Sure. But do you really think most strikers would find similar space to score in PL as in other league? I don’t think so, I think there are at least a very much spottable difference there. In general the pace, intensity in PL vs other league just isn’t on same level. And the failure rate to adapt in PL seems far much higher too.
Nordic Ghost Yeti (Scandi Carroll) | Haaland at City
- Thread starter Samid
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Good for you. I'm happy to take the position that Di Stefano while an all time great wasn't actually a superhuman. He was great, like a bunch of other greats and that's it. Nothing unique or extraordinary.
Should be ‘cubiti’.
DiStefano is the only player I can think of that this kind of thing has been claimed about. And the 1960 European Cup final shows that it is exactly what he did, taking the ball off defenders in his own half, playing in midfield and also popping up to score a hattrick.
I did actually consider that but I thought I'd make it less Latin
Fair play!
Di Stefano wasn't a superhuman, just a ridiculously complete player at a time when this allowed him to be a do-everything player. We could have a player as complete as him today, and we wouldn't know, because the modern game doesn't allow a player to play like Di Stefano
Yet positions that have existed beyond the changes that happened in the modern game are clubbed together to describe these players completely misrepresenting the re role they played. Which is my whole point. Di Stefano wasn't playing a CB as the CB position that is known in the current day. The formation and tactics were entirely different.
And theres more than enough players who contribute in multiple phases of the game. Not sure what makes you think players dont do that anymore.
If Haaland goes to every single league and becomes all time goal scorer in every league - would some fans still not rate him as highly than the more technical players?
That’s just nuts to me and always has been.
That’s just nuts to me and always has been.
I mean he is arguably the greatest player of all time. However 'superhuman' Messi or C. Ronaldo are, that's how 'superhuman' DiStefano was, in his own way in his own era.
Nostalgia is powerful!
True
His uniquess was in the ability to switch seamlessly between roles and positions across every phase of the game, and do so consistently. In regards to contributing tk multiple phases of the game he wasn't unique, just the first to do it(at least effectively). His uniqueness comes from his ability to be a top FB/HB/IF/Winger/Striker, depending on his team's need. Put simply, Di Stefano could start play from deep, pop up in the attacking third to open up the defence and then finish the play. He did this constantly. What makes him different was that he also had the ability to man mark the opponent's best player out of the game(not simultaneously)
Not the best comparison as what makes Giannis special is his abilities to combine roles of 2-3 positions, he is built like a Centre plays as a power forward and has similarities to a shooting guard, if Giannis was comparable to Haaland he would be playing more ‘traditionally’ like Brook Lopez just to a higher level.
This was literally Pele's one of biggest claims to fame. The whole world talked about it.
well this is a good point Pele was an all time great goal scorer while being a number 10 who could pass dribble shoot with both feet and playmaker this is the level of a GOAT player.
Muller probably the greatest goal scorer in European football history regularly has lesser goalscorers like Maradona and Cruyff rated ahead of him, why?
It's not about technique but contribution. How many good plays you make in a game, regardless of they are the last contact before the ball goes into the net.
I really don't understand what's so hard to get about this.
He was a number 10 or second striker.
I don't think he was first to excel in multiple positions either. Sarosi has similar lore about him who was before The Blonde Arrow. And then there was the La Maquina at River Plate where again Moreno was this "can do anything" fella.
What actually changed at the time of Di Stefano was the introduction of the European Cup and the journalism putting that at a higher pedestal as compared to competitions held previously.
He is one of GOAT because he was by far the most successful player ever at club level, prior to Messi and Ronaldo. He won 5 CL and was the main man staring for the most dominant club side in history of the game, and completely dominate Europe and La Liga too.
Regarding him being an all rounded “superhuman”, I believe most of us here don’t get to see him week in week out back in the 50s and early 60s, so much of that are hearsay to be fair. And I have been looking for his footage all these years but can’t really find much to conclude anything. But I still believe he is very much an all rounder back in his days, maybe in similar sense as to Rooney or something.
But if it’s completely down to hearsay only, I think Duncan Edwards sounds to me the most all rounded ”superhuman” ever, rather than Di Stefano.
You would think it’s pretty simple to gauge what he’s talking about Muller had already done before Haaland, maybe they’re not aware of just how good he was?
12 consistent years at the top, with a couple years where he actually scored more goals than Bundesliga games, countless leagues, multiple CL, a European Champioship, a World Cup including holding the record for most goals scored in that competition for some time, World Cup golden boot, European cup top scorer 5 times.
His list of honours is obscene, even if we caveat that point with him playing for a top nation that Haaland doesn’t his record with Bayern is enough to put him up there with the greats and he is, but then in the same breath we regularly see lesser goalscorers in the history of the game rated above him.
That wasn't claimed about Moreno in the same way as it was later claimed about DiStefano. But the River Plate 'machine' was in the lineage of 'total football' where players would switch positions, which went through Burnley, the Austrian Wonderteam, that River side, the great Hungarian team and of course the Dutch, who gave it a name and hence were thought to have invented it.
The point is that there really is no footage of Moreno. DIstefano and Pele are players that you can sit down and watch today (Pele much more so)
I really enjoy football, but people watching 50 black and white matches of Pele are on a whole different level 
I tried watching a few of the 1974 world cup matches of that Orange side, but gave up about 3 minutes in.
I tried watching a few of the 1974 world cup matches of that Orange side, but gave up about 3 minutes in.There is footage of both, go watch it Edwards was special but Di Stefano was something else, what actually surprised me watching him was his level of technique all the talk was about how complete he was but his ability on the ball stands out big time, especially in a time where they played on horrible surfaces.
Can you explain that first para as if you’re telling a 5 year old?
What did the CB position entail, at the time Di Stefano was playing in it, that it bo longer does? Not disputing by the way, I suspect you know what you are talking about, and will be right.
No my point simply was that saying he played as a "CB", which inherently refers to the modern day CB, in the same game where he's also scoring loads, and spent majority of the game in front of goal never really happened. The throwbacks are mainly aimed at an attacker dropping deep to get the ball, which is nothing out of the ordinary. Harry Kane does that every game and puts up decent figures most seasons.
Lukaku scored quite a lot in the PL before he went returned again for a lot worse teams than Chelsea or United.
How
Unless you mean power/small forward?And to clarify on my lazy analogy, I've seen fans not give Giannis his due (even though his game is multifaceted), precisely because of the relative (subjective) ugliness of his game. What allows us to mock those people (besides being human), is the existence of advanced stats that to some extent, attempt to sum the total value of a player's presence on the basketball court in different ways. How does this player impact offensive and defensive performance? What happens when he is off the court? What is his impact relative to the rest of the league? It's not perfect but it's more objective than looking at a few games.
That hasn't happened in football yet. So for a player like Haaland, some aren't convinced he's a very important player to his team despite the goals, because "he doesn't do enough on the pitch" and of course they are referring to touches and dribbles and sexy passes... Ignoring that all players will spend the majority of the game without the ball, so maybe their off ball contribution should be a vital part of the conversation, without which, the conversation is simply about aesthetics instead of contribution. Because otherwise, how the feck do you discount 50 goals in a season, or nearly a goal scored per game as simply being on the peripheral of the match?
In short, we need VORP and RAPTOR metrics in football that say Haaland's VORP is 1.073 per 90 minutes of football compared to Maradona's 1.035... then we can all shut the feck up
If Haaland keeps scoring at this rate he might go down as the best goalscorer of all time, but someone like Messi and Pele could score goals at an incredible rate while having a ton of strings to their bow. Obviously Haaland is a freak in one department, but I cant watch Haaland and say honestly that he´s better than Messi even if he goes on like this.
Haaland damn near unlucky born in Norway- the guy literally has no ability to win the World Cup with that team - compare that to players who get born in Brazil or Argentina or France have that chance skyrocket out of this world.
'Touches, dribbles and passes' are not aesthetics.How
And to clarify on my lazy analogy, I've seen fans not give Giannis his due (even though his game is multifaceted), precisely because of the relative (subjective) ugliness of his game. What allows us to mock those people (besides being human), is the existence of advanced stats that to some extent, attempt to sum the total value of a player's presence on the basketball court in different ways. How does this player impact offensive and defensive performance? What happens when he is off the court? What is his impact relative to the rest of the league? It's not perfect but it's more objective than looking at a few games.
That hasn't happened in football yet. So for a player like Haaland, some aren't convinced he's a very important player to his team despite the goals, because "he doesn't do enough on the pitch" and of course they are referring to touches and dribbles and sexy passes... Ignoring that all players will spend the majority of the game without the ball, so maybe their off ball contribution should be a vital part of the conversation, without which, the conversation is simply about aesthetics instead of contribution. Because otherwise, how the feck do you discount 50 goals in a season, or nearly a goal scored per game as simply being on the peripheral of the match?
In short, we need VORP and RAPTOR metrics in football that say Haaland's VORP is 1.073 per 90 minutes of football compared to Maradona's 1.035... then we can all shut the feck up
How
And to clarify on my lazy analogy, I've seen fans not give Giannis his due (even though his game is multifaceted), precisely because of the relative (subjective) ugliness of his game. What allows us to mock those people (besides being human), is the existence of advanced stats that to some extent, attempt to sum the total value of a player's presence on the basketball court in different ways. How does this player impact offensive and defensive performance? What happens when he is off the court? What is his impact relative to the rest of the league? It's not perfect but it's more objective than looking at a few games.
That hasn't happened in football yet. So for a player like Haaland, some aren't convinced he's a very important player to his team despite the goals, because "he doesn't do enough on the pitch" and of course they are referring to touches and dribbles and sexy passes... Ignoring that all players will spend the majority of the game without the ball, so maybe their off ball contribution should be a vital part of the conversation, without which, the conversation is simply about aesthetics instead of contribution. Because otherwise, how the feck do you discount 50 goals in a season, or nearly a goal scored per game as simply being on the peripheral of the match?
In short, we need VORP and RAPTOR metrics in football that say Haaland's VORP is 1.073 per 90 minutes of football compared to Maradona's 1.035... then we can all shut the feck up
But players don't score goals, teams do. When a player is attributed a goal then this really just means that he was the last player of his team to touch the ball before it passed the goal line. Nothing more, nothing less. But the mere fact that he had the last touch doesn't mean he had the most important one. We all know the saying "player XYZ may have scored the goal but at least 50% of it belongs to ABC for that pass!"
Nothing of that is reflected in the statistics people like to quote in here. I mean, let's assume you'd analyze every goal of Haaland this season and assign each player involved in its creation a value that reflects their "share of the goal". Do you really think Haaland in a 40 goal season would end up with a higher "total share" than Messi in a 30 or even 20 goal season? And that doesn't even consider that players who are more busy with build up and chance creation have many brillant plays that'll never lead to "goal shares" simply because the players further down the "supply chain" mess up.
On a sidenote: There are advanced football metrics that try to capture the impact of a football player. E. g. xGChain. Haaland for this season is at 0.99, Messi at 1.3.
Believe me, I’ve tried to watch all the footages available in common channel where I could find all these years, but I still have no idea how their game was like based on those footage alone.
I am the type of person who would even sit for 45 mins to watch an old footage of European Cup game in the 60s or 70s. The player who impressed me most in those old footage was actually Cruyff. He was a very completed player back then, a “total footballer”.
There was even a game I’ve watched (vs Real in the 70s?) where he was every where on pitch, tackling and winning the ball from his own half, dribbling past opponents, playing glorious through ball to his teammates, initiating attack, involved a lot in build up play, carry the ball and run past opponents with pace, and scoring goals too. He was at the left, right, center of midfield, he was at the final third attacking, and he was in his own half trying to win the ball back too at time. It was the closest thing of all rounded “superhuman” performance I’ve ever watched from any footage, truly a 10/10 performance.
Everyone accepts that he can't compete in big tournaments at international level so he will be judged pretty much on what he does at club level. Just like Best was.
Well that’s only one example. But I am sure there are more big flops in PL than in other league in recent years. Really it’s not uncommon for top goalscorer in other leagues failing to adapt in PL. Maybe there are always cases of major players failing to adapt in other league too, but I am sure they are not anywhere near the same extent.
Cool, I didn't know that such a stat exists because years back I was talking about that we need something like a Goal Share stat to fully capture the input of a player to a goal.
Like for example Player D stops a counter attack with a great tackle and then passes to Player C who plays an absolute killer pass to Player B who is through on goal and then squares to Player A for an easy tap in. In Goal share you would have something like 0,2 / 0,4 / 0,25 / 0,15 (from D to A). But at the moment only Player A and B would appear on the stat sheet which is obviously pretty inaccurate.
For sure.
And this is 35 year old Messi.
In ligue 1 though, lots of friendlies and a good wc. Not doubting younger Messi is off the charts in stuff like this.
Fair
Yep, exactly. Strength of league/competition (strength of opponent in general) = obviously of huge importance.
One can look at multiple other factors too (in MVB's case):
* Quality/strength of team (Milan > Ajax, obviously)
* Nature/style of team, manager's "philosophy" (now we're getting into less-than-tangible territory, but this factor is clearly very important)
* Player's trajectory (peak versus longevity, etc.)
...and so forth.
I vaguely recall that we talked about a sort of ranking metric with regard to importance of goals too - i.e. something that can be used to distinguish between "stat padding" goals and more "meaningful" ones. Something like this has been done, albeit not comprehensively - I can't find the link, but someone on another forum suggested a metric for this (basically: a WC winning goal would be valued at 10...and down from there, something like that).
Needless to say, this could get extremely complicated very quickly - so it's probably best to aim for something fairly basic/simple to begin with.