Cryuff has become really underrated despite generally being considered the 3rd best player of all time before Messi etc. And Pele's heir when he established himself. I guess its because he doesnt have a 1:1 goals to games ratio.
Nordic Ghost Yeti (Scandi Carroll) | Haaland at City
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Cryuff has become really underrated despite generally being considered the 3rd best player of all time before Messi etc. And Pele's heir when he established himself. I guess its because he doesnt have a 1:1 goals to games ratio.
The amount of time people spend arguing against it would just be better spent watching a couple of European Cup finals from then. You don’t need to watch much of it to see it, and it’s a lot more fun than arguing with strangers on the internet.
I've said this before, I'm sure, but:
Players who stand out as transcending (in one way or another) the often much more rigid systems used by teams back in the day tend to be glorified.
To a degree this is deserved: there was a reason why they transcended the system, it had something to do with their talent.
But one has to be careful when assessing such players, specifically when comparing them directly with players whose peak came half a century later.
Di Stefano is perhaps not a great example of this (there are other cases that are much more obvious ), but it's worth keeping in mind with regard to him too.
There is probably also a reason his peers and those who grew up watching him talk about his attributes the way they do.
I am not sure if goals matter to him that much as he is regarded as “total footballer” back his days, I think what he is lacking is international success. I still rate him highly regardless, as he is probably the player who has impressed most in a football game. Always and still my top 5 GOAT.
On the other hand...
Bruno Fernandes spent two and a half seasons at Sporting: 39 goals in 83 games.
In his first two and a half seasons at United: 36 goals in 87, very very similar. His goalscoring did slow down this season though, for whatever reason.
Salah scored 35 goals in the Serie A in two and a half seasons then scored 32 in his first Liverpool season alone. Mitrovic has a higher scoring rate for Fulham than he had for Anderlecht; Rodrigo has a similar scoring rate at Leeds as he had at Valencia. Son has been in England for a while now but in almost every season in the Premier League he outscored his best Bundesliga seasons.
What I'm getting at is that plenty of forwards, highly talented or somewhat average, whose numbers don't dip significantly in England, if not outright improve.
That's fine, the problem appears when there's an exaggeration in terms of the actual skills these players possessed and extrapolating them based on anecdotal evidence, or at best these players compensating for the gaps created due to the formations and tactics applied back then by putting an extra shift. There's a massive reach between doing that, and playing as an accomplished specialist for the said position, which requires an entirely different skillset. In this example again, because players like Alfredo, Charlton etc while primarily being the main goalscorers for their teams and playing as forwards, had to drop deep to collect the ball because there wasn't the required the system to ensure an actual transition something which is commonplace now, doesn't automatically convert them to a conventional defensive midfielder. Similar to if they were winning the ball back in defense, there's no way you can stick them instead of Rio Ferdinand in a CL final and expect the exact same skills to be displayed as displayed by Rio, but that is what the notion that gets distributed.
Di Stefano was a great player, who played primarily as the main goalscorer of his team, and added the playmaking and unselfishness to create chances for others, along with the usual skills in terms of control, passing, shooting that most great attackers share. And that's about it. You can take someone like Rooney and if you put him in that kind of system that forced an inside left like Stefano or Charlton to drop deeper, he would do that easily as well. And the plaudits he received for doing that during his own career were related more to workrate, and not actual defensive acumen of an actual centreback which is why despite him showing ball winning ability at all parts of the pitch multiple times he was never really played as a CB or a defender, beacuse he wasn't one and neither was Di Stefano.
Yes that’s the 2 examples I always quoted too, but those are few and far in between. In PL there are plenty more cases, it happens like almost every season.
During his peak he was pretty much the primary goalscorer for his team, ended up as the top scorer in the league and cups multiple times. For his entire career at Ajax he scored at the rate of 0.78 goals/game, for reference Messi is on 0.86 for Barca. Goals were a pretty huge part of his game and overall threat.
HowUnless 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
I get your point but remember Giannis is a 7ft athletic beast that can also pass the ball better than most centres and power forwards, he isn’t just a one trick pony, I understand your point about aesthetics but Giannis actually does things that aren’t conventional to his role, like progress the ball from the back to front court, I remember there were times in recent years when critics were complaining of him doing too much in terms of handling the ball, he should only be playing the 5 position and working on his post game like traditional ‘Bigs’ would.
Haaland is different because he plays like a conventional striker it’s not just an aesthetics thing with him, he plays like a poacher he does the role of a number 9 without many deviations, he just does it to a higher level than any other pure striker has in 30 years plus, that’s why i found some distinction in your Giannis comparison but I understand your point.
Also don’t think anyone will argue with Haaland having the ability to be top 15 players to ever play this game if he carries on the backlash comes from those who may try to put him in the pantheon of the handful of 3-4 greatest players of all time, that’s when the criticism about his all round game pops up, not just aesthetics. This arguments is brought up because those players did not only score goals at an unusual rate but also influenced the games in other ways through their playmaking, ball progression, dribbling and so on.
Yes, pretty much.
But surely this "superman" idea (with regard to old time players) isn't something entertained by serious people, i.e. that Di Stefano was a defensive giant (in addition to being an offensive one), etc.
ETA The only player in the generally accepted GOAT range who can somewhat plausibly be considered a superman is Beckenbauer (who remains underrated, on the whole, in my opinion - but that's another debate).
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He's still a Barcalona legend why? Okay they won their 1st la liga title in 14 years when he joined but what else did he do?
His legacy at Barcelona extends far beyond his playing career.
I don't think most times the intention is to portray that he was an out and out defender, but I do think people from time to time are prone into getting a bit overimpressed with the role he had to play, and maybe subconsciously extend it to the list of skills he possessed, which then becomes quite misleading. The few posts above going about him being "unique" and stuff which I believe is primarily down to his secondary responsibilities on the pitch, doesn't really fly.
I don't think anyone, even the journalists that he claims are exaggerating everything, has actually said that.
Well thats not really what i meant. I meant the player. I think there is a disconnect in understanding between players who can control games which enables goal poachers to do their job and the players boss the game in the first place. On a sunday league lvl, i was the best at interceptions, tackling, pressing, dribbling and i would lay chances on a plate for my best mate to score. Obviously he got all the glory, but if i didnt play or turn up he didnt score goals and we would lose.
He could have picked England if he wanted to better his chances. For all the cynicism in football, representing the national team seems important to players still.
Yeah I think I am aware of the fact that football is a team sport where players pass the ball to each other and one guy scores. Who contributed more in a particular chain of events for an attack is specific to the team and players in question.
Agreed, certainly.
His versatility/the range of his qualities has to be looked at in context.
And I say again, that part of that context is that he was, to some extent, a "neither fish nor fowl" sort of player in terms of established positions/roles (at the time). That isn't special, as you rightly say - it certainly doesn't make him unique. This position/role transcending quality is part and parcel of the reason why several other, earlier players (including Moreno, whom you mentioned above) have been placed on a pedestal (again: not entirely without reason - but there you go).
It’s time consuming but really interesting to watch a full match rather than snippets. Back when I bothered to do that I watched the 68 European Cup final, which every United fan should. One of the most incredible things was the roar when Best first got on the ball. Never heard anything like it, neither with Ronaldo nor Messi.
Anyway, I think most who watch old footage and see the stand-out players of their day would see that it’s pretty clear that one of the prominent attributes is their awareness of their surroundings and their decision making. Take those people and transplant them to modern football with its advantages and we’d see them dominate again, as they see things so clearly on the pitch. Provided they’re up to the demands on professionalism.
I’m a huge Haaland fan, and he might become the best 9 ever, but in terms of overall impact on play I’ll always rate the likes of R9, Messi, Charlton, Cruyff, Maradona, etc. over him. Different categories of brilliance, but ultimately we watch football to go «wow!», and he won’t do that all-round like some of the absolute greats, and that’ll be held against him by those of a more romantic slant.
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And yet, Haaland isn't even in the same echelon.
Because he's only good at scoring unbelievable amounts of goals, while also bagging a handful of assists.
Also he's from Norway and Ronaldo is from Brazil.
I would think not. So, yeah - he's exaggerating. But he does have a point.
Yeah, I agree 100%.
It will always (obviously) be a hypothetical exercise, but nothing to me suggests that - say - Bobby Charlton would have struggled with the modern game if he had time traveled to the present as a kid and subsequently made the most of his talent.
ETA Or, actually: if you went back in time, abducted Charlton at - say - 25, and then gave him some time to get up to scratch physically/get used to the speed of the current game...he'd be grand.
(Well, he might be slightly traumatized from the whole abduction thing - but besides that.)
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The most famous thing to come out of Norway since Egil Olsen, M2M and Lene Marlin. He’s against some stiff competition…
To me hes very much there.
I think this is a moot debate. Take Maradona for instance who was a "free spirit" through and through. He'd be as incompatible with Guardiola as Ibrahimovic was if not more.
The players that excelled in their respective eras did so because they found the right circumstances to shine. Maybe some of them could replicate that in later eras but others probably wouldn't (and it's probably the same if you'd transfer someone from today into the past). It's hard to tell and I think it is best to just accept that you can't really compare between eras. The only thing you can compare is by how much a player stood out among his peers.
Yes, I agree with that.
Like I said, the other thing is impossibly hypothetical - but still irresistible: or at least for some players, who have certain obvious traits that seem timeless.
But yes - you're right.
I know many on here have a problem with Ole - but come on. He's clearly more famous than any of those.
ETA Kind of an interesting question, actually. Most famous Norwegian here and now (see: the debate over how famous/well known Ronaldo - the thundercnut one - is).
Haaland is the obvious shout. But then again: how many people who know Haaland do not know Ole? I mean, we're talking about football fans. People who don't give a shit about football don't know Haaland, he isn't in that category.
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I actually agree with most of what you’ve said here. Those past greats do have special awareness of their surroundings and their decision making, which would probably guarantee them success in other eras too.
Regarding Haaland, I do agree there is limit for him, he will probably never compete with the likes of Messi, Maradona or Cruyff etc but I believe he does have a real shot to get into top 10 GOAT, should he keep up his insane goal ratio and physical dominance on the pitch in future. People have to give him credits on what he is doing right now, there such a huge gap between him and other no.9 in the game, that isn’t usual at all and deserves our attention.
I’ll be brutally honest, I am a huge Lene Marlin fan and I used my post as a flimsy excuse to reference her to someone who might actually know who she is…
But yeah, Ole is way more famous. Aurora is making waves too. Haaland is the most famous Norgi I’d say.
Some of the comments in here 
on course to break all sorts of records at his tender age but, yes, I’m sure he’s losing sleep at night because he *checks notes* only scores tap-ins (which isn’t even true).
on course to break all sorts of records at his tender age but, yes, I’m sure he’s losing sleep at night because he *checks notes* only scores tap-ins (which isn’t even true).Is it? I'm not sure I'd take Haaland over Benzema last season or Lewandowski the two seasons before. Nor would I take him ahead of ~2015 Suarez. I mean, we've seen Haaland and Lewandowski playing in the same league and most followers of the Bundesliga will confirm you that Lewandowski was still ahead of him. Even most die hard Dortmund fans did.
Haaland, Ødegaard, Kygo and Ole the most famous right now?
As a Brit I’d agree with that, yeah!
The idea of Di Stefano as this "superhuman" actually comes from his peers. Including Pelé and Cruyff
Btw i find it ironic that people talk about Pelé scoring a lot of goals "as a number 10". Pelé IS the number 10. Whatever meaning you might ascribe to the number 10 means nothing when it comes to Pelé. Pelé by definition is what a number 10 should be(which means ridiculous goal scorer, among other things) because he's the entire reason behind the fame and mysticism of the number
Born in England actually. Not that it ever would've changed his world cup winning fortunes
Yes, but without knowing precisely which comments you refer to, we (obviously) have to be very critical of that sort of "evidence".
I don't dismiss comments made by peers as worthless, far from it: they can be both interesting and illuminating.
But general praise ("he was the best, a complete player, he'd probably been the best goal keeper in history if he'd done that thing") from fellow footballers should mean exactly feck all to a serious researcher.
Agree he wouldn’t be above Suarez Lewandowski or Benzema.