It's funny to see it brought up as a measuring stick when his direct rival has put up those assist numbers 4x as many times to go with even better scoring seasons at the same time
That's who they always want to compare him to as well
The comprehensive Ronaldo thread
- Thread starter Red the Bear
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That's who they always want to compare him to as well
Impressed with Santos decision though. Although, I wonder if Portugal get to the final would he still bench him. Not just because he would have a biggest meltdown known to the world if he doesn't play. Imagine Argentina - Portugal final with Cristiano on the bench. No way he doesn't go absolutely nuts if he is not in first 11.
He still is the winner and out all historic players the one you would pick for a deciding penalty, header or a deciding goal in a one off game.
Saying all that, hope he gets benched in that scenario. Yes, am being petty.
If the team get to the final.. it would mean Ronaldo isn't playing. I am quite confident in saying that if Ronaldo starts, Portugal do not make the final.
If the game is on the edge come 70 mins, then you can bring Ronaldo on and he can give you 20 minutes in the box, balls in the box and he may score a chance.
However; in the groups Ronaldo was the one with the highest xG and scored the least, which shows he is struggling to finish chances, we have seen that at United as well.
I cannot see how Ronaldo comes back into the team, the team overall perform better without him.
I'm sure Mendes and Ronaldo are working on applying pressure on Santos to make him start the next game. Let's see what happens but I'm expecting some news to come out soon that Ronaldo/the dressing room isn't happy with Santos's tactics. Or something along those lines.
Well, he will tell Piers Morgan about it.
It's funny to see it brought up as a measuring stick when his direct rival has put up those assist numbers 4x as many times to go with even better scoring seasons at the same time
That's who they always want to compare him to as well
Well yeah I've never denied that Ronaldo is/ was a great player and legend of the game.
It was just a conversation which began about how Ronaldo gets boiled down to numbers , a poster said it works both ways as people use his stats to justify his place in the GOAT list and then ended with Ronaldo being boiled down to numbers to justify his position in the GOAT list.
Which kind of proves @Eckers99 point.
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She basically wants him to do the Piers meme
This is absolutely bat sh*t insane! You can NOT be doing this when your team is in the quarter finals. If Santos and Portugal win this world cup it'll be a massive achievement, not only to win the competition but to drown out all the noise and turmoil coming from your own star player and his family.
I can't get over how ridiculous this all is.
When he scores a hattrick against Morocco
When he scores a hattrick against Morocco
On FIFA?
On football manager.
Jokes aside this kind of proves how big of a problem he is and what E10H had to deal with. Hats off to the Dutchman on how he tried to manage the lad and also a reminder on everyone that CR7 or his environment can be toxic and problematic.
No-one called him a poor man’s Michael Laudrup for heaven’s sake
I also stated Laudrup is one the greatest players the game has ever seen.
When he was benched at the club he attacked ETH and Man Utd in the media.
Now he is benched at WC, he attacked Santos. Hope he will also be banned from national team.
Now he is benched at WC, he attacked Santos. Hope he will also be banned from national team.
Irony… too… great… to… resist…
To me he was, yes. Because it’s not just about stats. I think if you become overly focused on stats, you lose a lot of what makes the game beautiful, and also a lot of what else a player brings to the game. I also don’t have the relevant stats to match R9s comparable goal contributions in the same season, but even if I did, I am not sure it would matter.
R9 had that ability that Messi has, and CR7 doesn’t, to do it all by himself. That’s what made him so frightening for me. He could finish a chance, be part of a flowing move, but he could also pick the ball up deep and beat four of five players by himself and score a wonder goal.
The worldwide famous singer Ronaldo's Sister has been living in Brazil for 5 years and is married to a Brazilian. They are both Bolsonaro supporters. I read today that they were interviewed in the stadium after the SK defeat and Ronaldo's brother in there was in no way interested in talking about the game and wanted to seize the chance for some right-wing nutter monologue, but Ronaldo's Sister shut him up immediately. Smart from her.
No one is denying he was the best player on the squad, he was the best player on Real Madrid for even longer and they seem to be doing more than fine without him, there's a reason why some consider that side the best United side of all time and Ronaldo definitely a lot to do with it but looking at the depth and the fact that we were still able to win titles and reach a CL final a few years after he left makes your point moot, United were winning titles before and after Ronaldo, just admit you don't know what you're talking about.
It really is. The absolute disrespect being offered to his teammates, and team coherency, is astounding.
Shared with van Basten and Platini, who the majority of people also don’t consider worthy of top 5 discussion, so I’m not sure Ballon d’Or titles should be the barometer here.
Keegan has just one less & no fecker considers him in the top 30.
Saying he shouldn’t be in the dicussion for top 5 is hardly blasphemy, there’s some absolutely ridiculous footballers who would be the best players in the Premier League or World Cup today that wouldn’t make the top 5.
Weird that so many people got their bees in a bonnet about this yet all would likely agree that Iniesta shouldn’t make the discussion for top 5. You know, the bloke who was vital in winning 9 la liga titles, 4 Champions League, 2 European Championships & a World Cup.
If he does, Santos is a moron.
Or has received death threats from Piers, Mendes and the lunatics on here who worship a player who is so obviously not worth starting (probably not playing at all) for what looks like a pretty good team without him.
I don’t see there being any way back for him into the starting eleven other than coming off the bench and winning his spot.
But he simply doesn’t seem capable of it.
Maybe Qatar will pay Santos enough to make it worth his while.
Iniesta was much less instrumental (and much more of a cog in the machinery) than Cruyff was.
If that sounds harsh, I personally rate Iniesta very highly and have previously argued that he's underrated (compared to certain other players).
But Iniesta will never escape the shadow of a) Messi b) Xavi and c) the Barcelona machinery as such.
Cruyff on the other hand was never in anyone's shadow (even though he too was very much part of a machinery, if you will, at times).
In short, yes - it would be ridiculous to propose Iniesta as a top 5 candidate. The wealth and depth of that pool (historically great players) is just way too vast.
It would not be ridiculous to propose Cruyff, though.
Impressed with Santos decision though. Although, I wonder if Portugal get to the final would he still bench him. Not just because he would have a biggest meltdown known to the world if he doesn't play. Imagine Argentina - Portugal final with Cristiano on the bench. No way he doesn't go absolutely nuts if he is not in first 11.
He still is the winner and out all historic players the one you would pick for a deciding penalty, header or a deciding goal in a one off game.
Saying all that, hope he gets benched in that scenario. Yes, am being petty.
But why would you pick him for any of that? When has this grandpa Ronaldo version proven that he's still the one you should pick?
If anything, he's proving time and time again that it's not the case any longer with him.
Yup definitely should be in the conversation.
Unfortunately most will point to his lack of goals and assists and that's hard to overcome nowadays.
Man, Cruyff was out of this world at his peak. His 1974 performance was one of the best ever and that is at the age of 27 to pick his 3rd Ballon d'Or while leading Ajax to 3 European Cups before. Higly recomending you watch it to get the idea how great he was. Laudrup was brilliant, but he is simply in the next tier behind him. Iniesta is the probably the best supporting star of all time, but Cruyff was always the main man.
You were rightly called out on this one.
Oh come on, let’s not pretend that if Cruyff played with Messi he wouldn’t have ended up in his shadow to the “extent” Iniesta did.
Iniesta, who was Spain’s greatest player in 3 tournaments wins without Messi.
Christiano Ronaldo every time the teams wins without him starting
That's nonsense, mate.
Have you watched much of Cruyff?
If you had the (extreme) luxury problem of fitting both prime Cruyff and prime Messi into the same XI, you'd arguably have a bit of a problem in terms of getting the very best out of both of them - because their skill sets/ideal roles do overlap to a considerable degree - but you'd be lucky to have Cruyff as one of that pair: he might have found a way to make it work.
He wouldn't have ended up in Messi's "shadow", though. It might have been a clusterfeck (I doubt it, because Cruyff was an extremely intelligent player) but what you seem to suggest would never have happened.
The point - here - is that Iniesta could not have replaced Messi at Barca (in terms of the basic role in the team, the influence on the overall game)...whereas Cruyff could have done just that.
Different levels, obviously. I mean, if you actually think that Iniesta is comparable to Cruyff - we're miles apart in our assessments of those players.
I can see fans seeing past stats but goals and assists aren’t stats. It’s literally the be all and end all of football. Even then Ronaldo was a beautiful fecking player in his prime. He has every facet of the game to back him up. I can see fans arguing about styles and I honestly think that’s what this boils down to due to the sheer scale of dominance. If we’re talking down Ronaldo here then this generation is a poor generation when Mbappe and Haaland are a lot more limited than Cristiano ever was.
Look at the modern game, it’s people who play like Ronaldo that’s the stanndard. The directness, pace and power off the shoulder. History will look kinder on him as the game evolved even further down that route than ever before. There’s a reason why Messi was anonymous in his last 9 Classicos, why he never stood up for PSG in big games and why his ambling around for Barca caused them huge headaches in Europe. If Ronaldo isn’t the style you want to watch then there’s nothing in the modern game for you really.
Ronaldo did all that. We saw him be devastating by picking up the ball from deep for Utd and for a lot of his Madrid career. He scored some utterly fantastic solo goals. I really can’t see the argument here
Ronaldo missed the penalty in that game.
You could swap Crujff’s name for Laudrup there too in fairness, or a few other special players that play in a similar role.
Harsh to put that on Iniesta who had nothing like the same sort of attacking role.
Rest of the Portugal squad probably wishes he’d just feck off, he’s nothing but a distraction and hindrance at this point.
Well but goals and assists are stats aren’t they? They are just important ones. And to argue they are the point of the game is fairly myopic. It’s how you win games, certainly, but a goalkeeper plays his entire career trying to prevent goals, not score them. Does a goalkeeper have no point?
Anyway, we are straying away from what the discussion was about. I only speak for myself when I make these points, so I don’t want to be bundled in with a generalisation of trying to talk down Ronaldo. Whether you like him or not, it’s nuts to argue that he’s anything other than a top five player of all time. It’s just my personal opinion, based on how I have watched and appreciated the game, that R9 was a better player at his peak. I am totally okay with you completely disagreeing. So much so that I can see the merits of your argument without being offended by them.
My, again personal and subjective, opinion of CR7, is that he was always a ruthlessly efficient player. A footballing machine. If he had one weakness for me, when compared with the likes of Maradona, Messi or R9, is that he was more reliant on the service provided to him. A more selfish focal point. But his brilliance merited it. The other three, for me, had the capacity to not only do it on their own, but also elevate their team mates in a way that I never felt CR7 had. Messi for example is not only every bit CR7s goal scoring equal, but also one of the most incisive and best passing forwards of all time. Something which CR7 never excelled at.
And while I completely agree that he scored some wonderful, wonderful goals, he was never a player that you felt would pick it up on the halfway line, beat five men and go it alone. These are of course tiny criticisms (if you can even call it that), when judging the GOATs against one another. Not against mere mortals.
The problem with all these comparisons across different eras and stats is there is no context or circumstances taken in to consideration.
Today's top players are far more protected by referees and the laws of the game than earlier generations, they generally play on good pitches, they play with lighter balls and better boots
Do you really think the players of today would have the stats they do if they had played in the times of Pele, Best or Cruyff?
I'd love to see how Ronaldo (or any modern player) would handle the likes of Norman Hunter, Ron Harris, Tommy Smith and so on
There is no doubt in my mind that the stars of yesteryear would be stars in todays game with the stats to prove it, I also have no doubt that the stars of today would have been stars in the old days with the same kind of stats as the players of that age
Today's top players are far more protected by referees and the laws of the game than earlier generations, they generally play on good pitches, they play with lighter balls and better boots
Do you really think the players of today would have the stats they do if they had played in the times of Pele, Best or Cruyff?
I'd love to see how Ronaldo (or any modern player) would handle the likes of Norman Hunter, Ron Harris, Tommy Smith and so on
There is no doubt in my mind that the stars of yesteryear would be stars in todays game with the stats to prove it, I also have no doubt that the stars of today would have been stars in the old days with the same kind of stats as the players of that age
Well, of course the idea of a potential "greatest ever" player might change.
But it hasn't changed much over the last - say - half a century: the consensus has been and still is that a "GOAT" has to have something more to his game than just scoring goals.
You (I don't mean you personally) can argue all you want that Ronaldo was exciting to watch in his early 20s, that he was skillful, that he had the ability to beat his man in an eye-pleasing fashion, even that he was a provider of "assists" to a considerable degree, thus (tenuously as feck) portraying him as a "playmaker"...and so forth.
But to anyone remotely objective, it's obvious that he was never on a "greatest ever" level in any of these areas.
Nah not stylistically he wasn't a beautiful player, he didn't have the dribbling finesse of a Zidane or Messi, he didn't have the passing of Xavi or Scholes, his style of play was all pace and power thats not beautiful well not to me anyway I guess its in the eye of the beholder
It also shows how sentimental fans can be to have wanted to keep him. Over and over again we're hampering our progress backing failing figures, often due to sentimentality. Last season was actually a massive red flag for a player who was going to be another year older. We're not learning our lesson at all. Thankfully Ten Hag is now making the decisions and can bring some much needed standards.
Not really. Prime Laudrup was hardly a constant goal threat (much like Iniesta in that regard).
Cruyff was a complete package: he had the outrageous technical ability, he had the one-on-one ability, he had the playmaking and he had the goal scoring ability.
(Compared to Messi, you could also say that he had leadership qualities, and defensive qualities, that Messi doesn't match - but whatever: the point is that Cruyff is not comparable to either Laudrup or Iniesta because he was, simply, a more complete player than either of those.)
Oh sweet baby Jesus that's the worst statement I've ever seen on this forum.
By a long long way.
It's not even funny
He moved to La Liga aged 26, and scored just 48 in 5 seasons.
Laudrup scored at a similar rate in La Liga at a similar age.
No doubt at Ajax he was a massive goal threat but that part of his career ended extremely early. Ronaldo phenomenon-esque peak. What’s the excuse for a top 5 ever in the history of the game player to have completely dropped off aged 26 when he left Ajax? To never again discover anything like the same kind of threat?
I have my thoughts, and for example Ajax scoring 122 league goals in 1966-67 has much to do with it. Or in 71-72 & 72-73 when they had a goal difference of +84 for consecutive seasons
And if you think Michael Laudrup wouldn’t have scored a shit load in such a dominant Ajax side, you’re massively underestimating the bloke.
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Before Ronaldo there was no football, just empty grass.