Nah. I would say its more to do with young people caring more about being "buff" than playing sports. More likely to get laid having big muscles than being able to kick a ball about.
The quality of strikers today vs late 90s / early 2000s
- Thread starter VorZakone
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Nah. I would say its more to do with young people caring more about being "buff" than playing sports. More likely to get laid having big muscles than being able to kick a ball about.
Okay, time for the obligatory comparison. RvN vs Lewandowski. Remove those red-tinted spectacles or better still, imagine Lewandowski as our number nine.
Other attempts at meaningful comparison (wrt playing style):
Aguero vs Batistuta
Kane vs Shearer
Aubameyang vs Henry
Suarez vs Raul
Morata vs Kluivert
Higuain vs Inzaghi
It's actually not as bad as I thought for current forwards. But yes, 90s forwards rule. I actually feel strikers will return now that we are past peak Messi-Ronaldo era. Morata and Kane look good.
Other attempts at meaningful comparison (wrt playing style):
Aguero vs Batistuta
Kane vs Shearer
Aubameyang vs Henry
Suarez vs Raul
Morata vs Kluivert
Higuain vs Inzaghi
It's actually not as bad as I thought for current forwards. But yes, 90s forwards rule. I actually feel strikers will return now that we are past peak Messi-Ronaldo era. Morata and Kane look good.
Wingers and Attacking midfielders are better now, but Strikers were much better then
Somehow everything was better in the days the caf members grew up in despite 20 years of progress in tactics, training and medicine. 
There's no way wingers are better because at the top level very few actually exist. They're all hybrid 10s or 11.
I should have been clearer, but by wingers I mean wide men and not wingers per se. Wingers have become more important to the buildup and have transformed themselves from someone who were just responsible for putting in crosses to goalscorers. Ronaldo, Robben, ADM, Bale, Hazard, Ribery and even Messi, Neymar and Sanchez( if you consider the latter 3 to be wingers, that is) are head and shoulders better than those in 90s
It's called evolution. Out and out wingers are rare, they have been replaced by wing forwards. That's just how the game has progressed. That doesn't make a wing forward an inferior player though. Infact, they have far more responsibilities now.
The fact that the 90s list includes names like Kluivert, Cole, Solskjaer, Pauleta(ffs), Elber and Morientes is, if anything, a mark against that era if these are the cream of the crop.
They were excellent players who weren't world class back then and wouldn't be world class today.
They were excellent players who weren't world class back then and wouldn't be world class today.
Well Atletico are basically the Valencia of the late 90s/early 00s and we only beat them once and drew 3 times. As for Inzaghi you have to be joking
Look at the scrutiny Lukaku was put under, in this forum and everywhere else because of his apparent lack of technical abilities. Do you honestly feel that Inzaghi would have been exempt from the same?
I agree with this, always thought the above players (Solskjaer and Cole excluded for personal reasons) were average through and through. It amazed me at the time to hear the plaudits Kluivert was picking up when his record always screamed distinctly average to me.
You just cant compare these two. Inzaghi was a fox in the box type of player while Lukaku is more suited as a target man - technical ability like first touch are a a must have for these types of players
Plenty of wingers were like that in the 90's as well. Overmars role for Ajax wasn't any different to Robben's. Figo and Nedved regularly drifted inside, at times even played central and were wide playmakers you could easily call hybrid 10s. Someone like Del Piero often played left-ish cutting in. Plenty of teams played 433 with wide forwards or 352/532 with wingbacks and free roaming playmakers/second strikers instead of traditional wingers. How many quality wingers can you actually name from big football nations like Brazil, Italy, Germany, France or Spain during the 80's and 90's compared to actual forwards who were used out wide and played similar to the trend we have today?
Having said that, we also had Ronaldo, Romario, Bebeto, Batistuta, Henry, Shearer, Ruud, Zlatan, Trezeguet, Torres, Villa, Drogba (these last three coming toward the end of the 00s obviously).
Loads more too.
Loads more too.
The likes of early Giggs and Kanchelskis are the archetypal wingers of the 90s to me. Sure there were plenty who could play inside, but the era of hug the touchline and beat the fullback is over. Bale is possibly the closest we've had since, but his game has changed entirely.
Robben throughout his early career maybe.
The striker's striker down the middle -a la Shearer, Ferdinand, etc- will catch much less of a break in today's game. Giroud would probably have done well in the 90s.
Didn't play a single game for Bordeaux in the 90s.
If you wanted to see a bigger gap in talent and how footballers back then were better, then take a look at defenders. Defenders theses days are awful compared to back then. I am not surprised Messi and Ronaldo have massed the number they have.
Title name
The quality of strikers today vs late 90s / early 2000s
Also you mentioned Elber not being wc? You're bonkers
Over how long a span of time? Lumping Bebeto and Romario into the same period as Zlatan, Torres, Villa and Drogba seems to me a case of stacking the deck against the current era. they had basically zero overlap in their careers.
He was hardly a generational talent. Wouldn't have stood out much today either.
Sonny Anderson was brilliant for Monaco too. Good player, hardly memorable.
Aubameyang, Higuain, Benzema, Mertens (fantastic last season), Cavani, Costa, Dybala are just a a few you didn't mention.
We live in a time where someone like Gomez, who shits all over mythical goalscorer Inzaghi's scoring record is regarded as second to third tier.
I think that highlights it. Those players, the current top tier of strikers, match the second tier of the mid 90s, say from 1991 to 1998 for fairness. There are no strikers currently who get close to the stars of that era; Ronaldo, Del Piero, Romario, Shearer, van Basten.
The real elite level players now are no longer pure strikers.
You also have to factor in how poor defenders are currently. The tactics of defending have certainly improved but it seems to be at the expense of individual development.
How would Suarez get on in the 90s knowing how he struggled to score against top defences in the PL? Likewise how many more goals would Ronaldo score if he had the protection players do now?
I would call Figo a traditional winger. The most significant part of his game was dribbling past the fullback and delivering pinpoint crosses or cutbacks.
The fact that he was two-footed, set piece expert, and a close-to-world-class-playmaker-from-the-wing on top of that just meant he was as wellrounded a winger as you can get.
This argument was dead by the late 90s.
Everyone seems to have missed out on Radamel Falcao [prime]. What a striker!
I do think some of us are being harsh on today's crop of strikers. It's really not bad at all.
I'm thinking players who played at a high level in the 90s/00s. Bebeto was still banging them in with Deportivo around 96. Zlatan started a few years later, but if we're talking about 90s/00s compares to 10s-, I think Bebeto just about makes the cut, with some players counting twice because they played in both eras.
That's basically comparing two decades to 7 years.
Well, I didn't set the parameters of the thread.
Sharingham and Ferdinand were both in their 30s and neither scored 10 league goals in 97-98. Laudrup scored 5 in the SPL in the season before the World Cup, Klinsman was 34 and scored two goals previous season.
Were these players at the time better than Mandzukic, Sturridge, Hernandez were in 2014? All were missing from your 2014 list. I don't think they were.
Also, , McCarthy was no more than a talent at Ajax at the time. Eto'o was not a talent that raised many eyebrows till ca 2003.
Trezeguet was subbing for with Guivarch up front for France with the main talking point being the paucity of attacking quality besides Zidane for them.
Kiko and Balbo weren't worth much by 98 either.
Trezeguet was subbing for with Guivarch up front for France with the main talking point being the paucity of attacking quality besides Zidane for them.
Kiko and Balbo weren't worth much by 98 either.
You've misunderstood the post.
The year serves as a line in the sand.
One World Cup had a huge selection of players that had bags of talent and great careers.
The other World Cup has half that amount.
But to address your post; Sheringham and Ferdinand were both better forwards than the players you've mentioned. (Albeit Sturrige has a question mark as he's a damn fine player but made of glass).
It's not about the year 1998. I've explained that plenty.
Its not a hard concept to grasp or discuss.
If we can only discuss each year at a time we get nowhere.
Any World Cup will have some young players that will peak later. Some players will have peaked. But as a cross section of a generation it matters not when the players peaked.
There's a dearth of talented young players in the 2014 list. There was an abundance of great strikers to take over from the ageing strikers in 1998.
No love for Zlatan.
So you're comparing players who had a great career before or after the 1998 World Cup to players who had a great careers before the 2014 World Cup? You can't really compare after as only 3 years have passed. It's totally flawed.
Podolski, Fernando Torres, Huntelaar, Bacca, Mertens should also be included in 2014 then if players like Laudrup, Ferdinand and Kiko are in the 1998 list.
What? Where?
the post you've quoted said 90s and people here keep throwing all kind of names around ignoring timeframes anyways
several problems making the list very misleading
players are included/excluded quite arbitrarly based on position? why is robben there but not hazard or di maria?
if it's not about form at that time where are forlan and torres?
quite a few top players of their generation missed the 2014 world cup due to injury, their team not qualifiying or similar. zlatan, lewa, bale, falcao, tevez
romario and figo in '98 from what I remember
the 1998 group has the advantage of finished careers
you have no idea how some 2014 players might turn out in the future
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I thought Sonny Anderson was decent, if he was around now Mou would definitely go for him.
I think people tend to look back with rose tinted glasses sometimes. There were great strikers then and there are great strikers now. It's really the last position I'd have picked for a 'they're not as good as the olden days' thread.