Anyone claiming that Ronaldo wasn't an incredible player and one of if not the very best in the world pre injuries either doesn't like football or doesn't understand it. Probably both. He was an absolute joy to watch and prolific as well, if he was around now then yeah he would be loved.
Would Ronaldo have been so adored if he played football in this current era
- Thread starter Sir Erik ten Hag
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It is an answer. Miroslav klose has a 0.67 goal ratio at the world cup whole he had 1 in 4 at Bayern Munich. Just Fontaine was a goal a game at club level and over 2 goals a game at the world cup. It's 7 games at most every 4 years so it throws up aberrations. Some players have a better goal ratio at the world cup, some don't. If it was the top level as you say, no players would have a better goal ratio.
Yeah. Because he was Brazilian he was obviously compared to Pelé but they were very different players. R9 speed, agility, strength and ability to run full pelt with ball stuck to his feet was something special. I feel only younger fans are unable appreciate him.
The problem is that the Champions League matters much less in the grand scheme of things. It's a big trophy but CR7 would swap all his for a World Cup win with Portugal. Whereas R9 wouldn't swap his World Cup win for 10 European Cups. This is why C. Ronaldo's failure in the World Cup matters more, and as time goes on he will slide down the list of GOATS for that reason.
You can't have the world cup be your negative 'aberration' if you are trying to be the best player of all time. Just can't happen.
If you ask me and the other posters, its not solely about scoring and winning it, its the manner in how you do it. I can personally agree that international tournaments arent the ultimate litmus test, but some great players have iconic tournaments where they dont win it. Like Cryuff. On the other hand i doubt anyone will have Euro like Platini. Klose isnt considered the WC goat obviously because he was a solid player in a great team.
Cristiano Ronaldo's played 22 games at the World Cup, which is more than half a league season. Despite being Portugal's main goalscoring option for those matches, he has a worse goal per game record than Henrik Larsson, Romelu Lukaku, Xherdan Shaqiri and Landon Donovan, never mind someone like Brazil Ronaldo.
It matters more to judge ability than games against Costa Rica and China, matters less for prestige
Well pf course you can if you're carrying an injury in 2014 which was close to his proper peak. And 2010no attacker would have done well agaisnt that Spain side
Of those 22, 5 were when he was 37 and couldn't get a game for a lower level Premier league team, seems unfair to include those. He played 6 when he was 20 before he'd ever even scored a champions league goal, so he certainly wasn't there top scoring option then. You only really have 4 games at 2010, 3 at 2014, and 4 in 2018 where he was their main goalscoring option. 2014 he had an injury 2018 he scored 3 in 4, and 2010 he was a bit disappointing but he came up agaisnt that Spain side
I'm only using the goalscoring stats to disprove andrade saying the world cup is the hardest level. If that was the case you wouldn't have someone like Klose go from a 1 in 4 ratio with bayern to nearly 3 in 4 with Germany during the same time period.
Obviously you can have a good tournament without scoring and winning but I strongly disagree it's the highest level, most prestige sure, but not highest quality level
It’s absolutely pointless trying to have a debate with him. He has his mind made up and won’t budge no matter how often you disprove any of his baseless claims or what method you use to disprove them.
In 2023 the CL is the best tournament in the world from about (being generous) the Quarter Finals onward. Before that the super-teams can waltz through in second gear beating up on teams who are vastly over-matched and a challenge in name only. There are plenty of Costa Rica and China's in the CL now in terms of challenge they offer to the top teams.
No it doesn't. The best judge of ability is performing in the biggest games in the biggest moments. As the World Cup contains (by far) the biggest games, that is the best judge of ability. And yes there are players who are not that good who have performed better in the world cup than in other tournaments but this does not excuse a top player failing to perform in the world cup, particularly when they have multiple opportunities. It's weak to try and bring up some scrub who had a good WC once to try and excuse an all time great doing nothing in numerous tournaments.
The truth is that he's not quite good enough. That's the problem. We know his natural ability is not that of an R9 or a Messi or a Maradona so when he is shorn of his superclub support, he is not the same player. Messi is not either, but he has enough talent to carry a non-superclub side.
Well no it isn't. The best judge of ability is how you agaisnt the best players. City's biggest game of the seaosn was the champions league final, but inter clearly wasn't the best test of their ability.
In fact, insisting you use a tiny sample size, under unusual considitions as the best way to judge a player suggests a total lack of understanding of statistics. If you're going to use that, Ronaldo scoring 10 goals in 5 games agaisnt bayern, atletico and juventus is a level of a performance agaisnt a level of opposition thay virtually no one else has matched.
Nobody thinks international football is the highest level of football, plenty of people will agree with it being the most prestigious but that's not the same thing.
Look at tennis, Wimbledon is the most prestigious and most viewed, but no one says it is the best way to judge players, you look at all tournaments
Thats ridiculous though, because you're saying that if Messi loses that shootout to Netherlands and goes out in the quarter finals that suddenly he's a worse player as a result.
Look at who the best strikers of the generation are
Lewandoski, suarez, benzema. People base this on their club performances, no one cares about international level performances.
We're talking about the greatest PLAYERS of ALL TIME, not the greatest STRIKERS of a GENERATION. You're claiming CR7 is top 2 ALL TIME. Not top 2 of his generation. When you start talking all positions and all time, World Cup failure matters. Sorry chum.
Well yes obviously because both are judges of players qualities. It's strange to say international performances are irrelevant to judge who's the best striker but they are relevant to judge best all time players. Either they're the best judge of quality or they arent
And people on the other side have their minds made up and haven't changed them either.
And people on the other side have their minds made up and haven't changed them either.
Not strictly true. For example I’ve seen plenty of people change opinions radically since the Qatar World Cup for example. But some people aren’t interested in logic or reality and just want to carry on arguing up is down and black is white because they’re too emotionally invested in a particular side. Even if that means talking about players they were not old enough to have seen, who played in an era of the sport they’re also not old enough to have seen.
I just feel the sheer volume of occasions you contradict yourself as you try to squirm free when another poster puts you in checkmate isn’t a strong look, that’s all I’m saying!
People sometimes change their opinions based on what's happened, fair enough, like Messi winning the world cup, I don't think I've ever seen anyone change their opinion based on what someone else has posted on redcafe.
I try and take an objective look and use statistics because no one is going to have their opinion changed, if you think r9 is better than Cristiano, you aren't going to be convinced by words on a screen and vice versa. Someone saying, he was just better isn't an objective argument. I don't contradict myself at all, I sometimes adopt positions i don't entirely believe to show how ridiculous they are. Like andrade saying Ronaldo is worse because he didn't perform well in a world cup. So I say that r9 didn't perform in a champions league. Now I understand that r9 had injury issues and the like, but I'm trying to show how ridiculous it is to take 22 games, 5 of which Cristiano was 37, 3 of which he was injured, 6 he was 20 and wasn't a proper goalscorer yet and write off his ability as a player based on that.
I don't think you should write off r9 because of a lack of champions league success, I'm trying to show how ludicrous it is to pick such a small sample size absent of any context and judge a player's ability and career based off of that
Which could have made sense if between the most part of 2006 and 2022 the WC had only 16 teams, diminishing Cristiano Ronaldo's chances to participate more than a couple times when he was way past his peak (which is what happened to Ronaldo). Since that didn't happen, that comparison is useless.
Brazilian Ronaldo played 40 games in the champions league and he scored 14 goals, Cristiano played 22 world cup games, 5 of which were at the age of 37 when he wasn't even really premier league level anymore, and 6 at the age of 20 when he was still mostly a skinny winger who tried too many tricks. He played 11 games which you could say were at his peak and in 3 of them in 2014 he was carrying a knee injury that changed the way he played
And people on the other side have their minds made up and haven't changed them either.
In our limited interaction my observation is that you have a tendency to not take on the good points someone makes or admit that your analysis was a bit off when it's a proven to you. You've a tendency to cherry pick stats and pivot to a different point when challenged and continue trying to prove you're right rather than taking onboard what others are saying. It called moving the goalposts and arguing in bad faith.
It's a discussion forum after all. When multiple people point out the same criticism of your posting style, it's maybe time for self-reflection.
I would happily take on points some people make if the same courtesy was offered in return. For example people putting Ronaldo and messi's goal tallies down to their superteams, even though Madrid scored 63 goals when Ronaldo left and Barca 68 when Messi left. Rather than admit that maybe it isn't goal inflation but rather two exceptional players, the other posters doubled down and started talking about other leagues. When I showed that in the 5 years after ronaldo left barca, they averaged more goals than in the 5 years after ronaldo left real, I was told its still not proof that Cristiano mattered more to real's goal total than r9 to barca.
No one else is willing to reflect on these points (or how suarez apart from one outstanding season at barca, scored more leading the line for Liverpool in the league than he did for barca). If someone made a genuinely good point that they backed up with anything more than subjective opinions, I would say fair enough. But mostly it's just been a feeling that r9 was better
You’ve contradicted yourself countless times friend. It’s been pointed out by a few others on this very thread, and I’d imagine lots of other times people just can’t be bothered to point it out because they know you’ll just keep moving the goalposts to suit, ad nauseam. As another boy said you’re not really willing to take on board anything anybody tells you even if they’re educating you on something you clearly didn’t experience, you’d rather massage statistics to suit your own agenda and biases! You vs the rest does feel like a frequent occurrence, even to an occasional visitor like myself.
Just as a small example, in a recent discussion (I don’t even remember the exact details) you were using injuries as a seemingly valid excuse for someone failing either in the CL or in the WC. It stood out to me because it instantly reminded me of your obsessing in that Guardiola thread and how you kept using the trashing to Madrid against him despite him having serious injury issues (including injuries to his two best players) that were obviously a massive factor in that result. Like I said, just blatantly hypocrisy on your own part because you wanted to defend one person and had a personal dislike of another, so he wasn’t given the same leeway.
P.S. football can’t really be defined by statistics anyway. I’m not fond of the way it’s becoming like baseball with fans forming opinions solely from reading figures and numbers. But there’s nothing more irritating than when someone wants to hinge an entire argument on stats when it suits them, only brush them aside when it doesn’t.
I didn't use the thrashing of Madrid against guardiola, anyone can have one bad knockout campaign, I used not getting to a single champions league final when taking over a team that had just won the treble and reached 3 in the last in 4.
Although tbh I don't know if an injury impacting a player's performance which is totally understandable is the same thing as a manager having to deal with injury issues as hardly any manager ever has a totally uninjured squad to work with and usually needs to make accommodations, obviously r9 having injuries or Cristiano having injuries is more likely to impact individual performances than injuries are to impact a manager's performance
You've not done it here and you've not done it in the other thread where you were on another personal crusade. You do you, but people might make the choice to stop engaging. Good luck.
If the other thread you're referring to is the rashford one, plenty of posters have agreed with me there and it's very subjective, it's just about how much people value him and some value him less than others, no amount of debating is going to convince me he's worth 20m a year
Yeah, I've decides to add him to ignore now. Hopeless case
No one said international performances are irrelevant to judge who's the best striker. Who's a better number 9, R9 or Lewandowski? Marco Van Basten or Karim Benzema? To be fair to Lewa, he plays for Poland, which is exactly the kind of no-football-history-or-pedigree nation that cannot do anything at international level that CR7 fans like to pretend Portugal is.
Only you said that international performances are irrelvamt and you said it because you hate the fact that their relevance means that CR7 is not top 2 all time. If CR7 had won the World Cup you would use it in his favour. But he's been poor in every single one so you change tack and say that international football doesn't matter. We've talked about this. The most watched games in the history of UK television are all international matches. The audience for the World Cup final is a billion more than for the Champions League final. That extra billion is there because they know the World Cup is much more important than the Champions League. Sorry, not sorry.
But, but he had a bad knee in the WC during his prime, unlike say, Ronaldo who had a completely exploded one for 2 years prior to winning the WC while being top scorer
.The same way that marvel films are the best films and box office receipts are the best judge of who actors are.
You're making a false equivalency, r9 would be considered better than lewandowski because his ability irrespective of international performances, van Basten would be considered better than benzema again because of ability, you're trying yo act as though some of the best players ever have built that reputation on 15 games rather than a whole career.
But, but he had a bad knee in the WC during his prime, unlike say, Ronaldo who had a completely exploded one for 2 years prior to winning the WC while being top scorer
If r9 was OK to play and dominate a world cup after his knee injury but couldn't perform in the champions league, the champions league must be much harder and a better level of football.
*On a smaller stage with less pressure
Yeah, no pressure from real Madrid fans to win the champions league
Maybe he just wasn't quite good enough for chmaoioms league football, even if he could score agaisnt the giants of China, Turkey, Costa Rica, Belgium and ok ine decent team in Germany, although the goals were kahn fecking up after a great tournament
Not the same pressure as the World Cup though is it? Because it only comes around once ever 4 years, it has many more eyes on it and it’s far more legacy defining for players looking to cement their status as the games greats (you don’t even need to win it, just turn up and show your best ala Cruyff). Also R9 didn’t play in an era where you could lose the league title (and CR7’s Madrid so frequently did) and still turn up in the CL every year. I also have to say a past his prime Ronaldo didn’t look too bad in the CL when he was putting a hat-trick past a SAF lead United side at Old Trafford.
You need to consider there might be a valid reason why people who’ve actually seen R9’s rate him as highly as they do.
I mean tbh if you watch that hat trick Barthez fecks up for quite a bit of it. 33 year old Ronaldo didn't look too bad when he put a hat trick past Spain in the world cup either, though I'm sure he gets zero credit for that from you.
R9 didn't play in an era where his rivals in the league were paying the referees (or did he? I can't remember how far back Barca were paying them, it might extend to when r9 was at real)
It's not like I didn't see any of r9, I watched the 2002 world cup I saw some of him at Madrid, I didn't watch him in the 90s but given the lacknof la liga availability then to UK viewers, it's unlikely a lot of people on here were watching him every week. And for me, he's not close to Ronaldo or Messi, he didn't have the same aerial threat as crisitano, or threat from range, or free kick ability which crisitiano had before his knee injury, he didn't have as good movement off the ball as crisitano, he was a better dribbler, but it's not enough to make up for everything else where crisitano was better