Messi - The greatest player ever?

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Totti said:
Can't really say Ronaldo hasn't deserved it based on the amount of goals he has scored and what he has won. Champions League, European Championships (Portugals first honour in football), 51 goals in 55 games in all competitions across club and international football.

I thought it was more criminal that Suarez didn't get in the top 3.
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Suarez is a cunt. a nasty racist little prick. he shouldnt be in the top 30, let alone the top 3
 
Think it was better with Jorno's voting rather than players mates voting for each other. That said, it would be nieve to ignore the vested interest jorno's have when wanting to ghost write or write a player autobiography.
 
Maybe I'm a bit biased to say this since I'm an Argie, but Messi is the best of this generation of players. Comparing him to the greats of yesteryear like Maradona, Pele or Best makes no sense since the game changed so much. But I find him way better than any other of his contemporaries, his ability to dribble past the opposition, make long precise passes and shooting make him the best man of today.
Not my favorite player of all time but certainly the best striker of today, and will go down as a legend.

P.S: It's also comforting to see that he doesn't dive as much as others.
 
Guido said:
Think it was better with Jorno's voting rather than players mates voting for each other. That said, it would be nieve to ignore the vested interest jorno's have when wanting to ghost write or write a player autobiography.
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Indeed.

Skysports would run a special feature if Messi won, but put up a story about him meeting the carrier bag kid instead of even mentioning the Ballon D'or yesterday.
 
CJJ said:
the carrier bag kid
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SchmoodSpur said:
Just because he watches more games doesn't mean much. It means he's a statistician who likes football. What standard of football did he play? what coaching qualifications does he have? Is he registered with the PFSA? If so, what level has he achieved?

Again, football is not about data and numbers. It's about the body, the mind and the ball. Intuition is paramount. Intuition can't be reasoned with numbers.

You could have all the data in the world pointing in one direction and football will piss completely into your chips and give you a completely different result.

If it were like that, football betting would be easy.



There, you've proven that this ''dangerous area'' to consitute a ''dangerous pass'' is nonsense. What about the passes, say, from Alderweireld that releases a counter which achieves a goal? That wouldn't constitute a dangerous pass in this regard despite it being a catalyst of a goal.

Which brings me back to Messi. He's playing deeper, collecting balls off the defence and playmaking. Those ''dangerous passes'' will go down due to that. That doesn't mean it's the beginning of the end. It means his role is different and other players are sharing the creative load, especially in the final 3rd.


Your argument that football is black and white through data analysis is even less so. The stats used, no matter how great and exhaustive, are completely arbitrary to what the user and creator feel is important.

Scouts have done without them being the primary indicator of a good player for over 100 years. They used their eyes to see what a good player was, and still do.

To limit Lionel Messi to statistics, which, in the most important areas, are still the best in the world, is silly imo.

I mean, how did Messi get scouted for Newell's Old Boys at 6 years old, or any young player scouted at that age, in the first place? It wasn't intimate dissecting of statistics. It was watching a player.

"When you saw him you would think: this kid can't play ball. He's a dwarf, he's too fragile, too small. But immediately you'd realise that he was born different, that he was a phenomenon and that he was going to be something impressive."
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You are totally spot on about stats in football. It's not baseball where the sport is so structured they do actually mean something and it's not a FIFA game where everything is run on a programmed engine. Stats are in the main a massive con to give commentators something to talk about/make the companies who produce them money.
 
Ahab said:
Maradona for me.
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I can understand that Zidane, Pele, Maradona, Cryuff, Puska, Eusebio, Ronaldo and Beckenbauer etc could all be seen as the best, certainly they were all among the very best.

But the amount of goals and the difference of skill he uses to do it, season after season.
Maradona was fantastic, but it's also about the longevity Messi (and CR) are doing it, which is historic imho.
 
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