Trophies is the only criteria to measure size of big teams? Do you want a talk about jerseys? Flamengo equipment sponsor is Olympikus a brazilian company, that dont have market abroad. Ok River is selling jerseys abroad, but tell me how many jerseys River Plate sell during an year? Flamengo sold 1,4 million in 6 months, im anxious to see River numbers... About big teams, i wont repeat again, i think you cant understand the logic that: More big teams, means that is harder to participate in Libertadores, and since you participate less you have less chances to win. Congratulations River Plate, played 30 libertadores and won 2...Flamengo played 10, won 1. Also won Copa Mercosul and Copa Ouro. About Romário, what is the problem? Ronaldo played for Real Madrid and Barcelona, Inter and Milan so Ronaldo isnt idol for any of them? Evaristo was also idol of Barça and Real. Marcelo Salas who? this is your great example about player that return because of love? Romario come for Flamengo in 1995 after being world champion in 1994, and he was the best player of the world at the same year...Adriano return in 2009, and now Ronaldinho is playing for Flamengo. First of all we dont need foreigners to be a great team, but you show exactly how you dont know nothing about Flamengo, since Bottinelli transfered this year for Flamengo and he didnt play nothing until now. Bottinelli is the worst foreigner in Flamengo today, ahead of him Flamengo has Maldonado, Fierro, both from Chile NT and Petkovic from Servia that is going to retire.
Ok i just dont understand why Argentina has so great players and teams and just won 2 contastable WC. About Socrates, i never said that he is Flamengo idol. You mentioned him, and he didnt play in Flamengo on the end of his career. He played 1986 WC as Flamengo player. Yes all of them are greater than Zico, and River teams was greater than Santos of Pele and Flamengo of Zico. Plz continue with the nonsense jokes...
Salas scored as many goals in the 1998 world cup as ronaldo. if you don't think he is a great player, well ask some sao paulo fans about him from the 1997 super copa. as for River only winning 2 libertadores, well we are called the gallinas or hens for a reason. river has choked away countless libertadores' runs, i admit that look man i never had anything against fla, i was actually debating getting a jersey myself, i don't see what you have against us river is a big club in argentina with the most titles and the leader of the all-time table. flamengo is a big club in brazil with a great history of great players. we have no real history or rivalry so i don't see why you have such hatred for river end of story.
Your first question: trophies is the MAIN criteria to measure big clubs. Socrates was at Corinthinas during WC82 and Serie A during WC86, the only reason he went to Flamengo was the board of directors asked him to come teach the burros playing for that team how to pass a soccer ball. Romario went to Flamengo because he loved the partying in Rio...he enjoyed taking the loose Flamengista women to bed on his spare time. I wouldn't be surprised if he banged your wife, and here you are idolizing him Moreno and DiStefano are top ten players of all time, there is no Flamengo player at their level historically.
Let me congratulate you on Flamengos victories and great players.I have to say i have a great love for Zico a true great.However knocking Rivers history is simply being blind.Alfredo di Stefano made the European cup,Juan Manuel Moreno and Adlofo Pedernera have been declared better than Maradona by none other than Pele himself.Daniel Passarella and Roberto Perfumo are candidates to being the best defender of all.the list is endless.could I suggest you turn your ire on the so called clubs in Europe who unlike River or Flamengo are willing to take on in Manchester Citys case dictators and savages money.These savages are putting soldiers on the streets of Bahrain murdering people in cold blood and even attacking doctors trying to save lives.But have we heard a word from the money men of the premier league or so called futbol supporters?????????? The momey launderers such as Abramovitch are hardly as bad but do these teams deserve the name clubs.I say no so lets celebrate the glories of River and Flamengo Argentina and Brasil our glorious schools of futbol and put our fire where it should.
Five star post! Bravisimo! No surprise there on Arabs, these people will sell their mothers to slavery over money. PS: River Plate is greater than Flamengo, both in titles and significance.
I am not making comments about Moreno and Pdernera, but citing Pele' as a source of opinion, specially when dealing with the topic of Maradona, is not the best debate point.
I consider myself to have a pretty good knowledge of football and before this thread I have never heard of "La Maquina", Moreno or Pedernera. As great as they were, the 40's and 50's were a different time and it's very hard to compare teams from that age. Maybe some of you guys never heard of Leonidas da Silva or Arthur Friedenreich (this one from the 10's-30's). So I think it's stupid to claim things like "La Maquina" was so much better than Flamengo of the 80's when nobody here watched football back then. Not that it's an absurd statement, but it's almost impossible to argue. Some other things are much more "arguable", like Salas x Bebeto or River's titles x Flamengo's titles. On another subject, I think Argentina deserves all the credit for owning South American football alongside Uruguay in the first half of the last century. I'm sure Brazil DID care a lot about Copa America and just wasn't good enough to dominate the competition.
Great discussion here. I'm actually reading this book right now: [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Game-Journey-American-Football/dp/1899365230"]Amazon.com: The Beautiful Game: A Journey through Latin American Football (9781899365234): Chris Taylor: Books[/ame] The author would be proud of the La Maquina discussion.
That logic has a flaw because you are implying that having twelve big teams = more competitive squads, when the only fact we can get is that Brazil have 12 teams with lots of supporters. In Argentine we have only 5 big teams (which is something normal in almost all decent level leagues of the world) but it doesn´t mean the five of them have constantly the more competitive squads than the rest, you can see that no big teams like Estudiantes, Velez, Lanus, Banfield, Godoy Cruz, Argentinos have had some recent success. And the same goes with Brazilian Seria A, your brazilian big teams don´t have great squads all the time, so your statement about being harder in brazil to participate in Libertadores is false, you have the same spots than Argentina plus one extra spot for the current champion. If Flamengo participated less is just because of the low level they had, not because Brazilian Serie A is a mix of EPL, Calcio and La Liga with one spot to qualify to Libertadores, come on... You make me remind Racing Club supporters, who only talk about having the best supporters in the world and some prehistorical success they had.
i mean theyre spending millions and its getting them nowhere. what else do you want me to say I never watched La Maquina but my grandfather is 84 and he went to see la maquina week in week out he saw la maquina, di stefano, sivori, all of the greats. all the information i post on here about la maquina and river's history is directly from my grandfather or father as for bebeto vs. salas, well salas has an incredible record scoring against brazilian clubs and in the libertadores in general. he also scored plenty of goals in italy. bebeto did nothing in europe. if salas had been born in brazil or argentina instead of chile his greatness wouldn't be disputed.
They're trying to hold up to their best players: Neymar and Ganso. You talk like they are Manchester City, trying to buy success out of nowhere. I'm not disregarding your info. Just try to understand that old people tend to overrate things from their time and we have no way of knowing how teams from such different times compare. People have trouble comparing Pele to Maradona because of exacly that and we have plenty of footage and data of both. So let's keep it as objective as possible or it becomes nonsense. That's just ignorant of your part. Go check his wikipedia page and take a look at his personal awards and his numbers with La Coruna. Also, the guy played well in 2 world cups. Sala's numbers in Serie A (games - goals) 30 15 28 12 21 7 7 1 11 1 Bebeto's numbers in La Liga (games - goals) 37 29 34 16 26 16 34 25 5 0 (with Sevilla) It's very clear that Bebeto had a superior european career.
I don't know about Copa America, but there is some truth to the Libertadores story. I think Santos declined to participate 2 times in the 60s. And there were 2 or 3 (I think it's 2) occasions that no Brazilian team participated in the competition.
Libertadores started being really valuable to brazilian clubs after São Paulo's success in the early 90's. In the 80's we gave it some importance, but not close to what it is today. In the 70's and before our teams were hacked to no end at away games by the good old thugs I shall not name and the refs were OK with it. So the teams would rather focus on the domestic competitions.
Santos spent millions ??? Maybe their salaries ? Ganso and Neymar were developed at Santos. They brought in Elano, Possebon (loan), and Keirrison (loan). Flamengo are the ones that have spent $$$ on Ronaldinho and Thiago Neves. As GRBomber mentioned, check Bebeto's stats in Spain. Before he arrived they were a newly promoted team and were 17th. In his four years they finished 3rd, 2nd, 2nd, and 9th. He was also Pichichi in 93.
just a few points.I am surprised at the vehemence of the Brasilian replies it smacks of an unneeded inferiority complex.I am a River Plate fanatic who dearly loves our and Argentinas great futbol history.But I also love Brasilian futebol and among the most moments I have enjoyed was tge selecao of 1970 and Sao Paolo in the early nineties.Che we are great rivals but let's appreciate each other too.Two points on Argentinas side,Di Stefano has always said the best team he played on was River 46-49 at the end of la Maquina better than Madrids 5 in a row team.Secondly Brasilian fans here say they didn't take this or that competition seriously well Argentina didn't enter the Mundial from 1934 to. 1958 only returning in Sweden without Distefano,Sivori,Angelillo,Maschio and Dominguez to name a few.I wonder would the Verdeamarillo or Celeste y Blanco have won if Argentina hadn't insisted on home based players only as we did until 1974.
I believe it was three times that Brazilian clubs didn't participate. 66, 69 and 70. One big reason some Brazilian clubs chose not to participate in Copa Libertadores at the time was that after Brazil's world cup success their clubs were getting a lot of money to play exhibition games in Europe, so that became a priority. Pele's Santos in particular, spent a lot of time playing friendlies in Europe, but some of the other big clubs did as well. Also there was a dispute between the Brazilian federation and the South America leadership over the rules. But if you watch matches from the 60s and 70s involving Brazilian clubs and take notice of the intensity of the play in most of the matches, I think that debunks the theory that they didn't care about winning it.
True that. Bebeto is massively underrated man. His Deportivo days were superb, at times carrying the Spaniards all in his shoulders. Vasto days too.
I could see where you are coming from, and its a valid point from that sense. But then we would be dismissing all past teams then. Puskas' Hungary is pretty well known, despite being only about 5 - 10 years more recent than the River team. The fact that World War was going on didn't help too much either. Leonidas is in fact a very well known player, more known internationally than Moreno and Pedernera, but mainly because he played a World Cup. The legacy of Argentina's 40s era is undoubted though. Since recently, many historians, former players, and and football experts are giving massive importance to it as if it was some economic or political golden age of the country. Do you know the player Antonio Sastre? Many in Brazil thought of him as the greatest player they had seen till then, while Leonidas was still around and Zizinho was slowly beginning to sprout. I have heard some folkloric stories about him from old Brazilians.
It's not my intention to dismiss the ancient teams, they dominated their time and must be recognized in history. What I don't like is people taking personal opinions as facts. For example: someone mentioned that Pele ranked some other argentines higher than Maradona. Was it really true or Pele said it in order to put Maradona down? Decades from now people will talk about 2011's Barcelona as the greatest team ever. Someone will quote their father or grandfather. We will watch an 80 year old Xavi giving an interview about "the best team ever". It's an endless cycle.
I dont hate River, on the contrary i have one jersey of River and one of Boca. The problem is that some River supporters here, are evaluating others teams that they dont know nothing about. Pipiolo i wont discuss with you anymore, not because yours arguments are nonsense and you dont know nothing about what are you talking, but because you started with personal offense, like a childish person do when is out of argument.
Are you bipolar? First you give credit to Argentine clubs for dominating the Libertadores, then say it's only because Brazilian clubs did not care for it until the 90s. Anyways, this is BS as Brazilian clubs celebrated like mad anytime they won it, such as 1976 when Cruzeiro upset River Plate in the final. As for "La Maquina" this is a historic team that carved its place in history, possibly the best club side of all time. Flamengo of 81 was an excellent team, led by Zico, but they didn't mark an era the way La Maquina did, or AC Milan in the late 80s/early 90s, or Barcelona the past five years. These are teams that are the reference points for their era, they make their name in history and that's how we can compare them across time.