CR7 vs Ronaldinho (prime only)

Carlito never watched full matches all throughout an entire season of many players he downplays.

Its not new to me that he never watched the players he hates cause in the past I have referred matches to him and asked him for his opinion and it became apparent to me that he was not familiar with said matches until I mentioned it to him.

Yet he passes judgement with huge arrogance on said players.

He is a charlatan

 

for the record, R9 also took a handful of penalties in 96/97

 

I only highlighted a fact. You should appreciate the fact that I've highlighted a fact.

Compostella and Valencia? Sub par and mid table teams with defences in shambles. R9 created a substantial amount of solo and own goals against 96/97 sub par clubs. Romario destroyed all direct rivals to the title in 93/94. Romario also scored many many solo and own goals in 93/94. Examples: Zaragosa, Valladolid, Atletico (home and away), Real Madrid, Logrones, to name a few. These were all solo and own goals.

Every thing R9 did in 96/97, Romario also did and more. Cause, unlike R9, Romario's goals and assists gave barca the edge to win the title.

Comparable in the league? Not really, Romario goals and assists in the league was key for Barca's 4th title. Goal difference could have made it for R9 96/97. If R9 had scored against Deportivo and Real Madrid, then we could say that they were comparable. But he didn't. So based on this alone, Romario edges R9 in their respective best seasons. Also, Romario did not score any PK that season. So no, it is not comparable. In fact, Romario created a handful of PK for Koeman and Stoichkov to take, which they turned into goals. So Romario besides scoring the same GPG as R9, had created a handful of PKs (which Leadleader counted in his videos) he did not take himself. If he had taken these PK himself then he would have had a much much better GPG. Romario 93/94 La Liga is better than R9 96/97 La Liga.

the only impressive thing about R9 in 96/97 is that he did extremely great performance (perhaps historical) for his relative young age. But when age is ignored than he was not superior to Romario.

What Stoichkov has got to do with this? Bierhoff ouperformed R9 in 97/98. So?

Copa Del Rey of the late 80s and early 90s was a second tier festive competition that was not even televised globally as today. Not relevant back then. You continue, in spite of having been told about it before, to compare different competitions across different eras without considering the difference in level between different eras. Copa Del Rey of 90s is not as hyped as today.

R9 did not even play in UCL to begin with. So apples vs oranges

Having said that, It is a myth that Romario UCL 93/94 was bad performance. It is true that he did not score many goals. However fact is, besides the 2 goals, he gave 4 assists in 4 separate matches, and 2 pre assist vs Porto in UCL 93/94. And was a constant thread against his opponents in every match. Overall, not a great performance compared to his league. I agree. But Ronaldo never had a great overall performance in UCL either and all the while playing in Europe for twice the duration of Romarios stay in Europe. And still, Romario won 2 top scorer titles in UCL. R9 none[/QUOTE]

 

Than lets add romarios preseason matches since you have included all competitions for R9

93/94 preseason competitions are 14 goals in 8 games plus la liga 30 goals in 33 games plus UCL 2 goals in 12 matches.

Total 46 goals and 53 matches

 

In regards to the last line above, you are missing the point!

I repeat again, Copa Del Rey is a second tier competition and back in late 80s to early 90s was not even important as it is today. Many top players skip playing in Copa Del Rey to rest and recover. It was not hyped as it is today. Doing well in Copa Del Rey today may be impressive to you, but back in the 80/90s it wasn't important tournament and most top players didn't even bother signing up for it. Why are you not responding to this point?

Further, they may be official as you pointed out. But there are two things you are omitting here.

1. to rate a player's overall performance based on adding all of competitions goals in a single season into one single statistical value (like you always do in all of your posts), without considering the differences in the level of each competition makes your analysis outright inconsistent and therefore flawed. This is not how professional statisticians go about rating and analysing things. It is mathematically flawed. For instance, you keep posting Romario overall 93/94 as 32 goals in 47 caps yet this is mischievous and misleading if not outright unfair cause it conceals the fact that he had a great La Liga performance. He may have failed in Copa Del Rey but the fact is that he was one of the 3 key players (Stoichkov and Koeman) that were responsible for Barca's leauge title that year. See how dangerous your method becomes?

2. Copa Del Rey, official or not, was not important competition back in the late 80s and early 90s. You are not considering historical facts into your analysis. And haven't yet responded to this

In the end, because of Romario's goals and assists in the most critical matches of 93/94 season he is more clutch than R9's was in season 96/97. And no great performance in Copa Del Rey (as in R9's case) or lack thereof (as in Romario's case) will compensate or supplement for R9 overall performance. La Liga > Copa Del Rey and UCL>UEFA cup

And to be reasonable with you, I will even give you a thumbs up for pointing R9's Copa Del Rey performance. But it will only confirm that in their respective best seasons, R9 was only superior to Romario in the lesser second tier competitions. Whereas Romario was better in the top tier competition (La Liga).

Now go on moving the post again.

 

LOL, why would Messi have gone untreated in a previous generation.

And what are you basing him not being able to handle Diego or Cruyff's era? Its not like hes sustained any injuries on the pitch for you to make that claim.

Also, if Messi is only good because of the current generation he is in, he wouldn't be head and shoulders above his peers, but he is.

On a side note, I do wish the game was still as contentious and violent as it was in the 80's. Would be way more exciting.

 

Carlito, I am in a hurry right now so I might omit or forget some details. But still wanted to respond to your post. It is going to be long post. I do not like long post but this time I wanted to expand a bit and be a bit more detailed about things. So be patient and read the full post for good measure.

He was 20 years old, not 19. I am 4 months older than R9. I saw him often in Eindhoven leaving the stadium into his Audi. I shaved short like him my head to mimic his style and my uncle drove us (cousins) to Eindhoven many weekends to see his game. I was in the stadium when he scored his back heel kick against (i think) FC Roda winter of 1995. I Good old days. Big fan!

Don't get me wrong. I am not diminishing R9 season 96/97. I do acknowledge and appreciate his best season at Barca. By all means , like i said before, considering his unusual relatively young age he did a legendary performance, am a fan! But when age is taken out of the equation than his 96/97 performance, still great as it is, becomes a precedented event. And by precedented I mean exactly that...precedented.

Stoichkov was indeed finished. Guardiola was also past his prime.

Giovani however, did a great job feeding R9 a handful of assists that season though. And Ivan De La Pena had scored some good goals too. It is not as if he was supported by a B team in the wings. Bobby Robson was manager and gave R9 a lot of space and 100% backing. To say that Barca 96/97 lacked quality is not true. Robson played a big role in R9 career. But also Nike making promotional deals with PSV and Barca (Kappa was Nike's daughter company) and this had a big impact on what R9 next contracts was going to be. Nike called the shots a lot in R9 earlier career. It helped with his marketing. 100 million dollars earning for a lifetime contract. No wonder why he was dubbed wonder kid before earning trophies. His individual game alone, for as great as it was, could not warrant "the next Pele" hype that went in the media back than. I remember this like it was yesterday. First time I saw R9 was when Parreira included him in the NT94 as a sub. I saw a few goal summaries in the news channels and then I saw him sit on the bench in WC94 and hear my uncles claim that this 17 year old kid was going to be the next Pele. Became a fan there and then.

And in regards to your often claim that Dream Team Barca was a super team, not so fast! Dream Team 93/94 was not as good as the earlier years any more. @leadleader once did an analysis and observed (which I agreed) that Dream Team 93/94 was already on the demise. They started the first half of the season woefully by losing and drawing half of the entire first half of the season. Cruyff draw a lot of criticism by fans and players. Only in the second half they started picking up and got their act together. And Barca loss vs Milan in UCL final is testament and prove of this theory. Some say, Cruyff had overestimated his team and underestimated Milan. Even a comic video about Cruyff defeat vs Milan on youtube LOL! Carlito you need to read more about 93/94 and Cruyffs Dream Team. There is a great 1 hour long documentary about Cruyff Dream Team but in Spanish. Perhaps you could set the subtitle. There is a lot of inner circle insights by many journalist and former Dream Team players. If you do care about historical facts than you should watch it.

Your conclusion in the last sentence above proves that you look at fact sheets without looking further into articles, watch full matches, listening to contemporary commentators, and reading historical articles in the newspapers broadcasting the Barca vs Deportivo match of that day. Here is a little analysis in a nutshell....

Barca starts off woefully losing half of the first half of the season and the remaining ends in draws. Cruyff drew lots of criticism from the board, players and fans. You can find many articles in Catalan and Spanish language covering this story, yet I know this from having witnessed it myself in real time. My father is Spanish and I am fluent in Spanish and Dutch so that came in handy when watching La Liga back in the 90s. Memory is still going strong. So Barca starts off season 93/94 disappointing. Back then there was this rule prohibiting more than 3 foreign players on pitch simultaneously in La Liga. Cruyff told Laudrup, Koeman, Stoichkov and Romario that they will have to compete during pre-season to win themselves a place as constant starting line-ups in the upcoming season. This is why in one of my previous post I told you to consider Romario's pre-season even though you think it was not official registered matches. It is what's at stake in the pre-season that makes his pre-seasons performance worthy of consideration in the discussion. Romario won the spot with his 14 goals in 8 matches (some vs Ajax, Sevilla, and other good European teams) that convinced Cruyff to gave him the permanent spot as starter in the league whereas Stoichkov was told to be starter in UCL mainly. Laudrup was benched and served as substitute only when Cruyff needed change in tactics. Koeman was starter in all of league and UCL. See why pre-season played a role in 93/94? It was not only practice and experimental for Cruyff but also a fierce competition between the foreign players for a spot as starter. Only two would get a perm spot. All of this info can be seen in the Barca documentary I posted above

Now that we have cleared the background and understood that Barca had a woeful start off season, read on to see why Deportivo match was a great performance.

Round 26: Deportivo ranks 1st place while Barca 3rd place. Romario scored the opening goal and then gave assist to Laudrup to put Barca at 2nd place. Closing the gap between Deportivo meant a lot to Barca team and fans. Outside of the goal and assist Romario was a constant thread to Deportivo. And he repeats this feat many times in critical succeeding rounds later in the second half season, including the final round vs Sevilla when Barca desperately needed a goal difference between Deportivo to get 2 points to win the title. Watch Barca vs Sevilla full match in Spanish with subtitles to see what commentators say.

What do you mean with "is the player in question" ?

I never said that Romario was the sole influence behind that title. I remember mentioning clearly Stoichkov and Koeman as being important alongside Romario. Stoichkov and Koeman were also important. And even Bakero was important. Yet, Romario gave 4 PK to Stoichkov and Koeman in critical rounds deep into the season. And most of his own goals came in crucial rounds in the second half of the season to keep Barca trailing Deportivo at 2nd place.

They gave Stoichkov Balon D'Or award but thats not the same award as the real Balon D'Or award of today. That Balon Stochkov took was off limits to non-European players. It was lesser award to the FIFA one. Romario won Onze award and FIFA WPOTY for his WC94 and La Liga success.

R9 destroying Atletico was not unique. Great match but not unique. Romario did what R9 did but twice vs Atletico in 93/94. Destroyed them in both away 1st leg and home 2nd leg. Hat tricks in both. And by far one of the best goals scored in Nou Camp Stadium history according to fans. The opening chip goal!

Romario scored 5 goals vs Atletico Madrid in the home match. Referee had unfairly called it off. If you watch the match you will see that he was not offside.

In both matches vs Atletico (home and away) he scored hat tricks.

Conclusion, Romario did it twice in 93/94 what R9 did against Atletico in 96/97

you haven't seen Romario vs Atletico Madrid home and away than?This was 3 years before R9 came into the scene. Look at the beauty of the goals in both matches. The second goal (sombrero) in the 1st leg away match and the opening chip goal (shape of a rainbow ) in the 2nd leg home match, so perfectly put. These two goals were better ones than R9 goals vs Atletico 96/97

Valencia 96/97?

Valencia 96/97 finished the season at 10th place. Their defences were not the best in the league.

Watch Romario's great assist vs Valencia 93/94

Sociedad 96/97?

Romario scored a hat trick vs Sociedad 93/94 while Ronaldo scored a brace in 96/97.

Real Sociedad 93/94 finished at 11th while Sociedad 96/97 finished at 8th. in both seasons Sociedad fell like 30 points behind Barca. So both Sociedad teams were more or less the same level. Not to take away what R9 did vs Sociedad 96/97 but look at what Romario did to Sociedad 93/94 in his début match! Here is my analysis:

Both were great performance and both were equally entertaining, both were equally involving posing danger and making some cheeky tricks. Yet, that volley goal of Romario is a world class wonder goal. A very rare gem that you don't see often. How he traps that long pass and controls it with his chest and never let it touch the ground and then immediately volleys it with a gentle touch into a long arc rainbow projectile into the net. No way an easy feat to pull off. I have seen very few do this. Gerd Muller, maybe Matt Le Tesier could pull of a chip like that? Showing his technique. This alone makes Romario vs Sociedad more special to me. Dunno about you though but to me it does.

1st goal:
Romario opening goal is the same quality as that of Ronaldo's opening goal. Yet, Romario passed through 2 defenders head-on, while Ronaldo had 1 defender following slightly behind him 1 meter away on his left side. I give Romario the edge.

2nd goal
Tie! A bit similar as well. Romario's playing it back (one-two) with a back heel pass and than moves into danger zone, traps it, and with a gentle toe-poke puts the ball into the net is world class. Ronaldo's goal is stuff legends are made off! I am split here. R9 literally walked the ball like Johnny Walker into the goal. From start to finish it was a master piece! Both are gems of goals. Toss up.....

3rd goal
(R9 did not have a third). Romario scored what many football pundits considered to be among the best of goals in Nou Camp stadium history. Jorge Valdano, the Argentinian legend, who was commentator that day, likened Romario to a player out of a cartoon animation:. I quote him in Spanish: "Un Jugador de dibujos animados"

Overall I would consider both vs Sociedad players performances equal.

Not true. Both in season 93/94 as overall during his career did Romario give great performances against top teams. He saved Barca from losing against Manchester United UCL 93/94 home and away. And there is vs ManUnited 94/95 UCL legendary match in which Sir Alex Ferguson had eulogised Romario's great performance in the post match press conference. There is many more. In the Ro vs Ro thread an older poster had made a long list of all Romario vs top teams in his 7 years in Europe. The list is long!

And since you are speaking about hat tricks? A week ago, BBC published an article summing up the fact that Suarez is the first player to have scored a hat trick in El Clasico Barca vs Real since Romario 93/94. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45995215

Romario held until Messi broke it, the record for most number of hat tricks in a single season in La Liga history. And most were against difficult opponents.

Besides, what other "top team" did R9 give a great performance in 96/97? The only match I saw him give a great performance against a "serious" team was vs Atletico Madrid when he scored hat trick and assisted Stoickov. That was his best match of 96/97. Valencia? Valencia was a mid table team with defences in shambles. Compostela? give me a break. Beautiful were those goals against Compostela and Valencia, often cited by his fans and media. Yet, put in historical context it means that he owned sub par clubs in league 96/97. The other top performance I remember was ManUnited UCL 03. Other than that, I will have to do research to refresh my mind.

Thanks for giving Romario credit at last. Something you reluctantly do. It even feels contrived.

One more thing, Romario created 4 PKs which he did not take himself. He gave them to Stoickov and Koeman which they did score. Imagine if Romario had taken his own 4 PKs (much like R9 did in 96/97) he would have potentially upped his 30 goals to 34 goals to better his GPG even further. If you don't believe this point than read Leadleader's old post in the Ro vs Ro thread. We watched and counted all of Romario fouled PKs that he did not take himself. If he had taken them like R9 did, then he would have had 34 goals in 33 games.

Watch Barca vs Logrones home match. The full match. He scores a great goal and than gives his foul PK to Koeman. He did this 4 times in 93/94. Hence why they won the title.

In WC94 after scoring the opening goal vs Russia, he was fouled in a dribble passing two players in the danger zone. He gave his PK to Rai to score the second goal. He could have taken it himself and tie-up with Stoichkov and won Golden Shoe next to his Golden Ball. But its fine, you keep ignoring these things in your posts. Bear in mind, for a striker often branded as lazy and selfish, he was actually one of the most selfless of strikers I ever saw on pitch. He always played the ball back. This rebuff's yet another falls stereotype spread by haters.

Yes, this is true. He did score against all teams in a single season. And he was very consistent. No contest here!

Romario missed out 8 matches of which 4 were due to a suspension when he got red carded for knocking off Diego Simeone with a left hook in a league match vs Sevilla. The other 4 matches he gave assists in all matches for others to score. So even though he did not score against all opponents he still produced assists. Not bad.

You got me wrong.

I never said that Copa Del Rey in 93/94 was less irrelevant to 96/97. I did not post that. What i said is that Copa Del Rey of 80s and 90s was less important tournament compared to today (post millennium) So neither Copa Del Rey of Romario nor that of R9's should be given too much weight in this debate.

Copa Del Rey between Messi and CR7 can be used to rate their performance cause today it has more value.

In any case, I never understood the value of combining all performances of players across different competition e.g mixing up league with copa and supercup etc into one single stats value to see who did better. Any serious person who is in the know will tell you that is a flawed if not skewed way to analyse statistics. You are comparing oranges vs apples. Keep it simple. League vs League and UCL vs UCL and UEFA cup vs UEFA cup and NT vs NT

UCL > UEFA cup. Individual players performances here are not comparable.

This is true from the period between 93 to 98 (Cruzerio, PSV, Barca, Inter, Copa America 97, and WC98). Then came that unfortunate injury that set him back for a full season. He lost his speed and power but gained mental strength. With Scolari at the helm to give him another shot he came back and proved himself not to be only a great scorer but also a great player overall and finally (unlike WC98 final) that he could also (like his predecessors) step up when it mattered most.

Germany 98 was not strong a team though. Nevertheless he did what was expected of him and Ihe scored the championship goals. Rivaldo was crucial though and his influence in the team (98 and 02) contributed with almost half of R9 goals. Rivaldo also deserves to be among the greats. He deserve credit. To deny him would be unjust

Also, it was very disingenuous to knock off Romario's vs Italy WC94 final match by saying, he owes it to Baggio's PK miss. This is like the old poster Jamesbh11 who used to say the same. Every body laughed him off so bad he quit bigsoccer all together. Don't do the same. Romario scored the 5th PK goal that was crucial to keep Brazil 1 point trailing Italy. Marcio Santos missed. Dunga came next and scored. Italy was 1 point ahead. Baresi missed, then Romario equalized the score. Then Baggio kicked it out of the stadium. But to say he was responsible for Romario's Golden Ball is plain childish. He did not win Golden Ball for his final match. He won it for his contributions in group, R16, QF, SF matches. which is among the best. He is among a very few historical players to have won Golden Ball while winning the WC title at the same time and remained the last player to do so till today. Up until 1994 FIFA did not include the final match to rate players performances for the Golden Ball. I remember we had a debate about this on bigsoccer, Celito, Leadleader, PDG1978, PuckVanHeel and many others were part of this discussion. Think, why Johan Cruyff won Golden Ball in WC74 while still losing in the final! Messi won Golden Ball while doing exactly nothing worthy in final if WC14. Final match does not weight in the decision to award Golden Ball. Therefore if Romario called in sick and not play Final vs Italy he would sill been awarded Golden Ball for what he did in the tournament as a whole.

Look, It was never my intention to knock off R9 for the things mention here above. i am well aware of his achievements above mentioned. I saw the guy every single Sunday for 2 decades for cry sake.

Did you say that R9 1997 season "is one of the greatest individual years in football history"??

I say yes, he had one of the best in history. But Romario (underrated as usual) had even greater number of titles combined than R9 in a single year. Did R9 win WC and Golden Ball in 96/97? Romario did win every thing but UCL and in one single year! That is greater achievement than R9 had in any single year.

In a single year 1993/94 Romario won the following (all in the same year!)

WC94 title.
WC94 Golden Ball.
WC94 Silver Boot (5 goals)
FIFA WPOTY (predecessor to today's Balon D'Or)
La Liga (Spanish league) 93/94 title
La Liga 93/94 top scorer title
Onze D'Or award 1994
L'Équipe Champion of Champions Sportsman of the year 1994

As you can see, Romario's 93/94 year achievements here above tops every single season in R9 entire career including his best 96/97. R9 never won a WC title and a Golden Ball and a league title and a league top scorer title ALL IN THE SAME YEAR. He never did this. But Romario did

Are you sure?

R9 spend 14 years in Europe and won 3 top scorer titles. Romario spend 7 years (half of R9) and won 6 top scorer titles. Out of which 2 are in UCL competitions! Who is more consistent?

Romario's professional career started in 1985 and ended in 2004. Spanning 20 years. He won top scorer title in almost every single season back to back!

Olympic games top scorer 1988
Copa America 89 runner-up top scorer (3 goals in semi and final)
Carioca League top scorer 1986, 1987, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000
Dutch Eredivisie league top scorer 88/89, 89/90, 91/92
Spanish League top scorer 93/94
UCL champions league top scorer 89/90, 92/93
Copa Mercosur (CONMEBOL) top scorer: 1999, 2000
WC94 runner up scorer (Silver Ball)
Copa America runner-up top scorer (3 goals)
FIFA Confederations Cup top scorer and MVP 1997 (outperforming R9)

How more consistent can that be?

Romario is the second best overall goalscorer in history and second best league goalscorer of all times as listed on rsssf.com last updated 2016. Look who's company he is in. Yes, only Pele, Puskas, DiStefano etc rank up there with him.

when it comes to goalscoring he is in the same league as Pele and Puskas. You have got to be consistent enough to make it.

source: http://www.rsssf.com/players/prolific.html

rsssf.com was one of the most reputable football stats and record archive in the world for a long period. Very reliable.

 

And to do that he needed 16 more matches to achieve it. Which Romario did not have at his disposal cause season 93/94 did not offer him that

The fact that he played 16 more matches in that season is because in 1993/94 Spanish season had 380 matches played that season whereas in 96/97 had a total of 460 matches in the season.

Put things in the right context! You cannot knock off Romario for playing less matches than R9. Sorry but you think like a child often times. Fact is, they had an equal GPG. As long as the GPGs are equal there is consistency.

FIFA plans to lengthen the WC to have additional NTs participating in the future. Which means NTs will play more matches in future WC events. Does this mean that Pele's or Maradona's WC performances will be inferior to future generation of players with equal GPGs, just because they had substantially less matches played? Gossshhhhhh!

 

Romario vs R9 in their respective best league seasons for Barcelona is a deadlock statistically
Removing goals from overall tallies is a bad habit I picked up from some Barcelona fanboys on this forum

Penalty taking is an art form in itself hence the reason the best player isn’t always the designated penalty taker
R9 was as cool as they come from set piece situations,he was also a World class fk specialist in his prime[/QUOTE]

Yes, it is a deadlock.

I didn't understand what you meant exactly with "removing goals from tallies" can you explain what you meant?

If I remember it right, I have only counted no more than 4 to 6 freekicks in R9 's entire career. Romario has many more FK than that, many more. R9 never scored a FK for Barca, Romario was the third player for Barca (others were Koeman and Stoichkov) to be FK specialist. He scored a very good FK against Osasuna (2nd leg) for the 2nd goal of the match.

I have researched all of R9 FKs and he only took 2 scoreless attempts at FKs while at Barca. We touched this FK subject many years ago in the Ro vs Ro thread. You can read the post.

I agree with your point that for Madrid he just was not in that position because there were other specialist assigned with that. No one can replace David Beckham in that speciality.

It doesn't mean nothing. GPGs are still the same. No matter how you turn it. Statistics are not used that way in real world.

Scoring 30 in 33 is as impressive to me as scoring 34 in 37

it would be splitting hairs!

Yes, it is hypothetical and there is no guarantee. And no I didn't trick myself. Romario was a great PK taker. In 20 years he scored many PK while under pressure. Including WC94 final. Why would he have missed. Even if he had missed half of the 4 known PKs he handed over, he would still have bettered his GPG. But again, I did not say he would 100% score those in my previous post. I was just giving it a thought. Like you said, hypothetical.

In the same way, R9 fans always claim "wasn't it for his injuries he would have become GOAT" is also hypothetical and no guarantee. And yet, R9 fans use this assumption a lot in debates. I remember even you did this in the past.

but the fact that Romario did not take his own PKs makes him to me more clutch in the league. Cause after handing over his 4 PKs to others he still managed to get equal GPG as R9. That in on itself is impressive.

I agree, but I never implied nor asked of you to discount any of R9 PK goals.

R9 had all the potential to emulate young Pele. But what happened? Do you remember WC98 final? What does the final of WC98 say about his alleged potential to emulate Pele?

R9 had all the physical, athletic, technique, endurance and abilities of Pele with the ball at his feet. Yes!

But he missed one essential piece in his repertoire.......mental strength! His nerve break down in final of WC98 convinced many that the pressure put on him so early on in his career by Nike and media was not the best formula to develop a player. it was too many promises made to him when he was yet not mentally ready for that big occasion. Pele already had that mental strength from age 17. R9 needed more time to mature mentally as an athlete to take on his team on his shoulders. After WC98, he learned his mistake and became more in control of his agents and endorsers to the point he came back from an career threatening injury to become the key player winning WC02 title. So he only matured mentally post main injury one year before WC02.

Conclusion: The hype about R9 having all the qualities of young Pele was a marketing hype injected by Nike who signed PSV with the agreement to bring the brand to European shores and their exchange currency was to make R9 the poster boy for PSV, Barca and Inter. There is a Dutch national TV (NOS.nl) which PuckVanHeel posted in Ro vs Ro thread many years ago. It is in Dutch but I and PuckVanHeel translated it into English. In that documentary, a investigative journalist very reputable in Dutch sports news revised R9's career from Cruzeiro to WC94 to PSV and how Nike organised and mobilised big resources to make him a superstar. The "heir to Pele" hype has Nike all over it. Watch the video and read PuckVanHeel posts which spanned almost 4 pages in the Ro vs Ro thread. You will see interviews by Nike's president, Dick Advocaat, Parreira and many other high officials talking about how they scouted and brought R9 to Europe.

good comments.

Romario also fed R9 a hell lot. It was the perfect duo. If only they could have played together at WC98? We will never know. But the potential for the greatest attacking partnership was set. Bad luck got in Romario's way with that injury. Sad.

Edmundo's personal antics cut his NT career short. He was never destined to be in the same light as R9 or Romario.

Zamorano was already past his best when R9 joined.

the points above about R9 is true. However Romario was as good as R9 at feeding others. It is an old stereotype that Romario was only a box striker. Yes he was a goalscorer 1st, but he could play wide and deep when he wanted. And was very gifted and building up momentum in midfield and linking with team mates outside the box.

Outside of dribble (which I will give to R9), in all else, Romario was more complete technically than R9. Romario, had that trap! Better first and second touch. He had better vision and positioning/anticipation of the ball, was more accurate shooting with both his legs, he scored many more FKs and many more headers than R9. R9 has only a handful of headers and FKs in his career. Romario scored many short and long chip, volley and sombrero goals, which I haven't seen R9 do often.

In R9's own words: "Romário was the most decisive player who I played with, he was a great goal scorer, finisher, skillful, opportunist. I think I learnt all of that from him"

On a different note, in terms of what constitute the definition of technical completeness in players, Pele once said to the press as a respond to Maradona in the mid 1990s "no player can call themselves complete if they can't score with the head. Now, we can’t say that Maradona was a great header. He didn’t score goals with headers. And we cannot say Maradona shot very well with both feet, because he didn’t shoot with his right, only mainly with his left…"

https://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/pel...oot-with-his-right/1v1hy1u0jly3q12paf40hkjvwu

This is why I always believed CR7 to be more all-rounder technically than Messi. Messi may has better dribble and better playmaking and vision. But CR7 has that legendary areal thread which Messi lacks. And as forwards it is a plus bonus to have that areal thread in your skill box.

Romario would have done just as fine if he had played for Inter or any Serie-A club back in the 90s.

Maldini's comment on Romario: "Romário was incredible in the penalty area."

Romario faced Maldini and Baresi multiple times in UCL. He scored whilst being heavily market by Baresi, Maldini, Costacurta in PSV vs Milan UCL 92/93 match. Romario was always heavily marked by Italians. They fouled him heavily. Watch the videos below. Often brutal hacking by 3 of the best defenders ever. And he still scored.

vs Baresi!


vs Milan (Van Basten, Rijjkaard, Maldini, Baresi) Look how they keep fouling him.


Romario scoring while being marked on all sides by the best defenders in history!

 

It was not a lie but a innocent mistake. I am very busy at the moment of typing hence the error.

In any case, GPG are the same. And scoring 30 in 33 is as impressive as scoring 34 in 37 in the league Especially when most of the goals scored by Romario came in the critical rounds in the race for the league title. And the league is the "crème de la crème" in Spanish football. Not Copa Del Rey or Supercup. Those are second tier tournaments to get bums filling stadium seats.

NOTE: outside league, I am willing give Ronaldo R9 the edge for being more consistent in non-league competitions. Pay attention, I am willing to concede and compromise. However, I hope you could do the same and at least admit that UEFA cup 96/97 is not comparable to UCL 93/94. And I hope you watch Romario 12 UCL 93/94 full matches to see that outside of the 2 goals he did very great overall on pitch. Always being a thread and very entertaining. Example, watch Barca vs Porto (home match) where he has 2 pre-assist. Those 2 passes that lead to the 2 goals cannot be denied and than he almost scored a header that hit the post.

Watch! https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xya5bb

Watch Barca vs Austria Vienna. Or better watch Barca vs Dinamo Kiev. he did not score (hit the post many times) but oh my God was he not dangerous and entertaining? look at that double sombrero against 2 defenders in the danger zone.