For reference la liga 2011/12 recorded its highest gpg ratio of 2.76 directly coinciding with Messi's highest scoring season. The weakest defensive team of la liga 11/12 was 19th place sporting gijon conceding 69 goals Taubate finished 8th place in the 59 paulista and conceding 70 goals Now You may say Pele only scored once against Taubate 59 so what's the big deal? The big deal is a team like taubate was representative of the shocking state of Brazilian football specifically the late 50s which was like a goal fest/bonanza Pele scored a large proportion of his state championship goals in the late 50s when the goal averages were particularly high (maybe not particularly high for that time but definitely by 21st century standards which is pertinent because we are directly comparing him to Lionel Messi- a 21st century player) Supposedly and only in the warped mind of tropiero la liga defences are no better than the ones faced by Pele in Brazil The 59 campenato paulista maybe an outlier (I haven't looked at it properly) Still Santos won the championship conceding 50+ goals and the worst team conceded over 90 Such a precedent simply doesn't exist in la liga or even the EPL Messi never played in free flowing attacking football as this and still scored an unmatched,unsurpassed and barely believable 50 league goals in 2011/12 All the while being the most prolific dribbler in the world The most prolific assister and throughballer Did Micheal Laudrup, zico even Diego armando Maradona ever execute a more perfectly weighted through ball? I repeat Dude scored an all time record 71 goals in all competitions during 2011/12 and made more successful through balls than cesc fabregas,xavi,iniesta,ozil etc That is their primary function not his and he outdid them This is fact,proven and easily verifiable For Pele to compare he would have to do his job of scoring better than anyone else in history He would also simultaneously have to match the creative powers of didi This is a 'random peak season' of Messi as sexy beast would term it lol Everybody knows who has interacted with me just how highly I rate Cristiano Ronaldo Still I have never allowed myself to deny Messi (his best)is a step above him and everyone else of his era What are Pele's best club performances in official matches so we can gauge if he was indeed a clear step above every single one of his contemporaries? Pele during his prime did score 4 goals in a single match against benfica in the intercontinental cup. That exact same year a 34 year old Ferenc puskas scored a hat trick against the exact same benfica in the European cup final Benfica won that match through no fault of puskas but I wonder how the perception would've been different had he won That a 34 year old,ageing and overweight puskas very arguably put on a better big game club performance than Pele ever did in his prime Scored more official goals, more international goals,more Iconic big game performances,more continental club final goals And the list goes on etc Which reminds me that Pele was an imposter to the throne Which belongs to Ferenc puskas as the greatest pre modern era player A 'king' without the marketing of the brazilian
That's your opinion which isn't shared by many. Also the majority of those set piece opportunities were created by his own dribbling I'll make things clear for you. When did Coutinho, Dembele or Griezmann decided an important match on their own? What makes Suarez the best striker of the century?
Vava scored 71 goals in 142 games for Palmeiras. That's .50 GPG. How is that a huge difference compared to 0.44 ? That just proves my point. I don't know how many goals he scored for Vasco, but Carioca league has historically been weaker than Paulista. My point about La Liga in the 50s is not to compare Paulista league of then to La Liga is now. It's for the people completely discrediting the Paulista league back then when it doesn't seem to be that much different in quality to an European National league. For the posters who say, well, Pele didn't play in Europe. So that's why I brought up Altafini ... and you also proved my point for Vava where his scoring, is not that different. I am not sure why you compared his scoring rate to a WC. Did you even find out how many goals he scored for Vasco and Palmeiras ? Or you just threw that out there by assuming ? And mind you , I don't even know how good Atletico were back then.
You are wrong, this is not my opinion, that's the reality, facts. Take any data about free kicks ranges and conversion rate that you will find that out. There is not much mystery here. There are better FK takers than Messi. They may not have decided for Barcelona, but does that stop them being quality players? And players for whom Barcelona threw a lot of money on top? Do you think Barcelona's scouts are retarded to spend over 100 millions in each one of these players. They are (or were) quality/promising players dude. Moreover, I do not understand how difficult it is for you to understand that Messi played with most of the best players of his generation. Coutinho, Griezmann and Dembele are not even the greatest names; That's the list of The Independent with what they consider the 25 Greatest players of this Century: 25. Dani Alves (Brazil) 24. Carles Puyol (Spain) 23. Frank Lampard (England) 22. Luka Modric (Croatia) 21. Samuel Eto'o (Cameroon) 20. Neymar (Brazil) 19. Andrei Shevchenko (Ukraine) 18. Steven Gerrard (England) 17. Sergio Busquets (Spain) 16. Luis Suarez (Uruguay) 15. Luis Figo (Portugal) 14. Philipp Lahm (Germany) 13. Gianluigi Buffon (Italy) 12. Sergio Ramos (Spain) 11. Andrea Pirlo (Italy) 10. Fabio Cannavaro (Italy) 9. Kaka (Brazil) 8. Zinedine Zidane (France) 7. Thierry Henry (France) 6. Ronaldo (Brazil) 5. Andres Iniesta (Spain) 4. Ronaldinho (Brazil) 3. Xavi Hernandez (Spain) 2. Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) 1. Lionel Messi (Argentina) Others: 33. David Villa (Spain) 39. Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden) 52. Gerard Pique (Spain) 73. Cesc Fabregas (Spain) 91. Arturo Vidal (Chile) All (in bold) played at Barcelona. Now, what player names, apart from Pelé, could you give me that were considered TOP25 of that Santos generation? That if you know any names. Point is Santos has never made any such expensive or proportionally expensive purchases in Pelé's time like Barcelona did in the recent times, or even in this season. PD: If Suarez isn't the best striker of this century, where would you put him? Out of the TOP5 too? The Independent only considers R9 and Henry ahead of Suarez, for example (R9 highly discussed in thread). The point about my comment is and still remains, Barcelona during those fifteen years was probably the best team for Messi, the best team and the best league. I don't think he would have had a better career in any other club in the world, while Pelé arguably could have had a better career, without going too far, with Palmeiras, who maintained a great level from the beginning of Pelé's career to the end, unlike Santos who had many highs and lows (low-lows and not finishing third in league after being third as well, a drop of eight points).
Actually in the case of Coutinho, Dembele, and probably now Griezmann ... they are. Very, very stupid.
Griezmann was TOP3 in the world in 2016 at the Ballon D'Or podium, was or still is the referent of France and was from Atlético de Madrid, a very well-known player in Spain. They knew which player they were buying. Dembele was breaking records, with 18 and 19 years old, in the French and German league, one of those names that was top in any list of those players of the future. Coutinho was a good idea to replace Neymar according to many of these football analytics sites out there (the same source that many Messi fanatics use on a daily basis) and already had some great seasons at Liverpool. They may not have worked at Barcelona, but to say that they were bad players or that everyone knew they would fail is absurd. The same for De Jong if he fails too, the dutch was one of the hottest prospects on the market. Barcelona always targets the cream, the best players available. You cannot say, however, that Santos had the same ambition.
It doesn't matter if they are a bad fit for the team tactically. They tried and are trying to play Griezmann and Coutinho as wingers. Which they are not. It's only detrimental to the team. Even if Coutinho reached his full potential, Barca overpaid by a lot. So you shouldn't bring money as a point here as representative of his quality. Coutinho is just not that great. Never was. Griezmann is more of just a bad fit. What records was Dembele breaking ? He is a fuk up. The signs were there and Barca ignored it. And also paid a big penny for him. Yes Barca transfer policy has been very stupid. Don't let the big name clubs fool you ... they often have idiots running the club.
You can also say that Real Madrid was stupid to buy guys like James Rodriguez, Kaka, Robben, even Bale, all players who did notconsistently give the expected result, even Hazard where several of these data-sites were in doubt about what Hazard has to offer was what Madrid needed. Yes, they are idiots dude, but you can't deny the club's ambition and desire to provide the squad with the best players available. And if these names aren't exciting, imagine the transfers that Brazilian (or even European) clubs made in the 1960s. Even Toninho Guerreiro, which is widely spoken here, was brought from the small Noroeste (and later sold to São Paulo in a process of squad degradation). In the past, it was the players who stood out locally, not only in Brazil, who had the most attention. It is absurd to think that today with so much data (and money) available they make more mistakes in transfers than in the past.
Pele is literally nothing compared to Messi when it comes to technical skills. You’re a goddamn Pele wanker if you think Pele’s dribbling is above Messi’s. Messi is probably the most productive dribbler I’ve seen.
This thread has only become a place for Messi (and CR fans, since elevating Messi automatically helps Cristiano's legacy) fanboys show insecurities and to attack Pele. You guys are not even interested in working on something to create an agenda that makes at least sense, or seems to make sense. At this point Vegan is way ahead of these kids really. I don't know, it seems like a place for retarded people to show they are really retarded. lol Even on obvious things and points, they go into denial. Really nothing productive will come out here. PD: For me, it is still unclear which one has the best club legacy and carrer.
I don't know why you are arguing with this guy. This guy is clearly dishonest, and he has a clear purpose to 'hit nerves' in this thread, purpose even admitted by himself, and after everything he is talking has already been discussed here in this thread. The facts are clear. 1) The rule is that players inflate their stats against weaker teams, this has already been established here. Messi and / or Cristiano isn't any different, they are part of the rule. 2) Pelé has more participation in the goals scored by Santos than Messi has so far with Barcelona. Both passed the 600 goals. This is very well-documented. 3) Pelé could score goals (including many solo goals) against any team in the world in his time, no matter how strong they were. These are facts! So I don't know why you keep giving so much importance to this individual. This guy is making no sense.
60s players with perfectly manicured pitches, modern balls, near weightless boots, modern travel comforts, three substitutes vs zero, modern offside rules, modern recuperation therapy, modern surgery, nutrition supplements,etc .... the best then would be the best now. I have no doubts. Could you say the reverse? Would all the stars today cope with the conditions in 60s. How many Messi mazy runs would have been quickly destroyed with two footed tackle that resulted in no cards? Think he would adjust his game and limit those types of efforts? IMO he (Messi) would, because he is smart and can affect the game in other ways, but his career highlight reel would be very different.
Those are all of the things that would make it more difficult for Pele rather than less. Yes, surely, Pele with modern regime would reach higher peak and longevity than he did in 60s, but so would have everybody else. Tell me who would more benefit from the modern treatment, the guy who has dedicated his whole life to football in 60s, or an average John who never even considered that physical preparation could be of any significance to his football career? In whatever sport, the top athletes were always exceptional and close to their physical best (100 meters sprint is the best example, but so is basketball, etc). Pele would make a marginal improvment given modern regimes. The true winners would be everybody else, because a level of professionalism in football has drastically risen. Nowadays, you have the bottom teams in German's 3rd league that are training 5 times a week by proven, well known, fairly extreme training methods. Average players are infinitely better. So although Pele himself would individually be better in modern times, he would be in a much tougher competition so relatively speaking that is an argument in favor of Messi. If you teleported this version of Messi to 60s, the answer is: ZERO. Defenders from 60s wouldnt even touch him. As Ferdinand famously said, he didnt get near him in 2009 ucl final. He picks up pockets of space with such timing and quickness you dont often get a chance to tackle him. If one of the best modern central defenders couldnt cope with him, what makes you think he would struggle to dribble past few headless runners? One body feint and that two footed challenge would end up in locker room prematurely. But that two footed argument is a myth anyway. Btw, is it really questionable whether Messi could outsmart defenders from 60s? If Messi was borned in 1940 and was rised and nurtured by coaches back then, that is a different discussion (but also off topic). Messi has a 47 years long luxury of being trained and coached by much more knowledgeable experts. Shoes, balls and pitches are valid arguments and they surely allow Messi to have flashier highlights, but thats about it. In terms of how effective this Messi would be in 60s, the answer is a lot more effective. There is no reason to assume elite players from 60s would necessarly suceed in modern times. I would like to see how Pele copes against tactically organized defenses for once or teams of Chile's level of aggresion and pressing. Also, as mentioned already, how would Pele match up against pro athletes that can actually run for 90 minutes. Nowadays it is not enough to be technically or/and physically gifted to suceed. There are far more doubts in Pele's case. Messi has also proved that he has a phenomenal ability to improvise and adapt to extreme wheather and conditions. I could think of dozens of examples, few that come to mind are Sevilla 2014, Celta 2018, Ecuador 2017, Croatia 2006. He is always the first or amongst the first to adapt, making the whole debate redundant.
Put Messi into 1960s / 1970s Primera Division and the way to subdue him would not have been by highly-organized defensive set-ups (and judging by the number of goals he scored each season it doesn't seem the best way to subdue him anyway) but by applying ruthless man-to-man marking. One player would've been tasked to cover Messi so closely in order to decrease the number of times Messi gets on the ball and in those cases where Messi got to the ball, a second player would be positioned close enough to bring Messi down in a way that would not be accepted by today's standards but would go unpunished in 1970s Primera Division (though I imagine Pelé himself would have had a harder time scoring goals in 1970s Primera Division that he had in 1950s/60s Brazil due to the same reasons). Barca players have stated in recent years that they detest being treated to man-marking and that the most unpleasant opponents are those eastern European clubs that apply classic man-marking. I will just say that I am not interested in reading the usual modernist supremist hyperbole knowing that this hyperbole is in the interest of media and industry as they have to sell their product and one of the ways to do that is to claim that it is the best ever seen and the star players are the greatest that have ever existed. Messi and Cristiano R. fans then further hype their players into the stratosphere and it is getting tedious reading the same hyperbole by 20-30 something internet know-it-alls.
The least impressive car of today is much better than the best car 100 years ago. Medicine nowadays is better than 100 years ago. An average college professor of physics today knows more about physics than Einstein did 100 years ago. Virtually every technology today is better than it was 100 years ago. Everything that is taken care of naturally gets better over time. Every sport is getting better with time as well. That is perfectly normal and football is no exception. Yesterday's pioneers are today's expectations. What once was a revolutionary idea in football, today is practised by 10 year olds. On top of all of that, when you invest a lot of money into something, things move ridiculously fast. There has never been more money in football than there is today. That is a FACT. Money buys you professionalism, dedication and expertise in all areas of football. Money brings you competition, which in result brings you excellence in everything. Nations today invest money into their football because it is economically viable to do so. It also became viable as a career choice. Players from German's 3rd league live an extremely comfortable lifes. So you have a whole new market of people that are interested in becoming footballers. Money makes things more popular, which in return means more money. More money means more and better academies and better accessibility, which means more kids can and will become footballers, which means greater competition, which again brings excellence out of everyone. Football has became business long time ago and in business more money means higher quality. You can put whatever label on me, but there is not a single thing that suggests football from 60s was better than todays football, quite contrary, everything indicates football today is by far superior and the margin will continue to grow. You can resent that as much as you want, it aint changing the truth. In that kind of competitive environment Ronaldo and Messi have by far the highest peak and by far the longest longevity.
Give the single best example of that famous man marking that Messi would struggle with. Yeah, i agree, if you injured Messi he wouldn't be able to do much. great tactics.
I can't speak to 1960s-70s La Liga, but when I watched tapes of full matches from the 1970s, I personally never saw man-marking as a particularly effective method of stopping the star players. Even in the 1974 World Cup final, which before I watched the game, I read about how Vogts apparently neutralized Cruyff, but when I watched the actual game, it wasn't anything like that at all. I wouldn't even classify it as a better marking job than say Park v Pirlo, for example. Interestingly, I think one of the best defensive jobs anyone's ever done on Messi was the veteran Zanetti in 2010.
Team effort Out of recent man marking that messi had to face one comes to my mind. Casemiro el clasico 2017 in absence of Neymar. We know how that went and Casemiro is arguably the best def mid at that. But he will obviously argue for apparently a fact that in 70s every other tackle was 2-footed-slap-in-the-face-kick-in-the-balls and Messi wouldnt perform under those circumstances. Also note how at no point will he actually link to a single example of that unfalsifiable, unarguable claim he is making and will continue with the modernist narrative.
No, they don't.This idea of a permanent and constant improvement is a myth, because unlimited improvement is impossible. The answer why is very simple: physics. Because the most technologies you have quoted were in their infancy 100 years ago. I'll give you an example of a technology which have not changed much in the last 50 years: flight. Planes today have better avionics, due to the massive breakthrough in electronics technology over the last 50 years, but their basic parameters of flight (speed, altitude, range) have not changed. You fly today with planes which are not faster, cannot go farther or higher than they did in Pele's age. The development of aviation technology is a very good case study of what I'm saying: once a technological breakthrough is achieved, we see significant improvements at a rapid pace for a period, but, once the laws of physics will start to get in the way, the improvement will slow to a crawl or even come to a halt. In aviation, the first 50 years (1910-1960) saw records broken at a frantic pace, then it stopped. For instance, in regard to commercial aviation, the big problem is the sonic boom, which is a physical phenomenon and makes supersonic flight inconvenient. The sonic boom is what it is and you can't come with an "improvement" to make it disappear. For military aircraft, the problem is the resistance to stress of the metals and alloys a plane is made of. Again, these are physical properties which can't be changed. These principles apply to other technologies as well. I'll give you another example: I'm typing right now from a desktop using a 1 TB hard-drive bought in 2010. In 2010, it would have been simply impossible to keep using my old 30 GB HDD from 2001. I can use my 2010 HDD now, though, because the storage capacity of HDDs has improved only slightly after 2010 compared with the massive leaps in the decades prior. The answer why is again physics, because the limit of HDD miniaturization has been reached. And besides these mundane issues, there are the universal limits such as the speed of light or the Planck values, past which improvement is not possible even theoretically. Returning to football, when you mechanically insist that football has and keeps improving, you need to consider 2 things: 1. The room for improving a biological body is far smaller than technological improvement. In sports, the phenomenon is known as "the flattening curve": it refers to a certain point at which no significant improvement in your typical individual is possible anymore. 2. Sporting ability is not transferable from a generation to another and from an individual to another in the same way scientific knowledge is. If you disagree, let me ask you this: how long do you think football (and sports in general) are going to improve? Ever and ever? The current record for 100 meters sprint is 9.58 s, belonging to Usain Bolt. Before him was Asafa Powell with 9.77 s. If sprinter are going to improve by 0.2 seconds every decade, it means that in 200-300 years a human would be as fast as a cheetah... which is a utterly ridiculous presupposition. That is an absolute nonsense. Money don't beat physics and biology. Since you began by listing technological improvements, I'll give you a contrary example. No country spends more on the military than the United States. Yet: The record for distance flown dates from 1962, by a B-52. The record for speed dates from 1976, by a SR-71 Blackbird. The record for altitude dates from 1977, by a MiG-25. So, why the bloated DOD budget isn't capable of providing the US with planes capable of flying farther, faster and higher than the 60s and the 70s vintage models? You are not going to tell me that the US is not interested in improving the range of its aircraft (for instance)?
The idea is that modern athletes have far surpassed those in the 50's/60's. It's not even debatable. We have reached a saturation point. It will require genetically engineered human beings to even reach a 9 seconds mark perhaps. Although football is more than just running around aimlessly.
That's a hasty generalization. Even if we ignore some tactical and physical aspects of the game Pele in the modern days Won't get away with injuring defenders Would get into offside trap more often Will score less free kicks and headers due to the higher average height of the defenders, modern rules & better positional sense of the keepers Will concede more goals due to the back pass rules Won't get months for preparation of international competitions after gruelling seasons It works both ways
It is very much debatable. What exactly means for you "far surpassed"? It went from 10 s to 9.6. A 4% improvement. Maybe what these improvements actually mean does not hit you, so let me ask this: If someone asks you 10000 $ to make your car hit a maximum speed of 312 km/h instead of 300 km/h, would you jump at the opportunity or would you consider it a waste of time? A similar improvement in aviation speed would be from 3529 km/h (the speed record of 1976) would be around 3670 km/h. Do you think the United States Air Force should spend some billions of dollars to achieve that or those money have better uses elsewhere? People operate under the impression that record-breaking in sports means a constant and rapid progression, but they completely miss the point that these breakings of record are meaningful only in the context of sport records; outside of that, they simply are not big enough to matter.