Well, you have to look at both. I clicked that link you posted and the top guy on the list is someone from Sampdoria who has 2 goals in 6 attempts (33%). It says nothing. Lets see how many attempts & years it takes him to reach 10 goals for starters. Also, Messi's stat of 19 FK goals isn't from CL it is from league football, which makes it more telling /impressive since everyone plays the same number of matches.
Problem with free kick conversion rates is that not all free kick attempts are even shots on goal. Sometimes players go for crosses. Messi takes so many free kicks that are out of scoring range. How much that affects the % I don't know... As for CL goals, I don't find Ronaldo and Messi better than all but 9 clubs that impressive. For example Man United since 2009-2010 has 63 CL appearances. Ronaldo since 2009-2010 has 105 CL appearances.
The only thing you attempt to do here is creating a lot of mist. There are five guys in that top 10 list with over 10 attempts to goal, Neymar included. That 'guy from Sampdoria' is now arguably Arsenal's best and most impactful player, but of course, also here you showcase your rhetorical repertoire. Of course, players (protected superstars for some) like Neymar and Messi help to win free kicks in the first place, so they have more attempts too. This is from January 2018, over a longer period of time (and please read the introduction properly). What more do you want? https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/revealed-20-best-free-kick-takers-european-football Folks like you are deliberately dishonest.
Which fits into my point, that is related to what I mean, and it is the same way with free kicks. See that FourFourTwo article and the number of attempts (please also read the introduction, on that it has to be a deliberate attempt on goal).
So Pjanic, James, Coutinho and Dybala are the best amongst high profile names in terms of freekick conversion rate since the 2014/15 season till Jan 2018. Dybala especially seems to have had an exceptionally high conversion rate. The other thing to note is the volume of attempts that guys like Messi and CRonaldo have gotten.
I was actually being nice by saying "you should look at both". If being honest, any statistician would laugh at that link you initially provided. Seeing someone take 6 or 8 FKs and then projecting how many they would get if they took 100 kicks is sneaky... and, yes, dishonest.
Which is good for padding your goal tally, but not so good for your conversion rate, as @Danko alluded to. Ronaldo has taken some FKs that are ridiculously far away, but with his swerving balls they are still tricky to stop cleanly. As such, they often produce dangerous rebounds that another player can tap-in for a goal. So even if the odds of scoring directly are small its still not a bad strategic move to let him shoot away.
So 16 free kick goals (by #1 club Juventus) are suddenly of great relevance but 16 attempts are not.... Yes the fourfourtwo link is more meaningful and telling clearly.
Ronaldo went 43 consecutive attempts without scoring. How many of them resulted in a goal then? I'd wager it is not more than three.
Yes. Because 16 FK goals came over 4 years and probably ~300 attempts. That's not a small sample size.
Yes, agreed. There was a period when his FKs were generally awful. Not sure what happened to his FK touch during those 2-3 years.
as much as you talk about subtleties of this and that and iniesta. i can easily direct you to games where Iniesta outshined everyone on the barcelona team, including messi, because of his not so subtle play. by a distance if i might add. of course, i like subtlety but every good player at the highest level plays with these subleties, including a player like Kroos, for example. How many fans do you think kroos has despite his high level of play and subtleties. the fact of the matter, is that it takes more than subtlety to establish the same audience that a player like Iniesta has. trying to put it another way,.... if we were to take all the greatest players during barcelona in recent years including iniesta, xavi, messi, suarez, neymar, etoo, busquets, ronaldinho, david villa. and this may be an extreme example, i would put suarez on the bottom of the list. possibly last. not to say that he didn`t play great, but the other players are just so damn good, that suarez`s consistent level of play, won`t match that of the other players despite his moments here and there. that`s just how i see it. and i see it the same way when judging tostao among all the great players of Brazil. he played great but didn`t stand out as much as i would have thought given the hype around him. but honestly, that`s beside the point. tostao should have no point in this conversation as this is just going so far off topic. the original debate was where Messi`s WC14 stacked with the greatest. and messi was not present enough in the QF, SF, and Final for me to rank it with the best of the best. although it is really unfair to compare with pele`s given his supreme cast around him in 70. i`m not saying tostao did not play at a high level. i`m just saying i wasn´t as impressed as people made it out to be.
Still about FK's> https://www.whoscored.com/Articles/...layers-better-at-free-kicks-than-Lionel-Messi
Finally we have the data we need to make a good assessment. Based on that, I would say that Pjanic and Dybala are the best at FKs. Especially since they play for the same team, so they're not just taking the easier ones like maybe (?) Griezmann. Messi probably third-best.
My issue with the above table is that it still doesn't provide context on these attempts. For example when one looks at the approach of free-kicks from players like Pjanic, Dybala, Eriksen, Sigurdsson, and Griezman it becomes clear that in most cases they don't make direct attempt whenever the free-kick is not in "obviously good scoring position". These players normally prefer to pick out their teammates whenever they aren't sure of scoring from a direct free kick, which is complete opposite from someone like Ronaldo and Messi who in most of the time they are always going for the goal. This obviously will have a huge impact on their conversion rates, having said that I still think Messi is currently the best irrespective of the number of attempts he makes, and it is obvious that CR has deteriorated so much in recent years. Btw I'm surprised that Marcos Alonso doesn't appear anywhere in this list.
You may have a better idea here: (just click in situation) https://understat.com/player/2097 Messi Shots 179 Expected Goals 12.30 Actual Goals 17. Expected Conversion Rate per FKs shot: 6,8% Actual Conversion Rate: 9,5% Dybala: https://understat.com/player/1294 Pjanic: https://understat.com/player/1290 Neymar: https://understat.com/player/2099 Cristiano Ronaldo: https://understat.com/player/2371 Marcos Alonso: https://understat.com/player/1621 You can search the others. Something interesting to see would be the average goals expected by FKs for each club, the logic would say that number would go up according to the quality of the team.
Ronaldo has a habit of trying from truly impossible angles and distances, so of course that brings it down. Messi (or Ronaldo previously) might well be the best in this, but my point was just that 'more free kicks than these clubs' (or 'more CL goals than all but nine clubs' - what Danko says above) are simply misleading. This might well apply to about every great piece of skill they do (the volume of it), if I'm the devil's advocate here.
Firstly 1970's was a older and more mature version of Pele. Secondly, 6 games is a bigger sample size than 4
Pelé stopped scoring at a high rate in 69. That's clear from the stats. 6 games ? That's not a big sample size. And in a WC ? ...I don't see why would anybody want to try and draw a conclusion or correlation from that.
At his very best ronaldos freekick conversion rate was up there with the best of them In 2009/10 he scored 6 direct freekicks from 45 attempts:13.3% conversion rate https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/en.s...e-kicks-messi-and-ronaldo-compared-607472/amp And of course this doesn’t factor In ronaldo taking shots from angles nobody will attempt and scoring insanely difficult FKs(as you have already alluded to) I don’t have stats for 08/09 where he also scored 6 direct freekicks but between these two seasons he was directly challenging Juninho for best FK taker in the world and he was matching him stride for stride (In terms of output and technical difficulty of freekicks) really Messi’s FK style is just a recycled version of Ronaldinho He doesn’t have the power nor technique to strike from acute angles or improbable distances Starts at 0:25 Tbh maradona was probably the king of FKs from tight angles but from this generation prime ronaldo takes the cake for best “all round” FK specialist even if his accuracy went to shits over the past 5 or so years
Pele was a playmaker in the later half of his career. So it's not logical to compare just his GPG but also his assists. To see how his 4 goals + 5 assists in 6 WC games fare against his 1969 Santos season. Comparing a 17 year old Pele with modern players at their prime seems unfare to me. A kid Pele wouldn't make it through the top 20 of all time with his skillsets
It's worth mentioning that Ronaldo never really relied on his accuracy for scoring free kicks. Instead his shot power & knuckleball technique made those so difficult to handle. I doubt Ronaldo has ever scored a goal simmilar to Messi's signature curler against Atletico or USA in Copa America Centenario
I just posted two examples from the same/or more difficult angles than that FK of Messi in 11-12 Also vs Blackburn 08/09