What all above? Pele WC70 top assister, chance creator Messi WC14 top dribbler, chance creator, throughballer I don't think Pele has ever shown of being the best in two of the scoring, creating, or dribbling at the same time. Where as Messi has shown being the best in all three in CL, two in World Cup. Messi Champions League 09-10 top scorer, dribbler 10-11 top scorer, dribbler, throughballer 11-12 top scorer, dribbler, assister, throughballer 12-13 13-14 top throughballer 14-15 top scorer, dribbler, assister, chance creator, throughballer
Ahh, didn't think of it that way. True that might increase the goals per game but as you noticed, the underlying proposition is still valid. This can be seen in Santos going on a heavy scoring spree against decently ranked teams like Nacional whom I think they beat 10-0 in the 1958 Paulista (Nacional finished 10th that season). Pele was not at his peak in 1970 and these stats were not recorded when he was at his peak. However, considering that scoring, dribbling and chance creation was exactly what he was known for, at his peak, he shouldn't have had a problem in topping charts in all three. At least, I believe that to be a fair assumption.
There are a few big problems with this. 1. Look at the goal tallies for Santos before Pelé got there. You act like those aren't high and don't indicate a super team, but that's as much scoring as this era's Barcelona! 2.72 goals a match is equivalent to 103 goals in a 38 match season! They got that WITHOUT Pelé. So, on its face, you're not really disproving the point that he was on a super team. They were already scoring like this era's super teams before he got there. 2. Even though they were already scoring a lot, you make a good point that they scored even more when Pelé showed up. Some of this is obviously due to Pelé (he's an all time great attacker; of course he raises his team's scoring). However, it seems very clear that Pelé was not the only reason for this boost. Importantly, it seems quite obvious that Santos switched to much more attacking tactics in 1957. Look at the stats for those seasons. In 1956, Santos gave up 1.0 goals a match. That was by far the lowest in the league. They had the best defense by quite a margin. By contrast, in 1957, Santos gave up 1.75 goals a match. That was below average in the league. 11 of the other 19 teams let up fewer goals in the first stage, and 6 of the other 9 teams in the final stage let up fewer goals overall. A large boost in goals scored combined with a large boost in goals given up from one year to the next is an incredibly strong indicator of a change to more attacking tactics. They did manage to put together a pretty good defensive season the next year while still scoring a lot, but their defense fell off again a year later. And, in any of those years, they certainly weren't the best defense in the league by far, like they had been the year before Pelé got there. The key point here is that the boost in scoring when Pelé showed up was accompanied by a dip in defense, indicating a change to more attacking tactics. 3. The Paulista was also expanding in those years. There were 20 teams in the first stage in 1957, while there had only been 18 in 1956 and 14 total in 1955 and 1954. This doesn't explain the entire boost, but it does do some work here, because the league basically expanded such that it had more bottom tier teams. For instance, in 1957, Santos defeated the bottom two teams 7-0 and 9-1. Take those matches out and their goals per match goes down from 3.89 to 3.66. Take out their matches against the bottom two in 1958 and their goals per match go from 3.76 to 3.47. In 1959, they'd go down a little less, but still to 3.64. And if I took out the bottom 6 teams to make it like 1955 and 1954, Santos would've scored 3.45 goals a match in 1957, 3.04 goals a match in 1958, and 3.41 in 1959. Overall, here's what we are looking at. When you account for the change in number of teams, the boost from 1956 to 1957 was about 0.93 goals a match. However, they let in 0.75 more goals a match, so a change in tactic probably accounts for about that number of extra goals as well. In that case, we see a benefit to Pelé (as we would expect), but not the giant one you'd lead us to believe. And regardless of whether there was a giant boost from Pelé or not, his team was already scoring like this era's Barcelona team before he got there. And they kept adding more stars besides just Pelé after that. So it sure does seem like they were a super team. Again, you're making a ridiculous point here. Scoring 2.7+ goals a game IS scoring like a super team. Very few legendary scorers have had a team that scored that much with with them playing on it, let alone without them. And, as you so graciously point out, as the years went by the team only strengthened further from the team that had already scored 2.7+ goals a match without Pelé. Basically, you are trying to tell me that Pelé wasn't playing on a super team because, without him, his team only scored as much as this era's Barcelona does. That is self-evidently ridiculous. The definition of "chance created" in football stats is a pass in which the recipient took a shot after receiving it. Thus, virtually every shot is a "chance created" for someone. It's not every shot because there are occasional shots taken without receiving a pass, such as free kicks or dispossessing someone and then shooting, but shots and chances created are pretty much 1 to 1. As @PuckVanHeel has pointed out, the 1970 World Cup had, by far, the most shots taken in World Cup history, at roughly a shot every 2 minutes. Pretty much by definition, this means it also had by far the most "chances created" in World Cup history. And, not only that, but Pelé played on the best team in that World Cup, which almost certainly shot a well-above average number of shots, even for that World Cup. So it should not be surprising at all that Pelé had a lot of "chances created." Just to put this into numbers for you: a shot every 2 minutes means 45 total shots a match between both teams in the 1970 World Cup. That basically means roughly 45 chances created per match. According to WhoScored, 1606 shots were taken in the 2014 World Cup. That's 25.1 shots a match, and therefore basically 25.1 chances created per match. If you adjust Pelé's chances created downwards to account for the extra shots taken at his World Cup, he would only have 2.60 chances created per match. Which is, of course, below Messi's numbers you cited. Perhaps more importantly, this thread is not about Pelé's abilities beyond goalscoring.
Number of Players on Brazil World Cup Squad 1958: Botafogo: 3 Santos: 3 1962: Botafogo: 5 Santos: 7 1966: Botafogo: 4 Santos: 6 1970: Botafogo: 3 Santos: 5 Botafogo certainly had talent, but Santos was always more stacked. I think it's fair to say that perhaps Botafogo would've been even more successful if it had Pelé (though they were still the best team in their league back then). But I'm not arguing that Pelé was shite. In fact, I recently put him #3 all time, so I obviously think he was great. I'm just arguing that he wasn't the legendary, untouchable scorer that people make him out to be. Almost more importantly, Botafogo wasn't in the Paulista anyways. The fact that they had a bunch of the other Brazilian legends just demonstrates that the other Paulista teams didn't have those guys. You didn't need to be a Brazil legend to be the best player at your position in the Paulista. Take, for example, the 1962 Brazilian team. Take a look at their squad in the Finals. There's only 5 Paulista players in the starting XI. Three of them are Santos players. This basically means that there's a whole lot of positions on the pitch in which the best player in the Paulista at that position was sitting on the bench (or maybe even not at the tournament). For instance, you mention that Pepe. He was a left winger. In the finals, Mario Zagallo played left winger. Zagallo was not a Paulista player. Thus, by virtue of being the back up left winger, Pepe was clearly considered the best left winger in the Paulista. Another example: there are two midfielders. One is from Santos, and one is Didi (i.e. not a Paulista player). Mengalvio (a Santos player) was sitting on the bench. There was only one other midfielder on the squad: another player from the Paulista named Zequinha. Despite the fact that both Mengalvio and Zequinha did not even play, by virtue of being on the squad, they were clearly deemed to be the 2nd and 3rd best midfielders in the Paulista (behind Zito). Thus, Santos had 2 of the top 3 (and possibly the top 2) midfielders in the Paulista. Similarly, Vava got the nod at forward when Pelé went down, instead of Coutinho. Vava was a Paulista player, but Coutinho being on the team at all indicates he was considered the 3rd best CF in the Paulista (behind Pelé and Vava. Amarildo was not a Paulista player). I could do the exact same analysis for the 1966 World Cup. The fact is that you didn't have to be a Brazil legend to be the best player at your position in the Paulista. Being a legend is all well and good, but guys who merely made the World Cup squad and didn't play were the absolute cream of the crop in the Paulista. Hell, guys who got caps but didn't end up making the WC squad were cream of the crop in the Paulista. And Santos was filled with such people.
@PDG1978 Here is a list of players who played for Santos in the 1960's who were capped by the Brazilian NT. I've put asterisks next to the ones who made a World Cup squad. Those that made a World Cup squad were, basically by definition, deemed one of the top 1 or 2 players at their position in the Paulista, even if they did not play (because the squad has two people per position basically and the other person might not be a Paulista player). Players who were capped but did not make it to the WC squad are clearly just one rung below that. That is, they were surely still one of the top few players at their position in the Paulista. Pelé* Coutinho* Zito* Pepe* Mengalvio* Lima* Mauro* Gilmar* Orlando* Edu* Cloboaldo* Carlos Alberto* Joel* Toninho Calvet Almir Dorval That's 17 guys who played for Santos in the 1960s and were capped by Brazil. That's 13 guys who made World Cup squads, and were therefore clearly considered one of the top 1 or 2 players of their position in the Paulista. That's ludicrously stacked! Of course, these guys weren't all there at once. So I'll list how many of these 17 guys the team had each season of that decade. In parentheses I will put the number of guys on the team who made a World Cup squad in that era, rather than just being capped. (I'm not talking about the late 1950's more because I don't have as much information about what their squad was than anything else, but I do believe these numbers are a bit lower in those years): 1960: 8 (6) 1961: 10 (8) 1962: 10 (8) 1963: 13 (9) 1964: 13 (9) 1965: 11 (10) 1966: 14 (13) 1967: 13 (12) 1968: 11 (10) 1969: 11 (10) 1970: 5 (5) We're talking about a team that basically had virtually an entire starting XI of players who were good enough to be deemed the top 1 or 2 players in the Paulista at their position. And a team that often had back up players who were good enough to be capped by the Brazilian NT (making them a top player in the Paulista as well). That is just clearly a mega-stacked team. And notice that abrupt fall off in 1970, and how it perfectly coincides with Pelé's abrupt decline in scoring. Surely that provides strong circumstantial evidence that his scoring was to a large degree a product of his ludicrously stacked team. And remember, 5 players who made the World Cup squad is still really good. Santos still had more players in the 1970 World Cup squad than any other Paulista team (in fact, the entire rest of the Paulista combined only had 6 total). They just weren't laughably stacked anymore, and Pelé basically stopped scoring as a result.
According to Pelé (hear him say so on youtube footage a long time ago), Coutinho was to be a starter in 1962 but got injured and he said the same about Pepe (though I cant remember if in Pepe's case he was talking about 1958, 1962 or both).
Thanks for the reply - my basic point was that Botafogo could compete for South American and Intercontinental titles but it was Santos that was the team that emerged at the top, and that of the few best Brazilian players a good amount came from Botafogo and only arguably one from Santos. When Messi played in the WC with Spain they arguably won in 2010 because of his Barcelona team-mates, but Pele and his Santos team (I know it's not completely comparable to Messi with Argentina) emerged as the best team in the world rather than Botafogo, the team with his star Brazilian team-mates. Edited to correct some weird errors - wasn't concentrating lol - not sure how Maradona's name appeared in my post!
It does seem Santos was relatively stacked in the Paulista though of course, and that will have helped Pele in his goalscoring just as Barca and Real help their star scorers now - that is true I'm sure. But Estel's post did say something about Pele's impact in terms of his own goals and those of his team (they were scoring well although that era was not a low scoring one - the 1950's - and worldwide I guess the gpg of teams was coming down as football entered the 60's).
Pele's impact is even more impressive IMO if one actually considers Santos to have in fact been scoring as a super team before him joining them, and that is because no one here has yet applied the concept of diminishing returns to this phenomenon. Basically, if a team is already scoring at a very high rate, even a greatly heralded player is expected to find it difficult to further elevate said team's gpg. Pele's arrival at Santos though (as a 16 year old mind you) coincided with an increase of 1.1 in the gpg of the team. For a comparison, look at Barcelona with and without Messi - Source - http://www.thesportbible.com/articles/surprising-stats-about-barcelona-without-messi From the above, Messi's addition doesn't seem to make any positive impact beyond their regular gpg, to Barcelona's scoring rate. And this is a large enough sample size to cover almost a full league season (36 games without Messi). Also, the variety of opposition being played without Messi includes all kinds (from lower tier teams at home in the Copa Del Rey to teams liks Athletic Bilbao away) i.e. it is similar to the variety of opposition being played with Messi. In fact, since most of the absences are due to unforeseen injuries to Messi (and not due to him being rested), it is a surprise that Barcelona still end up covering so well for him. But then, this leads to my earlier point of Messi's scoring being more dependant on Barcelona rather than it being the other way around. While in case of Pele, his scoring seemed to be more independant of his club team (considering his impact on Santos' scoring) thus adding more to his clubs totals when he played along side them. Also personally I think, while much is being made of a 2.7 gpg heralding a super team since Barcelona have scored at that rate in the recent era, it is not simply a matter of gpg. Otherwise, all of Manchester City 2013-14, Liverpool 2013-14 and Chelsea 2010-11 were super teams (scoring at approx 2.7 gpg in those seasons). Or even Palmeiras 1954, Sao Paulo 1955 and 1956 were super teams, since they outscored Santos in those three seasons when Santos was scoring at an average of 2.7 gpg. Indeed, Barcelona is a super team because not only do they score at 2.7 gpg, but because they also control the game so much due to their footballing philosophy, thus ensuring that they concede very few goals while simultaneously allowing more time to their attacking players on the ball (an important aspect which is often understated when doing a gameplay stats comparison of Barcelona players with their non-Barcelona counterparts). Nice point regarding the origin clubs of those World Cup star teammates of Pele in the NT. Indeed Santos with Pele beat Botofogo in the 1963 edition on its way to the Copa Libertadores title, IIRC. Also, as I had mentioned earlier, Pele's chance creation at the 1970 WC alongside and in comparison to one of those star Botafogo Brazil NT teammates gives an indication of how much he might have impacted his team's goalscoring at his peak i.e. regardless of playing with a stacked squad. This is because, digging deeper into the shots on target metric which affects chance creation, it seems that 6 of the 10 outfield starters of Brazil took 69 shots (including Pele's 26) through the 6 games of the 1970 tournament. At that rate, the entire team wouldn't have had more than 115 shots @ approx 19 shots per game. (this is as per the Opta spreadsheet shared earlier by I think Puck and also much earlier by BadaBing too) Source - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...azhp-8fmg5BbiFCtPzKME/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0 In comparison, Argentina's entire team in World Cup 2014, took 93 shots in 7 games (including Messi's 21) @ approx 13 shots per game. Source - https://www.whoscored.com/Teams/346/Archive/Argentina-Argentina Thus, even if we reduce post-his-peak Pele's chance creation to match his team taking 13 shots per game as done by Argentina in WC 2014, it would still be around 3.24 i.e. above Messi's 2.97 @ same shots per game. This again IMO explains why Pele might have been able to impact Santos more positively in scoring and also why he was less dependant on them, as compared to Messi and Barcelona (or CRonaldo and Real Madrid for that matter).
Good points - it got me thinking about whether a comparison between Barcelona in the 3 seasons before Messi and Barcelona in his first 3 seasons would be relevant on the same basis.
You can't compare games without a player, that's what if, rather than what happened with. Messi rests only easy games, and if he's injured, players give more to cover him than they do with him. So it's completely pointless comparison. Still injured Messi had to come on and carry Barcelona to semi-final of CL 12-13. Pele has yet to do anything similar to that.
Thanks. What would you consider the starting point for Messi to be though? From a goalscoring perspective, unlike Pele who came in and immediately became the top scorer in the league for Santos, Messi became Barcelona's top goal threat in a much more gradual fashion.
Yes, that's true - it would be difficult to compare in that sense because we'd have to either use the first 3 seasons he played games in for initial impact, or the 3 seasons starting with 08/09 say to judge the impact of him as a major player and scorer. Unless we have a gap in the middle but then it would certainly be incomparable to the Pele situation.
Messi @28 WC14 runner-up, Golden Ball CA15 runner-up, MVP CA07 runner-up, Top 3 OL08 Gold, (no individual awards, involved 9/9 goals on the field) WC05u20 champion, Golden Ball Pele WC70 champion, Golden Ball WC58 champion, Silver Ball CA59-1 runner-up, MVP World Cup Career Matches (Won - Drawn - Lost) Pele 14 (12 - 1 - 1) = 86% win Messi 15 (12 - 1 - 2) = 80% win Goals (Scored + Assisted + Involved) Messi 18 (5 + 6 + 7) out of 22 team goals = 82% (+1 SO goal) Pele 22 (12 + 8 + 2) out of 37 team goals = 59% Messi's importance in team success is much higher. Interestingly that's exactly the same as: Messi at CL14-15 23 (10 + 7 + 6) out of 28 team goals = 82% importance I don't think Pele ever had that importance with Santos in Copa Libertadores either.
Goals / Team Goals Messi 75/243 = 0,31 CL 04-15 286/1044 = 0,27 La Liga 04-15 361/1287 = 28% Pele 17/56 = 0,30 CL career 34/155 = 0,22 Serie A career 51/211 = 24% 470/1543 = 0,30 regional league career
Both the initially mentioned above options also present some major differences to Pele's situation though. In any case, what conclusions we can draw from such an analysis is also something to think about IMO, since it would be difficult to make any defining statements.
Yes, true. Maybe even the rate Barcelona scored at without him during 2015/2016 so far alone would say something (I haven't looked at that as yet) but the situations can't really be compared in a direct way.
When people talk about this or that team performing without this or that player, does it say all that much? There are so many other things that can affect the outcome of such statistical revision, like other important players also missing the same games (one thing is how a full throttle Santos does without only Pele, and another thing is how Santos performs minus Pele, Mengalvio and Coutinho or whatever.. same for Messi or anybody else), the quality of the guy subbing in for the missing star in question (who was up for Santos when Pele was out, a top guy or a scrub?, same for Messi and whoever else), the quality of the opposition, host or visitor, etc.
Lol. I do think Bada Bing is a victim here though, simply caught in the crossfire. Too bad that this thread has so little to do with any academic interest in analyzing Pele's abilities as a goalscorer, since if it were I might have decided to contribute in an entirely different fashion, meaning that Bada Bing would probably never be troubled.
Except I already pointed out that it's pretty clear they also moved to be a more attacking team. When your scoring goes up 1.1 a game and your defense simultaneously lets up 0.75 extra goals per game, the tactics have clearly changed. Furthermore, the league expanded, increasing their goals scored by a pretty good margin. They also added Coutinho, a very top class striker, in 1958. It's overly simplistic to just attribute the entire increase to Pelé and then base your argument on the fact that he increases his team's scoring more than others. It seems obvious that a large portion of that increase, in fact probably most of it, was not attributable to Pelé. I don't have even the slightest idea where those numbers were derived from. As far as I can tell, they're literally made up numbers. Let's take a look how Barcelona has actually done with and without Messi. I will use La Liga matches, both because it's way quicker for me to calculate that way, but also because that takes out the annual giant blowouts they have against 2nd and 3rd tier teams in the first round of the CdR without Messi. We will take the last decade (i.e. starting in the 2006-2007 season, when Messi was first a superstar): Goals Per Game With Messi: 2.70 Goals Per Game Without Messi: 2.05 (I'll note that if you want to start at 2008-2009 instead since that's when he became a Ballon D'or winner, the numbers are 2.81 goals per game with Messi and 2.32 goals per game with Messi). So basically, you are making a point based on absolutely false information. I don't really care about semantics. The point is merely that Pelé was on a ludicrously high scoring team. Whether you want to call them a "super team" or not doesn't concern me. The important fact is that without Pelé, and prior to bringing in a bunch of other stars, Santos was already scoring as much as present-day Barcelona (which, along with RM, is scoring at historically high levels). When you put a great striker on a team like that, he will score tons of goals. Hell, when you put Toninho Guerreiro on a team like that, he scores tons of goals. Yes, and that year Santos had 13 players who were capped by the Brazilian NT in their career, including 9 who made Brazil's World Cup squad. Botafogo had some stars, but Santos was incredibly deep with its stars. Botafogo wasn't quite as deep with stars and that matters a lot. Furthermore, Santos had Pelé, who is better than anyone on Botafogo. You don't need to think that Pelé is the most legendary scorer of all time to recognize that. I'm not saying Pelé isn't one of the best players ever. I don't think you know you're making this error, but there's a GIANT statistical flaw in the data you present. Specifically, OPTA shots data does not count blocked shots, while WhoScored data does. In other words, you are using data that counts shots for Argentina that were not counted in your Brazil data. This error unfairly biases the data quite a bit in your favor. The correct measure would be to use blocked shots in both, but we don't have that data for 1970, so we will take blocked shots out for Argentina instead: You estimated 115 shots for Brazil in 6 matches (19.2 shots a match). According to WhoScored, Argentina had just 69 non-blocked shots in 7 matches (9.9 shots a match). After adjusting Pelé's 4.67 chances created down based on that, we have an adjusted total of 2.41 chances created. Well below Messi's total. No, nothing you've said explains anything. You've tried to pass off OPTA and WhoScored shots data as being the same. And you have tried to pass off completely false statistics about Barcelona's scoring with and without Messi. In both cases, you declared that you have explained/validated your earlier point. You haven't at all.
You're being too harsh on @Estel , who mentioned the goals with/without Messi includes Copa Del Rey matches. You took those out without really giving a reason, I believe they should count as a lot of the historical greatness of this era Barcelona has to do with them winning doubles and trebles.So the Copa del Rey has to a certain extent helped raise their legend.
Academic? That's funny because out of all the posters in this forum, you are definitely one of the last names that I'd associate with the concept/term "academic." You always make bullshit claims such as "Too bad that this thread has so little to do with *any* academic interest. Had it been properly researched, I might've even deemed this thread as something worthy of my academic greatness, but alas, the premise of the thread disagrees with me, and nobody can disagree with me and still be called academic. And so, I decided to contribute in an entirely different fashion, that is, in the same fashion I contribute *every time* that I don't 100% agree with the OP." I always find it quite amusing how a self-described "academic" always starts by insulting, and then by trying to argue. This thread being a textbook example of that... You obviously didn't even bothered reading Lessthanjake's opening post. And yet you still decided to define Lessthanjake as an ignorant "younger poster" who didn't do his research... And your source is littered with false and flawed claims. How academic of you. Anyways, it's quite amusing how smug you are when your sources are so obviously flawed. The person that you referenced, @tpmazembe, made a lot of manipulative/misleading arguments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first thing that should jump out at the reader is the fact that the S.Paulo league is of the same size as La Liga. Whether it was +/- one, two, or even five would not have mattered, but it does confirm the assertion that on a per capita basis it was just as tough to become a pro in the S.Paulo league as in La Liga. Whether you agree with this hypothesis or not, you can see that the historical records of orderly and consistent SP championships disproving the “incoherent” claim. Assuming these teams had approximately equal sized rosters of 22 players, Sao Paulo had 352 professional first division players from a base of 37 million people. Assuming that only half of the population were men, we have an index of 0.000019 professional football players per capita [352/(37 million x 50%)]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's pretty obvious that Sao Paulo, in the 1960s, was nowhere near having a base of 37 million people. So the whole thing is not academic, and very much is propaganda, starting with the very first line of argument. Sao Paulo in the 1960s probably had something around 8 million people or 12 million people, but in any case, it was pretty far away from the "40 million people... Same size as La Liga..." bullshit propaganda claims. Of course, it gets more interesting, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can’t think of one from the ‘60s who fits the bill, but I can think of a proxy for the ‘90s: Rivaldo. Rivaldo is one of my favorite players from the last decade, and was an offensive midfielder/attacker with a knack for scoring important and memorable goals. He played 6 years in the SP league, followed by 6 years in La Liga – providing us with an almost perfect basis for comparison. Please review his offensive production here: http://soccer-europe.com/Profiles/Rivaldo.html Simple math gives you Rivaldo’s goal scoring average over six seasons in each league: Sao Paulo – 0.46 goals / game La Liga - 0.54 goals / game If we drop his best statistical years in both leagues to eliminate a potential fluke season’s impact we have (over the five remaining seasons): Sao Paulo – 0.39 goals / game La Liga – 0.52 goals / game If we drop his worst statistical years in both leagues to eliminate a potential fluke season’s impact we have (over the five remaining seasons): Sao Paulo – 0.49 La Liga – 0.57 If we drop both his worst and best statistical years we have (over the four remaining seasons): Sao Paulo – 0.42 La Liga – 0.55 In every single scenario Rivaldo’s offensive La Liga output exceeded his Sao Paulo tally. How could that be? Wasn’t La Liga the superior league in the ‘90s? Hadn’t the talent exodus in the Brasilian game already begun by then? I’ll leave it up to you to decide what the factors where that explained this increase in output. Suffice to say, Rivaldo is a case study that should put to bed this generalization that a superstar’s offensive punch automatically would get muted by a move to Europe. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rivaldo is a case study that should put to bed this generalization that a superstar’s offensive punch automatically would get muted by a move to Europe... Simple math gives you Rivaldo’s goal scoring average over six seasons in each league... But of course... Rivaldo was 24 years old when he arrived in La Liga... So six seasons in each league? What does that mean? 18 to 24 year old Rivaldo (the one that played in Brazil) ends up being directly compared to prime 24 to 30 year old Rivaldo (the one that played in Spain). Of course, when you further take into account teammates such as Luis Figo, Patrick Kuivert, etc. Added to the fact that 26 year old and 27 year old Rivaldo was obviously better than 21 year old or 22 year old Rivaldo. What exactly is so inexplicable about the fact that Rivaldo's Liga output is better than his Brazil output? And Rivaldo is the amazing "case study" that should put to bed the generalization that a superstar's offensive punch automatically would get muted by a move to Europe? Get the f*ck out. This is 70% propaganda, and 30% academic, and that's if you can even call it "academic" to begin with. Yeah, as soon as you saw this topic you just knew that the propaganda by tpmazembe was exactly the type of bullshit that would readily debunk what was a perfectly well-researched and reasonable OP... That would definitely explain why your points, and your sources, hardly seem to tackle any of the points/arguments offered by Lessthanjake. Ultimately, I think older (or younger; I don't care) posters would do well to inform themselves when it comes to bullshit claims such as "Sao Paulo had 352 professional first division players from a base of 37 million people." It's the type of bullshit you can spot without even trying. Of course, when Rivaldo at 21 years of age not being as good as Rivaldo at 27 years of age somehow is the case study that disproves everything that we think we know... I mean, that just reaffirms how full of shit tpmazembe really was. He described himself as a "truth seeker" but, I mean, it's obvious that he was rooting for Pele right from the very first page of his propaganda piece. So anyways: again, what I mean to say is, basically, that arrogant and cocky posters like Estel really should do well to read better sources than "some dude who totally agrees with me, and who makes total sense!!"
Two things: 1. The problem with including CdR matches is that Messi plays virtually every single one except for the first round. And, in the first round, Barcelona is playing a 2nd or 3rd tier team. They don't play virtually any starters and still win by a massive amount. Those matches really aren't indicative of how well the team scores without him, but they're a giant portion of CdR matches played without him. 2. I think I finally figured out what those numbers Estel gave actually are. I think it's supposed to be all competitions from 2010-2011 onwards. The numbers aren't exactly right, but they're close. The website chose that pretty manipulatively, as Barcelona had lots of trouble without Messi the two prior seasons. It also includes the giant blowouts I mentioned above. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that Messi didn't miss matches those years that were against good teams (despite Estel's claims that the matches he was out were similar to the matches he played). Here are the teams Messi's missed matches came against: Levante: 3 Malaga: 3 CE L'Hospitalet: 2 Alaves: 2 FC Cartagena: 2 Sporting Gijon: 2 Elche: 2 SD Huesca: 2 Real Valladolid: 2 Athletico Bilbao: 2 Bayern Munich: 1 Cueta: 1 Deportivo: 1 Almeria: 1 BATE Borisov: 1 Mallorca: 1 Zaragoza: 1 Espanyol: 1 Cordoba: 1 Celtic: 2 Ajax: 1 Granada: 1 Villarreal: 1 Getafe: 1 Please try to tell me that that looks remotely similar to the average schedule in the matches Messi plays, a large amount of which includes KO stages of the CL, latter stages of the CdR, Super Cup matches, and actual matches against the perennial La Liga powers such as Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Valencia, and Sevilla (not to mention that Messi doesn't play a quarter of his matches against teams in the 2nd and 3rd tier of Spain like this sample has). It's a joke that @Estel acted like this was representative of the matches Messi plays in. The hardest matches on there are the match against Bayern and the two matches against Athletico Bilbao. And guess what? They lost 2 of those 3 matches, scored only 3 goals total, and conceded 5. They also lost probably the next most difficult match Messi missed: an away match against Ajax that they lost 1-2.
That's the galling thing really. @Estel clearly did not read my original post because he responded with a slew of giant posts about how it is wrong to say that regional Brazilian leagues were worse than European leagues, despite the fact that I had explicitly stated in my post that I was not making that argument. That would be all right, but when it's accompanied by thinly-veiled patronizing comments about how I haven't done enough research, it's truly ridiculous. Did @Estel ever wonder why I explicitly said I wasn't making the argument that regional Brazilian leagues are worse? I was making a post about how Pelé's scoring was overrated. If I were nearly as uninformed as he claims, I surely would've made an argument that a regional league is way worse. That's a commonly heard and fairly obviously argument (more obvious, in fact, than much of the stuff contained in my OP). But it's precisely because I have done research on the subject that I didn't make that argument (not because the regional league wasn't actually weaker, but rather because I knew it would open up a can of unprovable worms that I didn't need to open to make my case). So I was literally being patronized for not doing research on something that I think it should've been self-evident that I had done research on otherwise I would have decided to talk about it.