Rest of the world football

definitely

 

Carli Lloyd, FIFA Best Female Player of 2016, huh???

Watching her in 2016 was like watching Cpt. Bradley of late: many unforced errors, inaccurate passing and unnecessary turnovers. Best players of the year, I don't see it that way. Over-rated, perhaps???

 

hard to argue with 17 goals + 11 assists in 21 games tho

 

And, working only from memory here, it seemed that a lot of those goals were of the critical or game changing varieties. Although I may be thinking of the prior year.

 

Melanie Behringer won a champions league trophy and Olympic gold. She was also the leading goal scorer at the Olympics as a midfielder.

 

VERY hard to argue when someone is averaging 1.33 g+a/gm. That's great offensive production. (Only possible caveat is if a bunch of the goals & assists were piled up against patsies we beat 5-0? I don't know the answer to that.)

 

Paul Arriola highlights from last nights' game.

Insane goal:
https://streamable.com/95s6m

Insane assist (Leonardo like dubious defending):
https://streamable.com/xzfoa

 

Paul Arriola goal highlight.

http://streamable.com/pzves#

Folks (Doyle) are starting to say that Arriola is looking like the best wide player in LigaMX.

 

A Messi vs Ronaldo debate broke out on the Man Utd forum a few days back, prompting THIS BLOG POST from me.

I'd have posted it there but they grumble about bloggers posting links, whereas you guys are far more receptive.

 

Liked your post. So many years ago people would argue and hate on Ronaldo and Messi. I would always say enjoy both as they are doing amazing things and truly the greatest. I don't think their scoring records will be touched on for a while.

 

Nice piece. I didn't watch much soccer before the 90s (and since I was pretty young at that time, my comprehension of the game is night and day) but I tend to assume, generally across all sports, that most of the greats today would outperform guys from yesteryear. (I remember Colin Quinn's joke that Babe Ruth never played against a black guy). OTOH, I know a lot of folks staunchly oppose this view about soccer specifically: one of my good friends always tells me about watching Maradona live and swears he's never seen a player as good, including Messi (whom he's also seen live many times). But even then I question that Maradona could've executed at the speed of today's game.

I have heard that club teams and leagues have much more concentrated talent today, which could explain for Messi and CR7s sheer insane numbers, in addition to just how individually good they are.

 

re: Messi vs. Ronaldo specifically, I'm pretty torn. I feel like Messi is more likely to play a perfect game but Ronaldo is more likely to score against all odds. I feel if his team is not controlling the match, Messi will not assist or score (UCL KOs vs. Chelsea, Final vs. Germany, Final vs. Chile) whereas I feel Ronaldo is much more likely to score / create against the run of play or make something happen even if his team is not playing particularly well (vs. US in 2014, several times during the '16 Euros).

 

I disagree with the generality of your assumption. I don't think that evolution works that fast. While, I understand that in some sports that having a genetic linkage to a previously successful athlete increases the likelihood of success, I don't think that this explains the overall increases we see in athletic performance. I think that most of these differences can be attributed to modern year round training (especially at an early age), new equipment and medical care/research. To use your example, just think about the records Babe Ruth would have set had he not been an out of shape, alcoholic for the latter half of his career including the year he hit 60 home runs.

As for Colin Quinn's comment, not withstanding the criminal segregation of the time, it requires an assumption that black and Latino athletes are superior to white athletes in baseball which I don't think anyone can prove.

 

Admittedly, it's not a theory I'm married to since I don't know a ton about sports history but my reasoning is similar to yours: I don't think athletes' bodies have evolved that much, but training, nutrition, sports medicine (and medicine-medicine) and related areas have exponentially. You also have a much wider population globally of not just players, but coaches, analysts, tacticians, scouts, youth coaches, referees, sports doctors putting time, effort and money into getting better at the sport. I think that was the spirit of Quinn's comment on Babe Ruth -- not that blacks and Latinos are superior athletes, but that there was a whole population of talent Ruth didn't compete against.

 

I think this is always the most important criteria when comparing "greats"?

Do we base comparison on the fact that these aspects have resulted in a better player? Or do we base comparison on what the talented players of yesteryear would have achieved, if they'd had access to modern information and resources?

Imagine if George Best had been handled the way that Ryan Giggs was as a kid.

 

I think if that is the assumption, then his comments are totally BS or reflective of some weird racism. Blacks in the 20's and 30's were approximately 9% of the population. Latins and Asians were a much smaller percentage of the total US population then they are today. America was approximately 85 to 90% white. Baseball while a popular sport in places like the Dominican Republic, did not have the baseball academies that it has today. So if baseball had been integrated in the 20's and 30's then perhaps each team would have at most 1 black starting pitcher. Undoubtly some would have been all-stars but by and large they would have tended towards average (unless you assume some racial superiority in baseball). FWIW Ruth set records that still stand today and his wins above replacement for his top years dwarf not only his contemporaries (among field players) but all other players since then (e.g. Bonds best drug-aided year was 2002 with 11.78, whereas Ruth had 6 years that were better with a high of 14.01 in 1923) - and Ruth spent 5+ years in his prime with Boston as one of the best pitchers in baseball.

 

The PSG vs Barca game was very good. PSG took it to Barca 4-0. You don't see Barca get pushed onto their heels very often

 

And now back to soccer. I apologise for my digression about baseball.

 

Well, I think the comment was meant to be a mean-spirited joke more than anything. I didn't re-use it because I thought that about Ruth, but because I agreed with the spirit of the joke that that modern athletes have huge edge over past legends for various reasons (including the fact that there are more participants). I guess detached from the context of the entire bit, though, the Ruth joke on its own does just seem like a racialist argument, which wasn't my intention.

 

I didn't think it you personally were making a racist argument but rather one based that there are changes in the participants within sports (which is undoubtedly true).

Outside of unarguable current superiority of East African distance runners who are raised and train in high altitudes, its unclear if there are any racial advantages in sports. For example, baseball, tennis, gymnastics and swimming are all sports where early training is crucial to success. We have seen the number of black baseball players decrease as the number of year round baseball travel clubs (which are very expensive) have increased, ditto the disproportional rise of players from the Dominican Republic (with its extensive academy system). Tennis has seen what the intensive youth training has done for the Williams. In gymnastics and swimming, we have seen Asian countries (most notably China) have an significant impact.

 

Cristiano Ronaldo’s Champions League record with Real Madrid:

82 games 💪
80 goals ⚽
24 assists 🅰️
2 titles 🏆

Outrageous. pic.twitter.com/wx1KA9Z6RH

— Squawka (@Squawka) February 15, 2017