I think Xavi and/or Iniesta are as good or better than Zidane. Think about this. National Team Zidane was a national team beast. That is his main claim to fame. But Xavi and Iniesta are amongst the only players who can match up in this regard. Zidane won one World Cup and one Euros, while making the finals of another World Cup. Meanwhile, Xavi and Iniesta both won one World Cup and two Euros. So on the strength of just trophies, Xavi/Iniesta are actually a bit ahead. But of course, trophies don't really mean anything without context. Zidane was the leader of his team. And you might say he mattered more to the team than Xavi and Iniesta did. But I don't really buy it. Zidane was the leader of the French team, for sure. And he put in a good 1998 World Cup, a very good 2000 Euro, and a very good 2006 World Cup. The team struggled a fair bit when he wasn't there. So he was very important. But Xavi and Iniesta were incredibly important to Spain too. That team won with tiki-taka. And Xavi/Iniesta were absolutely the engine that made that tiki-taka run. As a result, they were, by a significant margin, the most important players on that team. In fact, Casillas and Ramos were the only other players that were actually starters in all three tournaments. And Xavi/Iniesta put in vintage performances in the big tournaments. Both players were in the Team of the Tournament in all three major tournaments Spain won. Xavi, Iniesta, and Casillas were the only Spanish players that was true of. Meanwhile, Xavi won Player of the Tournament in Euro 2008, while Iniesta won it in Euro 2012. Xavi and Iniesta were clearly the engine of Spain's dominance. And sure, you might say that Spain just has a ludicrous golden generation of players. It's true. But, of course, so did France with Zidane. And the telling thing is that, in both instances, these guys were clearly the key players on teams stacked with great players. You might also say that Zidane came through in key moments. For instance, he scored two goals in the 1998 finals. Of course, Iniesta also provided the World Cup winning goal. And he was Man of the Match in the 2012 Euro finals. And while Xavi does not have a memorable clutch goal for Spain, he had an amazing final every time. Club Team So I think Zidane and Xavi/Iniesta have similarly amazing national team records. Where the separation really comes out is in club play. Let's first just look at trophies. Xavi has 8 La Liga titles, 3 Copa Del Rey titles, 4 Champions League titles, and 10 other minor club trophies. Iniesta has 7 La Liga titles, 3 Copa Del Rey titles, 4 Champions League titles, and 10 other minor club trophies. Of course, both of them weren't entirely influential in all of these titles, so those numbers overstate it a bit. But they were both key players in most of those titles. Meanwhile, Zidane only has 3 league titles, 0 domestic cups, 1 Champions League title, and 9 other minor club trophies. Even discounting Xavi/Iniesta's record a bit, the difference is quite stark. Zidane did not win much, while Xavi and Iniesta have been key players for one of the greatest club teams of all time. And Zidane's record looks even worse when you look at the success of his team before he got there. Zidane was at Real Madrid for 5 years. In those years, they basically won 1 La Liga and 1 CL. In the 5 years before Zidane got there, they won 2 La Liga titles and 2 CLs. And they immediately won La Liga twice in a row after he left. Zidane was at Juventus for 5 years. In those years, they basically won 2 Serie A titles. The last three years, they did not win the title, though, and right after Zidane left, they immediately won twice in a row. So basically club teams seem to sort of have done better without Zidane. Moreover, his club team record looks even more shocking when you look beyond just titles. He played for two incredibly talented teams. And they weren't failing to win titles due to some amazing team around. They were underachieving, and often not even getting close to titles. For Real Madrid, his teams got 3rd, 1st, 4th, 2nd, and 2nd. They had point totals of 66, 78, 70, 80, and 70. This is with players like Ronaldo, Figo, Raul, David Beckham, Roberto Carlos, Claude Makelele, etc. Their point total went down his first year, and up after his last year. Similar things happened at Juventus, though they were perhaps slightly better. They even had a shocking year of 7th place (with 54 points) while Zidane was there. Of course, players can play well and have their team not do well. But that's not the case with Zidane. He was simply an extremely inconsistent club team player. This really is part of why his club teams were never very good. Meanwhile, Xavi and Iniesta may have slipped in recent years. But for many years, those two were absolutely ruthlessly consistent match after match. They controlled the midfield every single match. And their team was wildly more successful than Zidane's. But you say that Zidane came through in big matches, so his inconsistency didn't matter that much. First of all, inconsistency matters. Madrid failed to win league titles because it dropped points against lots of mediocre teams. Second of all, Xavi and Iniesta absolutely have come through in big matches. They both absolutely dominated the midfield in the 2009 CL and the 2011 CL. And Iniesta was possibly the best player on the pitch in the 2015 CL finals. They'd regularly embarrass teams in the knockout stages of the CL by keeping like 70% possession. Iniesta made that 2009 goal against Chelsea. There's just no argument that these guys didn't absolutely dominate big matches. But you may say that Xavi and Iniesta have Messi, which is why they are more successful. And I think that's certainly partially true. This year even showed that Messi can be wildly successful without Xavi or Iniesta being hugely influential. But let's not discount the influence of Xavi/Iniesta earlier in this era. Messi has now developed the ability to be a truly great playmaker. But he did not always have that. For the first three years of Guardiola, Xavi and Iniesta were absolutely the primary playmakers on the team. And even when they started ceding some of those duties to Messi, the team was still built around having absolute midfield control. Xavi and Iniesta allowed them to have this. While Barcelona has now become successful while moving away from that tactic, the fact is that Xavi and Iniesta were absolutely integral to Barcelona's dominance, even if Messi was more important. Moreover, Zidane played with tremendously talented players anyways. The Galacticos were just as stacked as today's Barcelona, and they largely failed while Zidane was there. Juventus was incredibly talented as well. Xavi and Iniesta may not have been the best player on their club team. But they were still absolutely dominant and crucial players on one of the greatest club teams of all time. Meanwhile, Zidane was an inconsistent underachiever. It is clear that Xavi and Iniesta were the better club players. Changing the Game/Aesthetics Having been about even NT players and better club players seems to obviously make Xavi and Iniesta better overall players. But of course there are other, more intangible, things that people care about. One of those is changing the game. We revere people who changed the way the game is played. Frankly, Xavi and Iniesta have done this, while Zidane really did not. Xavi and Iniesta represent the height of tiki-taka, which took the footballing world by storm. They changed how people played with their wild success using this distinct tactic. Zidane was amazing, but he didn't change how the game was played, nor did he represent a way of playing. We also care about aesthetics. People perhaps revere Zidane mostly for aesthetics. He was incredibly graceful and just looked awesome while he played. Of course, aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder. But people also generally find tiki-taka to be a beautiful way of playing. And Iniesta has the closest thing to Zidane's grace that we have seen this era. The fact is that Zidane, Xavi, and Iniesta all are widely considered beautiful to watch. So I am left with this question. Xavi and Iniesta are equal NT players to Zidane. They are better club players. They changed the game, while Zidane didn't. And all three are widely considered beautiful to watch. Surely Xavi and Iniesta are better?
I only have read the "National Team" paragraph, but you omit an important fact. Zidane: Golden Ball Euro00, Golden Ball WC06 Xavi: Golden Ball Euro08 Iniesta: Golden Ball Euro12 Zidane has as many international individual honors as Iniesta and Xavi do combined. Plus, is it valid to compare two players against one?
First of all, I think this is a bit of an illusory thing to hang one's argument on, since Zidane surely wouldn't have won the 2006 Golden Ball if it hadn't been voted on before the finals (which was a ridiculous thing for them to do, by the way. Best player can't be determined before the most important match). I suppose you could argue that he might've won the 1998 Golden Ball if it had been voted on after the finals. But I don't think he'd have deserved it. In any case, it's not like Xavi and Iniesta weren't really great in the tournaments they didn't win Golden Balls in. After all, they both made the Team of the Tournament of three separate NT tournaments. I suppose it IS an advantage to have been the best player twice, rather than once. But it's not a huge one, considering that Xavi and Iniesta were amongst the top handful every time anyways. Bottom line: If Zidane has an advantage in performance in major NT tournaments, it's a really small one. And he won one fewer major tournament, so I think it easily evens out.
I didn't mean to sound like I was pitting Xavi's and Iniesta's achievements combined against Zidane's, though I understand how it might've seemed that way. I think each of Xavi and Iniesta, taken on his own, is better than Zidane. I just talked about them collectively a bunch, since many of their achievements are obviously similar.
Zidane was all-tournament in WC98 and Euro04 besides the ones where he won the highest award (obviously). Given that each made all-tournament in an equal number of tourneys, but Zidane did them one better by winning the highest individual award twice, the advantage at international level is clear for Zidane.
Xavi yes. Iniesta no. I'm waaaaay too lazy to write books like you guys though. I'll just say this much. There is a fair bit of nostalgia with Zidane. Even his WC 06 is marketed to be the dog's bollocks because he pulled a couple of flicks against an ageing Brazil side with fat (visibly) Ronaldo leading the line and Roberto Carlos tying his shoe laces during a France freekick and for the goal he scored on the counter in the dying minutes against Spain when they were throwing in everything but the kitchen sink to chase the scoreline. Not even going to bother to talk about his 98 WC where he apparently "single-handedly" won the tournament according to 90 % of the casuals football fans. You'll probably have to go as far back as Platini to find any other midfielder dominating the way Xavi did between 08-12 for club and country week in week out. Dominating the entire pitch, deep-lying playmaker who collected the ball from the centerbacks and advanced the play and goal creator who assisted goals in 2 Champions League and 2 European Championship finals in one. Unfortunately he was the most unmarketable player on the planet. No tattoos, no extravagent lifestyle. A "schoolboy" as Ibrahimovich would say. And to top it all off he played in the same era and team as Messi which obviously kills any sort of hope for individual awards.
Beautifully put, I agree with everything you said about Xavi, whom I consider to be, at worst, every bit as good as Zidane was. That being said, Iniesta is a tricky one. Compared to Xavi and Zidane, Iniesta is a decidedly more peripheral player, but even then, Iniesta did added a special something that hardly any other player on the planet could've added. In season 10/11, Iniesta was a more consistent dribbler than Zidane ever was, and he lost less possession than Zidane, add the two things together and it's difficult to argue that Iniesta was slightly inferior. But I can see why you'd rate Iniesta as a slightly inferior player -- I used to think the same. As for "trophies," it is extremely obvious that Zidane, arguably being the more entertaining player to watch, and also being the more handsome image to sell (when compared to Xavi or Iniesta), is pretty much guaranteed to win more trophies.
Juventus and Real Madrid, both clubs did better without Zidane, and the proof of that is both consistent and conclusive. It always amazes me how Zidane's club career is widely described as a "success" when it clearly was much more of a case of an overrated player "underachieving" because the media had created the illusion, and therefore the expectation, that Zidane was a lot better than he really was. R9 was similar to Zizou in that regard. The striker was Nike's main man; the midfielder was Adidas' main man; both players are generously overrated as a result of media hype. Zidane was the more expensive signing in the world when he moved to Madrid, despite the fact that Juventus CLEARLY declined because of Zidane. The @BugsBunny thread details how many tactical experiments were tried, with the clear intention of trying to make good use of Zidane, which wasn't easy. This is the sort of circus that takes place when you have big corporate muscle creating a lot of smoke around players like Zidane: "record transfers" regardless of the fact that nothing Zidane did on the pitch at club level, actually justifies all that hype (and money).
EDIT By "trophies," I meant individual trophies, not team titles. Zidane arguably was the more entertaining player to watch, and objectively was the more handsome image to sell (when compared to Xavi or Iniesta), which pretty much guarantees that Zidane will place higher at them popularity politics-based awards.
The immense effort you put into historical revisionism is incredible. By the same token, the stars of today are benefitting even more from increased media exposure, and from the management and pressure exerted by corporations that sponsor them. We do not see you complain or put into doubt Messi's Ballon d'Or or player of the tournament award in WC14. Nobody actually rates Xavi and Iniesta on the same level as Zidane, least of all actual footballers who play the sport. Call me when either of those two ever put up a performance even close to this. They simply did not have the ability nor the impact to perform anywhere close to this level. How delusional you must be. Besides, we are talking to somebody who has never seen Zidane play at his peak with Juve.
The advantage for individual awards is indeed clear, but also relatively small. And it's counteracted some by the fact that Spain won an extra Euro. So if Zidane takes an edge at the NT level, it's very small. And, at club level, it is not even close. So Zidane still ends up behind overall. I also think that Xavi and Iniesta suffer on these individual awards things by being tremendously unmarketable and somewhat uninteresting personalities, in an era where that matters more than ever. For instance, neither Xavi nor Iniesta were in the top 3 for the 2010 WC Golden Ball. And that's pretty absurd since tiki-taka won Spain that tournament, and those two players were absolutely the engine behind that. They dominated the midfield in each and every match. And Iniesta scored the winning goal in the finals, of course. But neither of them made the top three. Instead, the top three simply included the three top goalscorers in the tournament. Zidane was a much much more marketed player, and I do believe he'd have had a very good chance of winning the Golden Ball if he had put in the exact same performance as either Xavi or Iniesta. Perhaps I'm wrong. After all, I am making wild speculations. But that's my intuition. And if it's right, then it's perhaps not entirely fair to use individual tournament awards as an absolute gauge of how well they played.
Xavi and Iniesta have dominated games...the CL finals come to mind ask Alex Ferguson how he feels about those two
It's amusing how you accuse of others of revisionism when you actively are the biggest revisionist on this forum. Before the 2006 WC, nobody considered Zidane anywhere near as highly as post-06. When he was at Juve, Zidane was widely criticized by a lot of respectable publications, not to mention the stand alone prominent personalities that also questioned the hype around a player who clearly wasn't as great as he was advertised as. Guys like you like to pretend that Zidane was always regarded the way he has been post-06, which simply is a dishonest claim. At club level, Zidane is nothing remarkable when you compare him to the other club legends. Fernando Redondo arguably had a better career at Real Madrid, despite having not even an ounce of the corporate power that was financing/marketing Zidane as a product. Paul Scholes also had a clearly better club career. And Xavi, despite not having the sensational youtube videos, also had a greater effect on club football, and a much greater effect at that. You really top yourself off as the days go by. How in the world could any sane person think that Xavi benefited from more "corporation sponsorship" than Zidane? Your claim is insane. Xavi at no point of his career, was the marquee face of Adidas nor of any other of the big corporate powers. Your logic would make sense if we were talking about Laudrup, but Zidane? Zidane is one of the biggest corporate CONS in the history of the sport. A midfielder who was hyped as the best in the world, and yet who was consistently outperformed by midfielders in his own league. It's amazing how you talk bout revisionism when you clearly are the biggest revisionist in this forum, hands down. You've basically just decided that XAVI of all players, somehow benefited from more publicity than ZIDANE of all players... Which is a ludicrous, laughable, claim, to be perfectly honest with you. Actually, a lot of fans do rate both Xavi and Iniesta as better players than Zidane. I'm not one of them, mind you. But I also don't consider Zidane a better player. And here we go with the usual routine: Zidane fanboy posts Zidane youtube video, thinks the video is conclusive proof that Zidane is the better player, and follows that up with the typical fanboy temper tantrum; indeed, how delusional must a person be, to think that a youtube video about flicks and flash, somehow conclusively proves that Zidane was a better player than Xavi.
I think it's fairly obvious that he would be considered a better player if he was not Danish. Imagine him being Brazilian or Argentinian? Or how about him in his 92/93 form, playing for France at the 1998 WC?
Spain winning an extra Euro has little relevance to the overall talent of these players, as obvious variables such as the strength of the squads, and crucially, the strength of the competition, come into play. Zidane in fact beat both Xavi and Iniesta at international level in WC06.
Zidane did...or did France beat Spain? also not to beat that guy but Iniesta did not play in the France vs Spain game
Do you realize how much Xavi and Iniesta dominated match after match? There are just so many examples. How about when Barcelona's midfield absolutely emasculated a very good Real Madrid team, making them look like amateur footballers who couldn't get a sniff of the ball? Or what about Xavi absolutely dominating Arsenal (though the Barca forwards bottled tons of chances this match, so the scoreline did not demonstrate Xavi's dominance)? Is this a dominant enough display for you? Maybe you want Xavi delivering 4 assists (and creating tons of other chances) against Real Madrid? Or how about these guys humiliating Italy in the Euro final, bossing an opposing midfield that had Pirlo in peak form? Or this match? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSHKYZwVY8M Or exerting more complete control than we have ever seen a team have in any remotely recent Champions League final? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nhx6vEsQJM Or another dominant Champions League final? I could use Iniesta here too, but I can't find a YouTube video for it (in fact, that's true of a few matches here. I have more Xavi matches, but Iniesta often dominated in the same match as well). Iniesata dominated the 2009 CL final, despite being so injured that he was told under no circumstances was he allowed to attempt a shot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSkNmjTlgSg I could keep going on. But by now it should be clear that it is absolutely laughable to think Xavi and Iniesta did not both absolutely dominate matches. In fact, it's really all they did for club and country for about 5 straight years.
I'm not one to care that much about titles. But it does have relevance to have won an extra major title. I'm trying to talk about who has had the superior career, not just who possessed the most talent. Titles are relevant there. But yeah, there's a lot of other factors that go into winning those titles. However, being the driving force behind three major titles instead of two is superior in the same way that winning two Best Player awards is superior to winning one (a lot of other factors go into those awards too, such as popularity, popularity of teammates, strength of other top players' displays at the tournament, etc.). Both things are not the greatest gauge of everything, but we take them into account anyways. And the fact is this. Zidane won a World Cup and didn't win the Golden Ball, but was on the Team of the Tournament. Xavi and Iniesta both did that. Zidane won a Euro and was named Best Player. Xavi and Iniesta both did that too. The difference here is this. Xavi and Iniesta both won another Euro while being in the Team of the Tournament. Zidane did not do that. Instead, he won Best Player at another World Cup before the final had been played, and his team failed to win. The question is whether you'd prefer another Euro title + Team of the Tournament or WC Runner-Up + Best Player award voted before finals (and there being little chance the player would have won the award after the finals). I'm not sure that's so clear cut in favor of Zidane. Maybe you think it is, and that's fine. But at the very least, we have to acknowledge it's not a big difference. And there is a big difference between Xavi/Iniesta and Zidane at the club level. As for the 2006 World Cup: Iniesta did not play in that match. And Xavi had literally just come back from a serious injury that had kept him out for 5 months. He had not even been deemed fit to play in the CL finals. Hardly the fairest way to compare these players, don't you think?
Xavi 2006 (rushed back from injury; with his place being in doubt till the very last month before the tournament; and clearly lacking match fitness) and Iniesta (who did not play that match?), and suddenly Zidane somehow "beat both Xavi and Iniesta" at international level in WC 06. How can Zidane ever loose when his fans can make up reality as they see fit? With all due respect, but this is exactly where nostalgia gets a little too out of hand for my liking. When you start making up stuff such as Iniesta being there when he wasn't even a bench player, or such as assuming that Xavi in 2006 (who clearly was lacking match fitness as a result of a serious injury) was representative of what Xavi became just over a season later: that's where I draw the line, because it's obvious that your opinion on the matter won't change no matter how much evidence is presented to you. That Iniesta wasn't there in 2006? That Xavi was rushed back from injury in order to make the 2006 team? Doesn't matter. You will still believe that Zidane was better than Xavi and Iniesta put together, despite the fact that Zidane wasn't even cutting it against inferior players at Liga level back then. Furthermore: using Xavi 2006 as conclusive proof of what you claim, would be like using Zidane 1996 as conclusive proof that some other player would beat him at any stage of his career. It's pretty much biased logic, but for whatever the reason, you clearly decided a long time ago that Zidane was that great, that you would readily make up stories about him for the sake of hyping him up. Case in point: "Zidane in fact beat both Xavi and Iniesta at international level in WC06," when Zidane obviously never did such a thing, and when Zidane wasn't even the best player in his own team in that particular game. But f-ck it. I'm sure @SayWhatIWant and some other posters will agree with it, all the same. You still don't get it... When Xavi and Iniesta win two Euros and one WC, it's because "variables such as the strength of the squads, and the strengths of the competition," worked in favor of Spain. But of course, when France eliminates an unconvincing Spanish team, a Spanish team with a rushed-back-from-injury Xavi, and with Iniesta not even featuring as a bench player: that's when you know that Zidane single handedly beat Xavi and Iniesta, not because France had an overall excellent game with both Vieira and Ribery playing at an arguably better level than Zidane, and not becasue "obvious variables worked in France's favor," but because Zidane made the difference when it mattered the most. Period. Oh and, when France 1998 played against a R9 who had no business on a football pitch, enjoying the known benefits of the home crowd, and with Zidane having a good game: this is another example of Zidane single handedly making the difference when it mattered the most; and no, no "obvious variable" worked in favor of Zidane, clearly. I honestly don't know what people like @Pipiolo and @SayWhatIWant see in Zidane. I probably enjoy watching Zidane every bit as much as either of them, and yet I still can't see what could possibly validate all these claims about Zidane being this magical player who could single handedly take care of Xavi and Iniesta, when no known single midfielder ever quite matched the Xavi-Iniesta duo. Only Mourinho's Chelsea managed to create problems, and Mourinho wasn't doing it by playing to Zidane's strengths, Mourinho was doing it by playing exactly the type of football where Zidane would not fit. The belief that Zidane, whom essentially was a possession-oriented player, would do well against Xavi-Iniesta who are widely considered the most devastating possession partnership of all time... Well I find it funny, to be honest with you, because to me it is abundantly clear that Xavi-Iniesta is exactly the type of team that would devastatingly nullify a player of Zidane's characteristics. Zidane on his own, trying his signature style when the opposing team has over 65% of the possession, would be ran over by the less entertaining but more relentless style of Xavi-Iniesta.
I think Xavi+Iniesta+Messi/others+Tika Taka > Zidane+old Figo+RonaldoMk2+Galacticos squad in general But I wouldn't be so convinced we can take the Xavi, or the Iniesta, part out of that equation with the > and the Zidane part. Does that make sense? I'm not sure putting Xavi, or Iniesta, alone into Juventus instead of Zidane would have been an improvement. It's a rough estimate but I'd say at World Cup/international level in terms of best performances Zidane>Iniesta>Xavi. Consistency wise maybe that closes up a bit. At club level maybe there is an argument that consistency wise considering the time in Spain alone that could be reversed to Xavi>=Iniesta>=Zidane? But then Zidane also played at Juventus. In 2003/2004 Zidane did come top of votes - the UEFA Jubilee 50 years vote, and the BBC Eurostars vote. What part media hype, or certainly being fresh in peoples minds and older players not being in youngsters minds at all played is hard to know but yeah probably some part. I do think at his best Zidane (although yeah he had backup players giving the platform) could run a game or determine the course of it as a solo player. Xavi and Iniesta always did it as a duo (and now Rakitic is Iniesta's new partner in a slightly revised Barcelona system). Whether Michael Laudrup is rated higher if he wasn't Danish? Maybe not by fans like myself (hard to judge all players in history but I felt he might be worth top 16 to top 20 anyway). But if he was say English then maybe more people would rated him at that level as compared to being just one player within say 60 or 100 great ones. On the other hand he wouldn't be the default number 1 player for a bigger nation, and it could be less people might put him forward as a top 5 player of all time even, as compared to now? And he wouldn't have starred for the Danish Dynamite team in 1986, or probably gone and played in Serie A. Whether he'd have helped England past Argentina and changed history, or helped Nottingham Forest do the double instead of Liverpool in 85/86 is speculation (not bad thoughts though for me!). If Cruyff had signed him for Barcelona and he'd been an England player maybe his status would be optimised - but would he still have taken a break from International football? Would England's dodgy form have ruined things in his peak time anyway? Would Graham Taylor have played both him and Gascoigne in the same team? I know I did see an Iniesta 2009 CL Final video. Maybe the name of it made it hard to find, but I can't find it now anyway and it could have been removed I guess. The closest might be this I suppose (maybe apt for my point to have them both in it - it's only short though and I've not watched it yet):
One other thing that should be noted. People don't think so much about how much work a player does to get the ball back. We don't always notice how much a particular player has pressed when we actually watch the full matches, and these things certainly don't make "Player vs Team" YouTube videos for people who did not see the full match. So they're easy to forget. But they're an important part of the game. A huge part of the reason that Xavi and Iniesta have been so successful and were able to dominate other midfields so thoroughly is that they pressed so relentlessly and intelligently when Barcelona lost the ball. Teams simply cannot handle the pressure. Of course, this is certainly a team-wide effort, but Xavi and Iniesta were the engine for this too. As a result of this effort, opposing teams often can hardly string together multiple midfield passes, let alone create a dangerous attack. This is as much a part of Barcelona's dominance as anything else, to be honest. And Zidane simply did not provide nearly the same effort to win the ball back (despite being more physically imposing). So think about this when you compare "Zidane vs" videos and "Xavi/Iniesta vs" videos. What you're not seeing in these videos is that Xavi/Iniesta are having an elite impact on winning the ball back, while Zidane is not. And Xavi specifically needs to get a lot of credit for his defensive impact. The man always covered the most ground on the team. And his defensive efforts are what allowed Messi and Alves to have such an amazing partnership. Let me explain. Messi likes to drift right. And Alves stays forward a lot, linking up super well with Messi on that side. It is a very important part of the team's attack. But look what we have there. A star forward who simply is not expected to track back that much, and a right back who is regularly basically acting as a winger. Logically, this should leave that flank extremely exposed. But it would not get exposed because Xavi was typically played as an RCM, and would work extremely hard to cover for Alves on that flank. The importance of this should not be underestimated. In the 2013-2014 season, after Xavi was older and simply didn't have the same motor as before, that flank started getting exposed quite a lot. It showed to Barca fans how utterly important Xavi's insane work rate had been to the defense. In this regard, we are lucky that Rakitic has a similar work rate (though he is, of course, inferior in virtually every other respect). Anyways, the point is that Zidane did not have this sort of defensive impact. It's something to think about.
To be fair, having said I'm a fan of Laudrup (although have enjoyed Zidane's play too of course) I'm not sure I can be convinced his own consistency within peak time was better than Zidane's (not really sure). I would think he did get more assists though (but maybe had more peripheral displays too? - perhaps both those things relating to style of play but also position/role in the team). I think both had a great level of peak brilliance anyway and also championship winning seasons in Spain where their influence was key overall (Laudrup more of those but less decisive arguably in CL latter stages in 92 compared to 02).
I think that's perhaps the best argument against Xavi and Iniesta on this debate. Both players were key players in absolutely dominating midfield displays. But they've only ever really played together, so it's hard to know how much they'd be able to dominate without each other. On the other hand, we know that Zidane was sometimes able to dominate the midfield himself. In the end, though, I don't really agree with this as a critique of Xavi and Iniesta. Watching the matches, you can tell how individually dominant they are. Sure, the team's dominance is compounded by the presence of both of them, but it was so often manifestly clear that each one was individually so good that he regularly made the opposition look like absolute amateurs. As a side note, I suppose we will see Iniesta without Xavi in the years to come. But Iniesta is going to find it hard to shine in the current Barcelona system, in my opinion. A lot of his greatness is his dribbling. The midfield passes around a bunch, and then Iniesta does a gliding dribble forwards that get the team into an attacking area. That was a huge part of his role, and a huge way he has been able to shine. But he's in a very different tactical role now. Barcelona is built much more around the forward line now than it has ever been. The midfield looks to get the ball to the forwards much earlier in an attack. So Iniesta doesn't have so much of a chance to make those gliding dribbles. His role simply is no longer to move the attack forward in that way. It's to recycle possession and get the ball to the forwards. With that said, I think Iniesta was also just a bit out of form this year. He seemed to be getting it back at the end, putting in some very good performances at the end of the season (including in the CL finals). So I'm curious what we'll see from him next year.