Why Do Many Consider This Current Era "weak"?

Then I come back to what I said earlier, that many records are broken in these days and not only by Ronaldo or Messi, or their teams involved.

 

I mentioned in this thread the winning streaks of Spain, Germany and Holland in the past few years. Neither Messi or Ronaldo are involved in those national teams. How does that signal the strength of this era? If teams like that break records and are (as per ELO rating) stronger than other great teams in previous eras?

Because Fabregas plays for Barcelona, and likes to sit on the bench at times, and not for another team, that other possible team is weaker. It is simple as that.

And I see every reasons why the pool of players is smaller today.

 

Having two teams who buy quality players for their bench makes other teams weaker despite having what 2 - 3 times more foreigners in their league?

 

Is the quality in terms of depth of those foreigners from second and third tier nations the same as before? I don't think so. If I look at Scotland, Belgium or Holland I think that the 10th best player of these type of nations were in general better as they are now.
Those teams receive third rate foreigners, who are thanks to reasons mentioned before not as good as the third-rate players in previous eras.

I mean this relatively speaking. In absolute terms they are maybe better but look it in this way: most good Belgium talents are nurtured outside of Belgium, like Hazard and many others. It signals that he possibilities to remain competitive and produce decent amount of talents are limited today. And to the extent it is the case, they are raised elsewhere.

 

About what years are we talking anyway as a comparison?
If it's the mid 80s then that shouldn't even be a question.

 

Which is a pretty low number if you take into account that only four top leagues in the world exist and there is free movement of labor (so all other 180 nations can in theory move to that country). Apparently, more than 60% of the Spanish footballers have more innate qualities than a foreigner.

And yes, it is going circular again because I have fundamentally other opinions. I do for example also not believe that the flooding of foreigners in your country is beneficial for the England national team - but that is my take.

 

In 1985 La Liga had around 600 Spanish players and 30 foreginers....

 

Could you explain though why do you answer a question with another question?

As for your point, there are 2 flaws with it:

1. The stranglehold which Barca and Real have over La Liga is unprecedented in football history except for countries like Scotland or Uruguay (heck, even Holland, a small country, has 3 contenders, not just 2).
You are implying that Ronaldo's performances would have stayed the same in the past, which is very unlikely assumption simply because, even in the best teams, he would not have given such a platform to perform upon.
For instance, Real Madrid has scored 3.2 goals per game, with a total number of 121 goals, 39 points ahead of third place and 63 more goals than third place. I don't know of any other team in history achieving such a big margin from all perspectives.
It is also the first time since 1959 when a Spanish team manages to score more than 3 goals per game in the history of Primera Division and the third time ever (it happened as well in 1959 and 1952). I don't know of any such instance in Italy, England or Germany in the post WW2 era.

As such, is not at all certain that Ronaldo would have managed his 2011 and 2012 performances in another era.

2. You seem to equate scoring a gazillion goals against opposition which isn't on his level to begin with with something phenomenal. That is debatable.
For instance, until last season, Ronaldo's record against the Barca, the toughest opposition he faced, can be described in no other terms than "catastrophical". It amounts to a single goal from open play in 10 games. That despite the fact that his teams were always number 1-3 in the world and that he met Barca in extremely favorably circumstances as well (2008 CL semifinals) or at least on equal terms (2009/2010 clasicos). ONE goal in 10 such games for a player known to be extremely prolific, in a period when he was in great form, is not even a decent return.
Only this season has he actually lived to his billing against someone else than Real's usual cannon fodder.
Compare for instance with Real's talisman before Ronaldo, Raul. The latter never reached his totals, but he performed much better against opposition which was either equal or better than Madrid.
So, is Ronaldo freakishly good... or freakishly consistent? While they are not mutually exclusive, you can be one without being the other.

Are you avoiding the crux of the issue on purpose? Van Basten won 3 Ballon d'Or in his entire career. Ronaldo would have FIVE already.
Besides, Van Basten won one of those for a stellar euro (which Ronaldo does not have) and another for a great CL campaign (again superior to any of Ronaldo's). Only one of them was mostly for domestic performances. Ronaldo earned a lot of his current plaudits by shattering records in the Scottish...ahem...the Spanish League.

Shall I understand that you keep Dudu Georgescu's 47 goals from 1976 in the Romanian first league (previous all-time european record) in a very high regard?

Shattering records is all cool, but those doing the shattering are always the same 2 players, always the same 2 teams (the respective players' teams) and always in the same one league. Do you really have to be a rocket scientist to notice there is something rotten south of the Pyrenees?

That simply flies in the face of facts. Whatever the other teams in Spain are doing, it obviously does not help.

Finally, I also have to remind you that Ronaldo's number of potential Ballon d'Or is just ONE of the clues I have used to adress the topic question. It is not by any means the single one. An even more poignant one is the fact that even failures and drops in form do not seem to affect their chances. Messi earning a second place in the rankings in 2007 and 2008 for basically nothing is another blatant example.
Ronaldo in 2009 had a significant drop in form and numbers, acknowledged even by his fans, yet he still managed to retain the second place.

Here is another example. In 2010, Ronaldo had a good season, with 26 goals, flops at WC and ends up the fourth best european player that year. But in 1990, Van Basten flopped at the WC as well and that cost him the presence in the rankings (not even a vote received), despite having won the CL, the Intercontinental and being top-scorer in Serie A. Yet, Ronaldo scorig 26 goals for Madrid (which is not that much a big deal, as the subsequent "shattering of records" proves) and winning nothing was enough to keep him among the first five european players that year. Go figure.

 

In 1985 you had still the foreigner restrictions and it was not yet a global labor market. So only the best foreigners, the top of the cream, leaved to the top leagues.

But how do the second and third rate talents of today compare with the ones of the past. Well, a rough yardstick is to look at the performance of the national teams at that time.

In order to prevent that I'm going to mention all 180 nations or only a selected few (which is replied by you and comme with counter-examples), it is again good to mention the ELO rating of the traditional top tier nations in the 1980s. As shown before, the sheer strength of the top nations in the past few years is enormous. The 2010WC final was supposedly "the strongest match ever."

To this extent it did not exist in the 1980s, and a less high ELO rating in those years by the traditional nations means that other (non first tier) were relatively stronger back then - and those others (non first tier) used mostly players who played in their domestic league.

Hence, the yield below the absolute top of the cream was relatively stronger.

[of course, this does not hold for Scotland and other Home Nations, who had the advantage that they did not count as foreigners]

 

This is interesting. Is this listed somewhere?

 

There are way more countries in UEFA now compared to 1985. I don't know the ELO formula, but perhaps this has led to higher ELO ratings since the talent is more diluted and the big nations can more easily go through qualifying tournaments with perfect or near perfect records.

But diluted doesn't mean less overall quality. For e.g. Yugoslavia getting split into 5-6 countries makes life easier for the likes of Germany, Netherlands and Spain even if the FYR is producing the same amount of talent as 25 years ago.

 

You'll have to do this manually. You can find lists of yearly rankings in the major leagues on www.rsssf.com
I know this because, in the past, I often had to argue against hyperbolization regarding past football (claims "teams back then were scoring 5 goals per game") and as such I had to collect and calculate the highest scoring teams for entire decades (for Spain, for instance, I did that research for all their seasons - the highest scoring ratio for a team was achieved by Barcelona, with 3.2 goal per game, which current Real has just matched). That is why I said "I know of". Then you have Barca in 1952 and Real in 1960 with almost 3.1 goals per game (92 goals in 30 games for each of them).
The highest in Germany is 101 goals in 34 games by Bayern in 1972, which is 2.97 goals per game.
I looked at Italy right now since 1945 and I have seen only 2 instances of teams scoring more than 3 goals per game, in 1948 and 1950.
I have not seen any in England.

 

I really really honestly think it is not....Stojkovic, Savicevic, Suker, Boban, Prosinecki, Jugovic, Asanovic etc. That generation was hailed as their best ever.
I see the point you're getting at regarding diluted talent (there may be a slight compensation in terms of togetherness etc) and it might be slightly more applicable to the Soviet Union since Russia have quite a useful team now (though in 88 the Soviet Union did make the Euro's Final). Maybe Czechoslovakia (although there was a clearer case a few years ago when the Czech Republic alone probably had a higher quality team than the old Czechoslovakia of the late 80's and early 90's - we are only talking about two countries forming out of one in this case though).

 

Even only getting split into 2 makes a big difference though. Imagine Catalunya splitting from Spain. It would make major tournaments seem weaker and fuel the argument that we are in a weak era, even though we have the same exact number of high quality footballers.

 

Fair point and I agree with the theory certainly. Meanwhile, many Club sides are left with less quality (even if there was an absolute equal amount available) because of the large squads containing many foreigners that the top Clubs compile. AC Milan would be an example of a Club that did that a bit in the 90's but they were restricted in terms of the number of foreign stars they could play together in one match.

Here's a piece on Yugoslavia pre the 92 Euros during the time of the unfortunate events in the country (just to backup my previous post):

 

All of Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia split up long before Euro 2000 however, and that was still considered to be a great tournament with almost all the big teams playing great football and having a lot of stars, most of which managed to deliver on the big stage.

So I think, it is more than simply an increase in the number of countries in the Euro qualifying groups due to an expansion of UEFA, which makes this era seem weak.

 

First, if I say 'top tier', I do not mean the Netherlands although the Netherlands had a record-high ELO rating too in the past few years and was part of "the strongest match ever", as well as some records streaks and record wins. The Netherlands is a classic example of someone who is too big for a tissue and too small for a tablecloth [that is proverb].

Second, that is true although you can delve a bit further in those cases. I.e. the Soviet Union of the 1960s to 1980s was for a large extent leaning on Ukrainian talent. If Ukraine had participated in the 1980s they would surely be a good contender on their own, I feel. Similarly, the 1990s Croatian and Serbian generation were raised in the FYR.

Third, in general (exceptions aside) I feel it is harder for second-tier nations to produce decent amounts of talent. As example: I saw recently the Holland-Germany match of 1989 (WC-qualification) where Holland played with people as Eijkelkamp, Rutjes, Hofkens, Hiele and Huistra. Probably you never heard of those guys and that is with a good reason: they were second or third rate choices for their positions but Holland managed to reach a good result, a 1:1 draw, against Germany. Germany played with many of their big guns but it did not result in a total humiliation or so. So, while not suggesting that Holland played with great players, the depth was OK in that era. The same was I feel true with Belgium and Denmark although they had their strongest generation ever in that period, probably.
Similarly, I feel that FYR is not producing the same quantity as before. Interesting enough, the relatively strong Serbian and Croatian generation of the 1990s and early 2000s were nurtured in the 'old' Yugoslavian republic (Boban, Prosinecki, Milosevic, Mijatovic - you name it), and under the pre-Bosman setting.

Last, while the breakup (from 33 nations to 50 nations) make it more likely for top tier nations to receive a high rating (but why was this not the case in the first 15 years until ~2008? why not in the 1990s?), the spread of democracy and wealth are supposed to strengthen nations and make them more prosperous, as well as fostering a pro-active positive mindset (instead of a docile, lazy, reactive mindset) which eventually in theory would help to make those nations stronger - also in football. So the spread of democracy, of liberal values, should in theory make those nations stronger because it fosters stronger people - less servile, lazy and so on. This more adventurous culture negates in theory a bit of the break-up problems.

 

I did not only mean the big nations but also second tier ones like Croatia and Yugoslavia themselves. Romania, Czech Republic, Denmark are a few other good examples too.

I also remember that Holland, eventual semi-finalists, had a hard time in their 1998 qualification group against Belgium and Turkey. Belgium had on certain key positions an ageing squad but it was not a walk in the park or a dominant display in cruise control. Same with Turkey, who had a young squad. But of course, we know at hindsight that they did relatively good two years later.

 

Catalunya would've had a decent chance at the World Cup on their own. Put Valdes in goal and you have only to find two decent defenders and that's it.

 

I disagree. Germany and England didn't deliver and Italy didn't play great football. You look at the current German squad and most have key roles with big clubs like Real Madrid and Bayern. Its been argued on here that the big clubs are stealing more talent from lesser clubs now more than ever. But if that's true, then it also must be true that it requires a higher standard to play regularly at these top clubs. Thus if your national team is full of important players from Bayern and Madrid, you must have really good players. Especially if some of them can't even get into the Germany starting XI.

^ Similar argument can be made for the current Spanish, French and Portuguese teams. They must be good with so many players from elite/rich clubs where its tougher than ever to play for (using logic provided in this thread).

 

Not sure if you're serious. I think "decent chance" might be a stretch considering how important Xavi and Iniesta have been for Spain. Splitting them up would not lead to good results IMO.