and then i count from the 1950's upwards. i mean to say would a 50's south american team most of the times beat a 50's european team ? or an 80's or an 70's team ? for example the 80's would the likes of junior, socrates, zico, maradona, falcao, etc etc beat a team with gullit, van basten, platini, matthaus, rijkaard ? or lets take the 50's nilton santos, djalma santos, garincha, di stefano, schiaffino. would they beat a team with puskas, kopa, bozsik, yashin, ocwirk, etc etc the 1960's pele, marzolini, garincha, figueroa, jairzinho or eusebio, coluna, moore, best myself i made up a few all time decades teams both south american and european but besides the 1970's in wich clearly european players where more dominant for all the other decades both europe and south america are real close together
So you think european players were clearly better than Pele, Jairzinho, Carlos Alberto, Clodoaldo, Rivelino, Tostao, Luis Cubilla, Zico, Pasarrella, Cesar Cueto, Cubillas, Kempes, Elias Figueroa, etc. Add to the fact that two of the three world cups that took place in the 70s were won by south american teams. []__[]
yest a 1970's european squad is a level above a 1970's south american squad. pele in the 70's was already a bit past prime. and some of the names you named are not atg players. kempes for example is nothign special. greatest keeper of the 70's ? dino zoff...a european passarella is indeed an atg central defender but in europe we have ruud krol or beckenbauer in 1970's both better then passarella. rivelino great attacking midfielder indeed europe has gunther netzer, willem van hanegem for the 1970's tostao good attacker but not the same level as gerd muller. lets be honest in the 1970's european players outranked the south americans. dino zoff, peter shilton- goalkeepers suurbier, vogts, mcgrain- rightbacks breitner, krol- leftbacks krol, beckenbauer, tresor- central defenders neeskens, van hanegem, bremner- box to box midfielders netzer, deyna, rensenbrink, muller, dzajic, dalglish, rep, lato all attcking players oh yes and lets not forget johan cruyff
Europe has always had an edge. That's quite obvious. Something to consider is that there was never an era where both Brazil and Argentina were superior to the traditional top group of European nations, or equal even.
I would give the 70s to Europe, but the 50s to South America, with Uruguay and Brazil being WC winners, the Brazilian squad considered possibly the greatest NT of all time. Add to that River Plate's La Maquina years with all its stars and influential play. By comparison, the German team that won WC54 is rather ordinary.
Well, clearly the 1940s at least have to go to South America, since Europe was busy dealing with other issues at the time.
That must be reason why the last time a team from South America could beat a team from Europe in the knock out stage of a World Cup was 2002. Since than Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador were beaten by European teams. The big teams Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil even 2 times.
30's - Euro 40's - SA 50's - SA 60's - SA 70's- Euro 80's - Euro 90's - SA 00's - Euro 10's - TBD This would be more fun if it were done by countries instead of continents
I'm struggling to see the basis by which some of these decades were "dominated" particularly by either confederation. South America dominated the 1950s? A decade in which Hungary went 6 years without defeat and beat both Uruguay and Brazil en route to the 1954 World Cup final. How so? Equally in the 1970s, while the middle part of the decade was dominated by Holland and West Germany, Brazil won the 1970 World Cup and Argentina won the 1978 World Cup. How did Europe dominate. In all these things, the balance at the very top tends to be close (ie two of the best three in SA tend to match up pretty well against the equivalent from Europe), but Europe always offers greater depth. How does SA win the 90s for instance? They won one out of three World Cups and provided three out of 12 World Cup semi-finalists.
The 1978 World Cup is one of the very rare instances where the losing finalist kept a higher ELO rating as the winner (who was host after all), after the final match had been played. This was a very good post from another thread. Hints also at the factor of draws in a small tournament (e.g. success of Brazil in 1958 and Argentina in 1990 might have been helped by certain circumstances, the draw is one of those).
Argentina drew with Germany in their home field at WC06 while outplaying them overall, with a bit more luck as well as better refereeing and Pekerman not substituting Riquelme, it could well have been them winning the match in regulation. Besides that, dismissing the group stage matches is absurd as those matches determine who plays at the KO stages. By countries, roughly in chronological sequence per decade: 40s - Argentina, England, Uruguay 50s - Hungary, Uruguay, Brazil 60s - Brazil, England, Argentina 70s - Germany, Netherlands, Argentina 80s - Italy, Brazil, France....Argentina, while not producing many greats, must be included because of Maradona 90s - Brazil, Germany, Netherlands 00s - France, Brazil, Italy 10s - Spain....TBD for the others
Depends how you define an "era" and how you measure and define "dominance". My answer: no. After the fifties, SA and Europe always brought too high quality for us to say that the other was "truly dominated". Football happens in NTs, clubs, single players etc, and including all those aspects to consideration, the "dominance" usually disappears. The footballing cultures in SA and Europe are so strong and vast that we likely won't see "true dominance" anytime soon either. One can say this or that was the better one in a given decade, but being a bit better doesn't equal to dominating. What true dominance there is in the global level, it is the duopoly's dominance over everyone else. Take current era, the, say, last three World Cups: Europe: 2 golds, 3 silvers, 3 bronzes, 1 fourth. SA: 1 gold, 1 fourth. Asia: 1 fourth. Still, the level of good and the best SA players and their role in football, not to mention the level of SA NTs and clubs, and that not every Euro NT and club is brilliant makes me say that Europe doesn't "truly dominate" today, even though has vastly superior WC record.
Well, we should also point out that some of the top European NT, including two of the last three European WC Champions, chose to include South American players in their squad. African players as well. South American teams sometimes use foreign players, but they are also from South America. I agree about there being no real dominance other than the duopoly's dominance.
LOL europe has a lot more participants at the WC than the rest of the world. Yet you guys still say the 70s belonged to europe even though two of the three WCs during that decade were won by SA teams and 5 of the 12 semifianalists were from SA. []__[]
you can't say SA dominated the 70's because they won 2 worldcups. you should also take other factors in account. how about we rank the top 5 players in all positions for the 1970's ?? from goalies to strikers etc etc ? http://this11.com/boards/abFy2qNaek.jpg reserves : breitner, boniek, rensenbrink, shilton, netzer no 70's south american team would beat this. as for the 1950's.. south america can make a strogn team but lets see. http://this11.com/boards/abFy2waap9.jpg with substitutes as hanappi and hidegkuti this is a even match for every SA team from the 1950's
South America 50s, from midfield up: --------Varela - Didi------------- Garrincha----Pele----Schiaffino -------DiStefano----------------- Includes three of the seven greatest players of all time, too much for Europe to match up.
I agree with Comme that 50's and 70's were not clear. Plus the 90's was like obvious case in recent time 50 Euro edged it (2 in WC50 semi, 3 in WC54 and in WC58 semi) 70 very equally between the two continent: SA = Euro at both WC and Intercont cup. 90 Euro no question asked (3 Euro teams dominated in all semi from WC90,94 to 98) So arguably 30's: Euro 40's: SA 50's: Euro 60's: SA 70's: SA = Euro 80's: Euro 90's: Euro 00's: Euro 10's: TBD (but Euro are leading in the trend ...)
I think we'de debating two questions simultaneously: 1. Levels of football culture in continents 2. Winner of the SA XI vs. Euro XI. They are two different things. The latter question is, imo, so much up to opinion that it can't be answered (well, there always exceptions). The first question is more concrete (as it's realism, not fantasy football). But those comparisons give a huge amount of credit even to the continent that is doing less well in any period. Also: I think it's a bit problematic/arbitrary how "eras" to many equal decades.
For me, Brazil defined the 90's more than any one European team, but I can see the argument for Euro dominating as well. But its kind of unfair to say more European teams were represented in the semis since they have more countries who can contend for it