Yeah, I still see it differently than you. I could care less if the old hegemony is gone. Or if there are less galacticos. For me it's more about good exciting football matches, along with surprises, upsets, story lines, etc. I suppose it's a reason I've come to really love women's football. You can make the argument that it's a notch or two down in quality from the men's game, but that doesn't affect the enjoyment. In fact there are quite a few things I like better about the women's "lesser quality" game.
That stuff is all fun, but in the end I want to watch players like Hagi, or Baggio or Bergkamp - not a bunch of mindless drones play pressing traps Agree on that front - I found women's rugby just as exciting as well. That is not really the point I am making. When we played Scotland in 1982 they had players like Souness and Dalglish and Leighton and Hansen and Strachan - now you'll struggle to find minnows with that quality because their leagues are trash.
If you think more from the same pool will mean higher quality, then football is the first source to defy the rule and statistics that more from the same source equals less quality. An Introduction to the Bell Curve - ThoughtCo What Is a Bell Curve? To be technical, the kinds of bell curves that we care about the most in statistics are actually called normal probability distributions. For what follows we'll just assume the bell curves we're talking about are normal probability distributions. Despite the name "bell curve," these curves are not defined by their shape.
The bottom level goes/went up, because knowledge is shared better, but that doesnot imply the top level goes up or stays the same.. If one goes up ant the other goes down the only observation to be made is the difference shrinks, but that's something else from the quality of the matches compared with other wc's.
Given the convenience in extremes we're about to see, I would love to hear from players, coaches, etc. after this and '26 about how they feel the travel impacts the quality of play. I certainly think it has to be a factor, and I fear the expanse of '26 will lead to a negative impact in that regard. Would love to see FIFA have a more defined standard for future hosts that finds a more proper and comfortable medium. I suspect fans and players alike would both benefit immensely if time and money were spent less on travel and more on actual experiences.
Agree with what Prince said, but also, Messi is short and playing against much better athletes than Pele ever did, and against better defensive coaching.
Imo there is no point trying to compare as the game was so different Maradona was juiced and had a huge coke habit I am sure Messi is juiced but I don’t think players can have those bad habits anymore
I'm not saying I don't see the argument for Messi as greatest ever - so please don't take my thoughts as argumentative. Messi is a/the all-time great, no disagreements there. I don't buy the height argument. If height is valid, then we should anoint Maradona as the greatest ever since he was 4cm shorter than Messi. And Messi has definitely benefitted from far better protection from the refs for fouls. Many of the fouls on Maradona were felonious in most countries. Since Pele played largely 50-70 years ago, he also was unable to experience any of the following, which likely could/would have benefitted him substantially. - far better nutritional/health coaching - far better understanding of human physiology and conditioning - better gear (boots, balls, pitches that didn't have pot holes) - far better medicine and injury treatments - Referees back then allowed harder fouls than now. You don't think Pele got hacked? Look what the Germans did to him in Victory with impunity. For a rough (actual) comparison, watch how Jordan got reffed compared to LeBron in hoops. - Messi has largely benefitted in playing in top-heavy leagues. The level of competition isn't as consistent top to bottom then as now. - Messi has consistently had better teams/individuals around him. - Messi's PK tallies are substantially higher than Pele. Most of Pele's goals are from open play (TransferMarkt lists only 7 PKs in his career, with 3 of those of Brazil NT (77 total goals scored for Brazil in 92 matches). Messi has scored 109 PK in all comps, with 31 misses. There's no way anyone can "win" this argument. To be clear, I'm not saying I'm correct on this. All I'm trying say is that if you take Messi's stats and compare them directly to Pele, it leaves out a lot of factors besides the raw data.
After being kidnapped from their Champions League match, Messi and Mbappe lead a ragtag bunch of Ukrainian POWs against Putin's contrived rebrand of Shaktar Donestk, immediately after which they're rescued by Vin Diesel and Co. and provide critical information that might end the war.
Certainly North America is slightly bigger than Qatar. But don't you figure they'll make group matches regional so as to limit air travel, at least in that part of the tournament? Knockout round venues and travel does get a little trickier I suppose. Speaking of '26, what are the chances regular people like us have of snagging a ticket or two to USA match(es)? In '94 I thought I assumed I'd get a ticket at NJ, MA or CT, but sadly I didn't, perhaps due to cost or availability, I can't recall. This time I'd like not to repeat the same outcome.
I'm not saying I have any idea one way or the other, whether he is. And I know this is an area of some focus for you. My honest question is: If Messi is regularly doping, how does he not get caught in a situation like this? (realizing that it's a few years back)
Doping can take many forms. Lance Armstrong didn’t primarily use supplements, he did blood transfusions to help his body recover more quickly. That’s virtually untraceable. other supplements are either not screened for or have ways to avoid detection. Track & Field is notorious for these types of supplements. Nike athletes (especially ones coached by Alberto Salazar) are especially strong candidates for doping and getting away with it.
I thought the World Cup was decent, best one in a few years football on the international stage had got quite stale, maybe the players were tired in the summer? They seemed more refreshed here, lots of counter pressing and organised midfields this is how modern football looks, give everyone an equal playing field and the smaller nations can become better and more organised only tiny margins and errors make the difference between the top sides, lots of relaxed refereeing which makes it better to watch. I don’t think we need to expand the World Cup personally. More than enough matches and teams. Other than Italy and maybe a couple of African and South American nations, I can’t see the point? Did they miss out because they suck?
In ‘94, my memory says they didn’t regionalize the matches. Teams flew all over the country if memory is correct. (I can try to look up later, but definitely could be wrong) i was able to go to see Spain v Bolivia in Chicago for ‘94. My dad was able to get some tickets through his Chicago-based employer. I don’t recall tickets being hard to come by. I definitely want to take my son to at least one match. Will likely look at Atlanta, or one of the sites in FL or TX
Yup. And I'm somewhat familiar with cycling doping from having followed the Tour for years, including the Lance/Floyd years. But in recent years the discussion around cycling doping seems to have died down a bit, or at least my awareness of it has. Not sure how much of a good sign or bad sign that scarcity of discussion is. Anyway, football doping controls I'm much less familiar with. So, since Jitty is convinced Messi is "juicing" I was curious to hear what his theory on that is, which type of doping he's likely doing, etc. Also, I'm curious how football doping controls are administered, how frequently, in which tournaments/leagues (EPL?), etc. And cognizant that that takes us fairly OT in this thread.
I'm very much with you on this one. 32 teams with groups of 4 is tried-and-true. And produced a really good tournament this time. If it ain't broke don't fix it! Except for the fact that FIFA are driven massively by money. So since 48 teams should generate more of that... Sigh.
You're kinda right about regionalization... to an extent. Here's a clip from Wiki: "Because of the large area of the continental United States, the game locations were often far apart. Some teams in Groups A and B had to travel from Los Angeles or San Francisco all the way to Detroit and back again, covering 2,300 miles (3,700 km) and four time zones. The teams in Groups C and D only played in Foxborough (Boston), Chicago, and Dallas—a trip from Boston to Dallas is 2,000 miles (3,200 km), but only covers two time zones; Chicago is in the same time zone as Dallas but is still 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away from both Dallas and Boston. The teams in Groups E and F had it a bit easier—they played exclusively in New York (East Rutherford), Washington, and Orlando, which, while far apart, were at least all in the same time zone. A few teams, such as Cameroon and Colombia, did not have to travel to cities across the country to play games." I have no doubt that I'll be able to get tickets to some sort of non-USA match(es). What I'm wondering about is the likelihood of getting to see a USA match, given that we have a country of millions of USMNT fans (or at least many hundreds of thousands) and the number of total # of tickets for 3 group games --- assuming 4 team groups! -- would be roughly 225,000 tickets combined.
Personally, I loved watching two foreign teams play when I attended in ‘94. It was such a different experience as our seats were near a large section of Bolivian fans (especially Marco Etcheverry), and even though they were outclassed by Spain, it was still a super fun game. To this day it is one of my lifetime favorite memories. so my advice: just get to *any* match(es) you can. You will have a great experience regardless of the teams playing.
My buddy (also IL based) and I are trying to figure out which cities we will try to get tickets for, hopefully the US would be involved in those games, but we don't really care.
I read this article or a prior version of it and the author does qualify his argument. Basically it is a statistical argument that claims that the gap in career goals plus assists between Messi and the second best player, Renaldo, is greater than the gap between the best player and the second best player in any other sport during the last 50 years, with the possible exception of Gretzky. He then dismisses Gretzky because there are many more professional soccer players than there are professional ice hockey players. In short, he’s arguing that statistically Messi is the best player, by a lot, in the most popular sport in the world.
True, but he largely excludes athletes who play other sports from any consideration since every other sport is not as globally popular as soccer. His entire argument a circular one.
A combination of this and the fact that the doping technology is usually always one step ahead of the testing tech/procedures.