You 8-2 See One Team Score 9 Times- The Other Teams Thread

Talk about hyperbole .. You are taking selective cases and extrapolating to drive home a flawed assumption.

Barca got rid of Maradona because they knew he was going to be a problem.. Not every club out there tolerated non professional behavior.

 

Dude, the job itself is an example. Wether they were a trash collector or another job, the point is they didn't dedicate their entire day to their sport as players do now.

Or are you seriously saying that all teams in the top leagues in the 80s had 100% professional player bases?

 

Not necessarily. He was able to exert himself on the field in spite of his physical frame. Imagine him going up against players bigger, stronger, faster and just as skillful as him.

Apparently he was an early adopter of personal fitness coaching so right there he already had an advantage over the other players around him.

I mean it was as late as the mid to late 90s players were eating heavy English breakfasts and having a smoke before their training session. Of course Maradona is going to destroy them and don't even get me started on Pele.

The first truly modern "legend" was the original Ronaldo. He was the prototype to the modern player and I believe the only one that would have been just as successful as he was in his era.

 

I don't think people realise how normal it was for a "pro" player to smoke, drink and not eat properly back then.

 

On the other hand look at the "tools" being used back in those days. Maybe the average player wasn't as well trained but they didn't need to be if you could hack a player to the ground. Maradona would have made an absolute mockery of diving and VAR, luring players in only to fold like sheets hot out of the dryer. Meanwhile players like Maradona couldn't benefit from modern equipment and playing surfaces and were seemingly surrounded by inferior support systems at every turn which made "excelling" and becoming an international sensation that much more difficult and improbable.

 

Lol you’re assuming he would be stuck being as good as he was in that era if he were to play in this one. The reason players are faster, stronger, fitter etc is because science and technology has advanced. If Maradona had been brought up with everything that’s available to players now than he would have been even better. Maradona was not the ultimate professional that was out there busting his ass at training and taking advantage of other players not being professional. He was the complete opposite. He won two serie A not even training properly for half the week. This player had every quality of talent to make him special and he would be special in any era. You guys are making him sound like he was just some schmuck that was decent with the ball.

 

This is just not true. Maradona played against top class players in Italy and in the World Cups, not against scrubs.

And it is arguable that he played in the most difficult era of football, because the physical demands increased drastically from the late 70s to the late 90s, to the extent that the amount the players ran almost doubled in that period, but the sports science and nutrition aspects were still pretty much the same as in Pele’s time, and the rules were still brutal.

If you look at Maradona’s technical ability it’s clear that even then he was head and shoulders above most players today. Linekar said recently that he went to a training involving Maradona back in the days Linekar was playing for Barca. During the warmup Maradona practiced booting the ball in the air as high as he could, letting it come down and before it bounced he would whack it back up in the air as high as he could. He apparently did that 13 times and only moved a few footsteps for each kick. Linekar and the other Barca players tried it the next training session and the most anyone did was three kicks. I bet if players tried it today none would get thirteen without moving a few steps each kick.

 

Oscar is easily going to name half a dozen AC Milan and Juventus players from the 80s who drove buses during the week to make ends meet.

 

Franco Baresi was a painter during the week and Maldini I heard was a bartender on the weekends after the games .. and Platini was the trash collector Oscar was talking about lol

 

I wonder why the person complaining about selective cases, is only talking about top teams and players at the time. Seems pretty selective in his top money examples.

Shirt sponsors weren't even a thing for all Spanish clubs untill the late 80s, much less other sorts of sponsorships clubs can get now. Teams weren't making even close to the income they are now. The big clubs could afford proper salaries for their staff, but the mid to bottom teams could not (for their entire team). You can see a clear transition from the 80s to the 90s in where as teams start to get more money, they get more professional in every sense of the word. And not just the upper clubs.

In Holland and Spain there were teams with (semi) amateur players. England I could believe, but I highly doubt Italy was a money fountain where they had only pro players with no side jobs in the 80s, but hey I could be wrong.

Then again: "Italy would remain a little further behind in terms of shirt sponsorship. It wasn’t until mid-way through the 1990’s till most Italian clubs had shirt sponsors."

 

THE ELECTION WAS RIGGED!

"Some or all of the content shared in this Post is disputed and might be misleading about truck drivers playing professional football in Serie A in the 80s or other professions."

 

By your logic Maradona could have been just as self destructive in the environment if science based training.

He's not a schmuck, he's an all time great and a legend that would have a far harder time playing against a team of players who are on average at a different level than 35 years ago.

Don't take it as an insult to him because you can believe both.

 

The best and only way to compare players from different eras is to look at how dominant they were over their eras.

Of course athletes today are better. They have significant advantages to be better

But the likes of MJ, Maradona and Pele dominated their respective eras more than the athletes of today. With an equal playing field, they dominated more and deserve the love that they are being given.

 

Basically, you have a time machine and bring back Pele and Cruyff back to 2020. They probably would not do much in any of the bigger leagues in the world. If you took 6 year old Neymar or Mbappe back to 1950's and they train for twenty years, they probably would be outclassed by Pele and Cruyff in the 1970's.

Jesse Owens ran a 10.3 seconds in 1938. I do not know how his time ranks in the all-time record. As of 2020, about 146 runners have broken the 10 second barrier. Does it mean that over 146 runners are better than Owen? Of course, not.

 

Comparing players from different eras is like comparing the men who went to the great war and the omg literally shaking 2020 Starbucks dudes.

I'd love to see what Messi or Ronaldo could do wearing Pele's boots trying to kick a ball made in the 50s though.

 

Idk. Kobe, rip, had rape allegations. Ray Lewis had a murder charge. Tyson actually did time and people still love him.

In sports, as long as you produce, all else is forgiven.

 

You're a bigot.

 

I'll add a trigger warning to all my posts from now on. I won't hurt you anymore.