Does Lionel Messi have too many failures to be considered the greatest footballer of all time?

Certainly interesting thoughts and I can see that with players having increased fatigue-resistance it can mean that players don't benefit so much from space developing more as games go on, or indeed from being left 1 vs 1 as much. On the flip side, for a player like Figo, he wouldn't be getting hacked as much as before and players would be routinely punished if they did it (although I know you've pointed out that on the other hand the sharing out of more minor but obstructive fouls seems to be more of an issue than ever now - 'yellow card resistant fouls' as you've put it, and so if 2 or 3 players are often closing down the same player then attempts to dribble might be easily frustrated by this a lot of the time).

I suppose as always though, when it's 11 vs 11, multiple players going towards one player will always leave other players open, so dribbling past one or perhaps two should leave open passes to team-mates with space (sometimes the dribbling part won't even be necessary, and Figo for example was a somewhat under-rated passer perhaps from a technical point of view as well as in terms of vision and timing).

I suppose too there are always subtle changes in rules and tactics that can make each era a bit different. Videos that were available before on Youtube could have shown what I was saying about Figo being fouled harshly, without significant punishment at times, but as another example the 'goal' at 4:40 here would actually stand now because the offside would not be relevant (I guess there isn't any real case that the goalkeeper would be interfered with - certainly not in terms of line of sight):
Home Luis Figo vs Real Valldolid 1999 - YouTube

Sometimes with new players going to new clubs other factors come into it too, so Grealish might be in a sort of adjustment period in terms of how he fits into Man City's system potentially (not that your example is not valid because certainly he's a player that would thrive more with fewer players confronting him). Coutinho isn't maybe an exact replacement for him in terms of role in the team (but kind of similar at least), and he's started in great form, after never breaking through as the key player at Barcelona, so I suppose all sorts of things come into it. It could be Coutinho is getting less close attention (including double and triple team marking indeed, or specific man marking maybe) than he might if his reputation had not dipped, in these first games back in the Premier League though perhaps (not really an observation, just a theory).

 

I'll get to responding to you later, but for now....

 

I think that considering how he has struggled for so many years, I will only be satisfied with the final victory.. but of course if Argentina has to make a great World Cup then it will necessarily go through a Messi who makes a great World Cup.

Besides, nobody has managed to win twice the title of Best player of the World Cup, right?

 

Every time they give a disasterclass like this, I like to go back and read Maric’s blog post “the problem with English football”. His hubris becomes more and more amusing as the years go by

— fox milder (@fox_milder) February 17, 2022

'Modern football' is also declined sympathy for the underdog (the 'faceless' Rangers in this case). Football as a tv show series for Netflix.

 

I don't think a player's successes should be negated by their failures, but I certainly don't think Messi has a claim to be the greatest ever. I'd place him 5th at the moment. Here's my top 10. Note that this ranking is post-ww2 only. I don't think it's possible to accurately rank a player without enough full-game footage, not to mention how much the war affected the world of football.

1. Pelé
2. Ferenc Puskás
3. Alfredo Di Stéfano
4. Johan Cruyff
5. Lionel Messi
6. Diego Maradona
7. Franz Beckenbauer
8. Cristiano Ronaldo
9. Sándor Kocsis
10. Eusébio

 

You "don't think it's possible to accurately rank a player without enough full-game footage", and yet you rank Sándor Kocsis 9th on your list, of whom there exists a grand total of 3 games from his career...

 

I would argue that the "little to no sympathy for the underdog" social construct or mentality is not exclusive to football, but rather established cultural standard of the modern world. I am not religious myself, but I am also not an atheist, and I find that a lot of young atheists have a habit of making religious artifacts out of humans; for example, Elon Musk is treated like the real life Iron Man, for doing not a lot...

Lionel Messi, who I am a fan of, but who was expected to destroy the so-called easy French league... Messi fans actually were under the impression that the league that recently produced Kylian Mbappe... is somehow a weak league that Messi would invariably and easily dominate.

Of course, now that Messi comprehensively failed to satisfy said expectations of him easily dominating a weak league, now all of a sudden, all of his fans quickly found that, "Messi is a family man, his life was in Barcelona, and he has not yet properly adapted to France."

The obvious irony here is that the same "the human before the player" excuse is not at all entertained when it could and should be extended to include the classic players who also failed or disappointed at different leagues.

On a similar note, Cristiano Ronaldo automatically continues getting rewarded and congratulated for literally doing more harm than good; Juventus and now Manchester United were better teams before Ronaldo's toxic influence on the dressing room.

The same excuses are, again, not at all extended to players like Memphis Depay, who was quickly crucified at Barcelona.

Cristiano Ronaldo will probably make even more millions (or perhaps even billions) of dollars, after he retires... Cristiano Ronaldo's reality show on Netflix would sell even better than Cristiano Ronaldo the football player, as a result of the modern obsession for ultra-wealthy people who not only get to run the show, but then also get to make a grotesque display of it on television reality shows.

It is religious pornography that ends up doing the same function as classical religion; it creates permissive and docile 'domesticated' humans, who will not only accept the steal, but even celebrate it as an integral aspect of modernized secular society. It is plain old religion masked by the appearance of a harmless quirky reality television show, simply put, it is religious content to be consumed by atheist or secular viewers.

Or maybe I am just a pessimistic person at this point in my life.

 

This is to me representative of an incomplete, stuttering and partial secularization process.

In which football adopts the form and role of religion (and where the public interest in football tends to be demonstrably lower in more atheist nations; you can add up here the stadium attendance and the domestic television contracts for an alternative indicator). When people stop believing in God, it does not immediately mean it is entirely gone out of their system (cf. the work of Hans Joas; which I have in turn out of another book).

Football is a magnet for money laundering, fascist cities (Madrid, Munich, various regions in Italy as safe haven), a host of bad people (indeed, better they end up there and corrupt the VAR system in clear daylight than them starting wars or murdering people - as I always said; football as substitute for warfare), but also tribalism and religiosity. Even when people say they do not believe in God any more.

On the whole I have more sympathy and admiration for him than the Peter Thiels, Jeff Bezoses and Bill Gates of this world, or the perennially wrong Volkswagen company.

At the same time, until recently his companies never made a profit (until 2020 Tesla never had a break-even year). How that works, is explained here (turn on English subs).

He does not tear up the league but is also not as bad as made out by some (nor was he as good/decisive/useful at Barcelona the last few years as believed and the awards made out).

His role and job is slightly different now - whether that new role and Harlem Globetrotters line-up makes PSG stable enough for actually winning the CL, that is doubtful.

I never thought (or said) he is an elite level, tier one, forward but yes, there are some fishy and odd things going on there. It is not entirely right and 'normal' what is happening there; also with the recovering of his injury he is not treated well. He had a pretty strong year in 2021 (just as some other years where his G+A is in the top regions).

I find FDJ vs Pedri/Gavi or MDL vs Chiellini/Bonnucci (post-prime) a better example (and yes, it has real consequences). The media ratings and (end of the year) rankings are entirely wrong there, for reasons not hard to understand. All those Belgian GG players will also be reduced to a mere footnote I am 'afraid'.

💥🍊 La teoria de Minguella sobre els holandesos: "Són educats i professionals però quan surten del seu mercat, no funcionen, i la prova és que la selecció no ha guanyat pràcticament res"

💥"És millor vendre Frenkie de Jong quan estigui fent-ho bé"#OnzeTV3 pic.twitter.com/5iVPkTKM6x

— Onze (@OnzeTv3) January 13, 2022

It seems like pundits see Holland players in general as "educated" and "professional" persons (well... the bar for footballers is not high), but so to speak, you 'do not win the war with those guys'.

Needs to be said media sometimes/often also swing to the other end:
"Xavi and Spanish media praise 'Maradona-worthy' Frenkie de Jong: 'He is a genius, really fantastic"
https://www.ad.nl/buitenlands-voetb...-jong-hij-is-een-genie-echt-geweldig~a7fd69ce

But don't underestimate how the 'unfree media' countries work, and what effects it has. What tone, warped reality and villainization campaigns it starts, not least in football, where certain working relationships to the things they cover need to be protected and cherished as well (which in turn gives an incentive to, for example, villainize South Korea in 2002).

The media has decided Van Dijk is "arrogant", receives man of the match awards for doing nothing of note, and of course euphemistically "suffered" an injury rather than being taken out by force and ill will (and referee incompetence). Was this someone of their own, they don't phrase it that way, for sure (no, they start a three month campaign to see the officials banned; that will learn them).

As I said above, that Catholic style sanctification has maybe an end point. I am not sure that will last forever.

Compare for example the acceptance of deviant behavior in 1994 with the numbers now:

Answers to "Is homosexual sex wrong?" (1994)
Countries - Always - Almost Always - Only Sometimes - Not wrong at all
Australia 55 8 10 27
Austria 52 18 15 15
Bulgaria 81 5 4 10
Canada 39 5 10 46
Czech Republic 29 12 21 39
Germany (East) 51 9 10 30
Germany (West) 42 10 14 33
Great Britain 58 6 10 26
Hungary 83 8 5 4
Ireland 71 6 6 17
Israel 57 8 7 27
Italy 67 7 7 19
Japan 65 22 11 2
Netherland 19 4 12 65
New Zealand 56 5 8 31
Northern Ireland 80 4 6 10
Norway 47 6 11 37
Philippines 84 9 3 3
Poland 77 6 4 14
Russia 57 17 7 19
Slovenia 70 13 9 8
Spain 45 7 6 42
Sweden 56 6 6 32
USA 70 4 7 19
Overall 59 9 9 24
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/llv6z5/in_the_show_derry_girls_a_teenager_living_in/

Those numbers of acceptance are nowadays far higher, and countries have converged to each other (yet, football is a story itself). This is a sign of the religiosity decreasing.



There are many things to be pessimistic and optimistic about;

The centralizing EU machine marches on (no prizes for guessing which countries benefit most). An escape and Nexit is quickly needed, perhaps; we need to get opt-outs like Denmark/Norway/Switzerland or out of the EU if possible (with the UK as counterbalance gone). While the hotbeds and breeding grounds of right-wing terror are just around the corner. The big powers increasing their military spending is asking for trouble.

At the same time, things are nowadays discussed that were not discussed previously, in the 1990s, under the (otherwise correct) umbrella and wall-of-protection of 'everyone did this' and 'almost everyone else in aristocratic Europe was far worse, even at the height of the trade obsessed Seven Provinces.'

What I also find optimistic, is that we have grown low-key into a very diverse economy. It is not only/predominantly the gas (because of earthquakes this has stopped; but other countries, the usual ones, have pressurized us to start again and just accept the earthquakes), transport and financial industry, like in the 1970s.

Some things have just become better; people have become richer than ever before while working fewer hours than ever before (something that now needs a correction). In large parts of the developed world.

 

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One game later: put back on the bench....

 

I've been saying it for a couple of years. Both him and DVDB need to be rescued.

Even at like 70M, I would still snap at that chance.

 

I am not very good in predicting these things.

 

Fabrizio Romano 7.1 million followers
https://mobile.twitter.com/fabrizioromano

The president of Ukraine (a tragedy dominating the news), 4.4 million followers
https://mobile.twitter.com/zelenskyyua

Hmmmm...... I understand how that comes about but sort of 'proves' your point.

 

Longevity. Right now Benzema who is also 34 years old - same age as Messi - and Modric who is 36 are playing better than him.
Messi only touched the ball twice in the second half the other day. His performance is sinking fast

 

I think it's a problem with the mentality and the system of play, I think Messi is not happy in Paris and the style of Paris Saint Germain does not match his style of play at all.
I think Messi at Manchester City would have been more comfortable. Even at current Barca.
Let's see what Messi will decide on his future but his current season is a mess, but to see a Messi who changes completely in 6 months, it seems so brutal, that I think there are sporting reasons but also extra-sporting ones that come into play.

 

Nothing against Messi, but I personally enjoy seeing PSG fail when they've tried to put together these super teams. I of course enjoy seeing Man UTd suffer as well.

Personally, I do think football discourse is a bit better when the rivalry revolves around these club rivalry and love/hate for clubs. Hopefully, the decline of Messi/CR7 would also mean less player vs players fandom, and more back to the classic club vs club fandom.

 

Thowing stones when you live in a glass house
The last time Arsenal won a premiership title Ronald Reagan was still alive and the next time will be when the USA has their first transgender commander in chief

 

How is that throwing stones in a glass house

That's literally 100 years of football fandom. If you can't laugh at the fall of your rivals, just because you yourself isn't doing well, then we might as well pack it in.

What? So right now, only Liverpool, Man City, and Chelsea fans get to enjoy the suffering of Man Utd?

My god, lets send out a memo to the fans of every team all down the football pyramid to just shut the eff up then

 

Which is, after all, to be preferred above people promoting Josef Stalin in their avatar.

 

Josef Stalin

You're simply put drunk off your own madness

 

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The sort of 'cheap' goals also Platini and Lampard thrived on.

 

Clueless remark.
Since 1945 Munich has been ruled by Social Democrats in 63 of these 72 years. Only 9 years has there been a CSU mayor ruling Munich.

 

- My previous statements (money laundering, magnets for bad people) in no way requires an absolute majority. The possible exception is the claimed correlation with religion or the afterglow of religion (compare this map with this). Madrid being a city with strong "fascist" tendencies (safe haven for people as Leon Degrelle) and a stronghold of the Republican forces can both be true. It doesn't require an absolute majority for my statements to be true. Similarly, other cities and regions can both be a safe haven for people as Soren Kem and Claas Karel Faber (knowing where in Europe they had to go, even if that region was a net receiver of intra-German aid until the late 1980s), and have a left wing presence as well.

- This are so called second order elections, of a lower salience, with a turnout of 35-50%. Often because voters sense they are of lower importance and, for example, not the place where the magistrates are controlled.

Furthermore, in many European cities above a half a million people it is unthinkable the center-right (or a party as the CSU that in word and action covers the entire right flank; though there have been positive developments the last 20 years) gets anywhere close to a majority. Let alone passing the mark. Say, in Amsterdam the center-right has always been at least 30%-points removed from that mark - and that is not unusual to see.

- The party system of Germany is traditionally shaped by the denomination/religion cleavage - with help from Bismarck his kulturkampf - and the geographical cleavage. That shapes and explains the vote to a great extent. This also explains why the "capital of the movement" had a limited growth potential. The Catholic Zentrumpartei and BVP placed a barrier on their growth past a certain level. Typically, the same Zentrumpartei/BVP had already governed with the far-right in the 1920s, happily and famously enabled the NSDAP in the 1930s, was antisemitic themselves and - in short - facilitated the industrial genocide in Namibia where systematically 90% was wiped out (the dress rehearsal).

The party system and dominant cleavages also explains how the 'socialists' can be quite traditional, authoritarian and hierarchical in nature. Martin Lipset (among others) already noticed how the working class and socialist voters can have significant conservative social and authoritarian values (see also: 1960s Sweden). In general, the SPD was one of the last in Europe to reject Marxism, one of the last to adopt a Third Way platform (more than ten years after the Dutch and Swedes, more than five years after England), one of the last to support something as gay marriage or recreational drug liberalisation, and one of the last to turn away from the Third Way again.

- Both 1860 Munich and Bayern Munich have traditionally not a strong relationship with the SPD (this is more the case for other clubs). They have, both of them, one with the CSU (that clearly sits to the right of CDU and FDP, and has an at best ambigious relationship to denazification, networks as Stille Hilfe, antisemitism, visiting the SS veterans).

Financially (financial aid, black money, nazi money, creative tax fraud) and in board interlocks there has been that connection. That is of great relevance for my previous statements. More so than what the majority of the city votes for in a second order election.

Also (and this has long been papered over by the propagandists as Honigstein, Eckner and you):
"His study shows that between 1933 and 1945, 53 percent of Bayern officials were also members of the NSDAP [...]. Kurt Landauer returned to the association and became president again. But it wasn't just him who returned, "but also several of the NS-burdened Aryanization profiteers or propagandists," reports Hofmann."

- Is the CSU "fascist"? Technically no, and I would say they cover the entire right flank rather than being far-right. That doesn't take away though how after the war they were home to many wrong people (about as many with a former NSDAP, SS etc. membership as the much larger CDU), thwarted denazification, thwarted the commemoration efforts, fuelled antisemitism, lobbied stronger than the other German parties for amnesty, sabotaged payments to the Jews, sabotaged extradition, tried to block the famous Holocaust television series, the 1970s prime minister Goppel was in direct contact to 'underground' war criminal networks, Strauss was in direct constructive contact to Stille Hilfe, Strauss held in the 1950s and 1960s praising speeches to SS-veterans and much more.

- Only counting the votes can be fairly incomplete and does not say all about society. By that logic Netherlands had only once a left wing government (1973-1977) and thus sits behind Spain, let alone Sweden (where, when it had a majority, the Wallenbergs controlled 30% of the economy, there was an eugenics programme, and there was a state church). It sits behind almost all of Western Europe!

Instead, take a look at the right wing attacks in cities (Munich number two behind the much larger Berlin/Potsdam, ahead of other larger cities), the proportion of the population with antisemitic, homophobe and xenophobe views - over 30% and the highest of Germany (Judaism, unlike Catholicism and the Islam, is really not expansionist in nature), and how Germany their own constitutional office points at Bavaria and Munich as (joint) number one in far right networks. More than 70 far-right networks in this part of Germany! And it is fair to hold the CSU as complicit and guilty in this.

- Sadly, we live in Orwellian times where - for example - Jonathan Wilson happily writes about Dutch football and doping (amphetamines - already in mass use in the 1950s in England, Brazil etc.) in the 1970s and does not write a single word about the Germans. In more than one work. While that was in truth more advanced in West Germany, was state sponsored and state organised (the very same ministry that eavesdropped football teams at the 1974WC), and with the FIFA/UEFA chums on board, infiltrated and complicit in the scheme (yes that is important, ask Scotland in 74 or Holland in 01). And don't dare to claim this is a conspiracy theory!

Perceptions and narratives have been completely turned around. Why? Because some markets need to be catered, at some places libel laws are stricter, and journalistic contacts need to be cherished. Holland is an easy target in all of this.

Goodbye to the alliance.

 

The Four Four Two 100 "most influential" players list: only one Dutchman on this. The rest is written out of the story. Very illustrative of what I am saying all the time and I am far from surprised. The anglogerman alliance in full force. Manuel Neuer is the first ever sweeper keeper in the Champions League era.

(maybe the global corporate press will give plaudits to e.g. Robben or Van Dijk in their first season - after this they are taken for granted).

We have seen that "heroics without thinkers, heroes and famous people" in previous times ('we' didn't have coal.. among other bottlenecks);

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40241400

https://unherd.com/2020/07/how-the-dutch-invented-everything/

It is 'inventing' capitalism, land reclamation and the stock market without inventors and thinkers. Without protagonists.

In 1700, China's per capita income was almost 1/2 of the richest county in the world then (the Netherlands). Then, it declined big time so much so that by 1950, it was just 5% of US per capita level. Today, it is 15% of Norway's (the richest country).
(Maddison project data). pic.twitter.com/G56QZYOfg8

— Branko Milanovic (@BrankoMilan) December 1, 2020

No, let tell ourselves stories (per the BBC) about the bad guys and how they already knew and thought - per BBC - in the 17th century slavery was immoral but necessary to let the state survive and "compete" with Portugal (it was in truth not higher than 5% of the world share).

This will also be the fate of the football and footballers. Cruijff will be overshadowed by Guardiola (or someone else) in the long run.

Total football without footballers.

Putin’s useful German idiots: „There is no Churchill-like figure in German politics who has been warning for years of the perils of trusting Putin. While Merkel deserves most of the blame, the truth is that Germany’s entire political class is guilty“. https://t.co/NKNfI8jLvS

— Ruud Koopmans (@Ruud_Koop_mans) March 28, 2022

The legacy will be an oversized army around the corner with seven decades of infiltrated fascists and repeated incidents in the Bundeswehr: many thanks (somewhat hidden by e.g. the system of electoral thresholds and fierce social media censorship).

I will never ever trust this (to this day no formal excuses for destroying my city).

 

There’s more on YouTube from the 1954 World Cup that isn’t on Footballia.

 

ownnn