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

I think I would say that Messi was better at keeping the ball under control and close to him when dribbling (even though evidently Pele had some long-range runs that ended with a goal and we can't see the famous gol de placa with proper footage of course for example) and probably could dribble with the ball close at nearer to his maximum running speed (of course modern pitches can also be helpful here but nevertheless I guess it's true in real terms probably anyway).

Controlling the ball when it arrives to the player, and manipulating the ball soon after receiving it though, perhaps Pele was better or at least about equal, I guess (maybe not every time but most of the time seemingly his touch and control with his right boot seems on point I reckon, and as a young player he could obviously change direction and turn very well and had lots of ideas to fool defenders with...but yeah maybe the pure control is not less good than Messi's in these kinds of scenarios too arguably?). He was good at using chest control and then evading defenders too I think, like here at 5:07 (vs Argentina in the 1960 game I believe):


Similar to how Maradona keeps better control/fluency when dribbling compared to Zidane, but perhaps Zidane controlled balls and manipulated balls as well as or better than prime Maradona even....?

 

Pelé played in much worse pitches compared to Messi. Pelé first touch better than Messi is a real possibility (very high technique + aerial ability) also his number of dribbling goals is just as high if not higher meaning he was a solo dribbler at least as good if not more elusive and effective to score solo goals. Pelé was also a incisive pass machine with high number of assists especially from central areas as well of the pitch and a much more complete goalscorer on top of that.
Difference is ball control while running arguably, but Messi had problems with bad pitches in the past (he said so in the media), imagine in Pelé's time.

Raw numbers, impact on their teams (and especially in their primes since I value prime over longevity -being Pelé underrated on the longevity score as well) and performances/impact on big matches that goes to Pelé.

 

Garrincha his game was totally dribbling based, but I think Pelé was actually the most dangerous dribbler closer to the goal (goals and assists after a dribble quantity). Similar to prime PSG, last Barcelona season Neymar compared to Messi when Neymar had the dribbling quantity advantage but not as dangereous closer to the goal, and even tho Garrincha was a more effective and high number dribbler than Neymar (arguably nobody imposed their dribbling and runs as well as Garrincha in 1958 and 1962 World Cups).

But they are different types of dribblers. Messi and Pelé were definitely more goal oriented/direct dribblers than Garrincha who was more of a ball progressor dribbler. Of course each one has their advantage, ball carrying/ball moving and direct dribbling.

 

True for Garrincha - Pele, but Messi at his peak still had quantity over Neymar in terms of stats. Completed 22 take ons in 2010 vs Almeria, which i believe is the most since it is being measured, 16 in ucl KO stage game vs someone, for example, which Neymar hasnt done. This was all while Messi was never just a "dribbling guy." In terms of quantity Messi and Neymar are much closer to each other than Garrincha and Pele based on available info and eye witnesses.

What is obvious from watching Pele is that he was quite phenomenal with dribbles with pace in a straight line, but I dont see agility of Maradona, Messi or even Neymar. Pele was also great at tricking defenders such as nutmegs, skills and so on.

I think ball control, agility/balance and footwork separates Messi from Pele in a concrete, unreachable way.

 

Well Messi is not the one to self-promote but okay.. Messi has played on terrible pitches many times before and dribbling talent really doesnt go away.

Some of this are questionable for "bad pitches" but there are some great ones in here:



.. there is no way of telling how good would Messi be if he played all the time in such pitches or vicer versa, if Pele palyed at modern pitches. What we know is how well they compare to players of their era.

 

I think this is right. Succeeding at something eventually doesn’t mean prior failures never happened. But the gravity of that point I think is highly dependent on what the comparison points are to. In other words, is there any all-time-great football player who doesn’t have failures? I don’t think there is. It’s just not a sport where a player can succeed all the time—in significant part because a player is just one of 11 players on the pitch, and each individual player truly can only do so much. Furthermore, there’s also many different competitions each year (and therefore a ton of opportunities to fail). You don’t have football players that are like Bill Russell in basketball (11 titles in 13 years).

I think the only all-time great that anyone even tries to make this sort of argument about is Pele. But it’s not actually a very good argument, since Pele had a lot of failures at club level, and he did actually fail to win a WC that he played in (as well as never winning the Copa America, though that wasn’t exactly significant back then I don’t think). Given that he also barely played in one of the WC wins he had, the argument that he didn’t have failures would require us to basically ignore everything else and just say he didn’t have failures because he won the two World Cups where he was fully healthy. Obviously, ignoring everything else and just focusing on a sample size of two tournaments is not the recipe for a compelling argument. And that’s the all-time great player that probably has the best argument for not having failures! It’s really just a sport where failure happens to everyone. Which is why great players in football are much more judged by what they have achieved, rather than being judged by what they failed to achieve.

 

Well, Pelé only played 3 libertadores and won 2 and fall in semis of the third ending as the top scorer. The Santos board thought it better commercially to tour the a world rather than play in the Copa Libertadores. I wouldn't say he failed at the libertadores. Also, the only copa América he played he also were the top scorer and finalist

 

I’m not sure I see the point with the Copa Libertadores. For one thing, by your own admission, his team failed to win one of the times he was in it. Furthermore, that’s all ignoring the fact that it is a failure to not be able to make the Copa Libertadores in the first place! It’s a tournament you have to qualify for, so failing to qualify is an even bigger failure than qualifying and failing to win! Granted, I know there were a few years there where Brazil refused to send teams, so we might want to discount those (though I believe in about half of those years Santos wouldn’t have qualified for it regardless—which is reflective of failures in domestic competitions). But there’s a bunch of years in there where Santos simply didn’t do well enough to make the Copa Libertadores at all. Those are definitely failures!

Which all relates back to other failures in club competition. There’s plenty of those! For instance, Pele played for Santos for 18 seasons, and he won the Brazilian league 6 times. In other words, Pele’s team failed to win most of the time—even though Santos was replete with talented Brazilian national-team players in his time there. Unsurprisingly, Santos did better in the regional league, winning that 10 times, but that still includes a lot of failures, even in the regional league. Pele’s team lost the Torneio-Rio-Sao-Paulo 5 times out of the years he played in it (out of 9 tries). Drilling down more specifically, Pele failed to win almost anything at all with Santos in his last 5 years there (all he won in that time was the regional league one time)! Those were his older years, of course, but he was still like only like age 29-34 in that timeframe. That was basically an entire era of failure for him at club level.

As for the Copa America, you can say Pele was top scorer and a finalist, and that’s a good point. But it’s certainly still a failure by the measuring stick applied to players these days (including, notably, Messi). For instance, Messi was the player of the tournament in the 2015 Copa America, while being a finalist, and that tournament is still part of the “failures” people talk about. We should be consistent in how scrutinizing when are when labeling something a failure. That said, I’m not overly concerned with the Copa America for Pele, since my understanding is that it wasn’t taken particularly seriously back then.

Anyways, my point here isn’t to actually drag on Pele. The stuff I talked about above ultimately still shakes out to be a lot of success! Pele won a lot of stuff, including with Santos! But, as with every single other all-time great footballer, he had quite a lot of failures, because football simply isn’t a game where a player can actually just always succeed. It doesn’t work that way. It didn’t work that way for Pele, and it didn’t work that way for Messi. If having a lot of failures disqualifies a player from being the GOAT, then there is no GOAT.

 

Well there's a big difference between win 1/5 WC disputed and win 3/4 WC disputed. The original point wasn't about fail once (Pelé). It's about too many failures (Messi). And Messi had too many failures to be considered the goat who is actually Pelé.

I think we need context. At Pele's time only the Champions of the national competitions qualified for libertadores. And not only this. Only the Champions of the state leagues qualified to play the Brazilian championship. And there are the big four only at the paulista league (Palmeiras, Corinthians, São Paulo and Santos). Also the big four at the carioca league (Flamengo, Vasco, Fluminense and Botafogo). So it was a very complex league and much more harder for a Brazilian team to qualify for libertadores (many sieves). Palmeiras and Botafogo were particularly strong on that era. I would say that the Paulistão during Pelé's time was as competitive as LaLiga and the Brazilian league, almost on par with the Champions League. If the champions league were on that format on Messi's era, Messi also wouldn't even be able to play some of UCLs. For example, in 08/09 Messi wouldn't even play since Real Madrid won LaLiga in 07/08. Also in 14/15 he also wouldn't play because Atleti won LaLiga 13/14 so Messi would have won only 2 UCLs one of them carried by Ronaldinho.

 

I don’t think that’s even close to true. As good as Brazil was back then, top leagues today are definitely stronger than any league in that era, since leagues in that era only had players from one country. (And I’ll note Santos was also generally much more stacked with NT players from that country than virtually any other team, so they really were in a great position to win stuff). But that’s all largely beside the point. The point is that Pelé has a boatload of failures. That’s really undeniable fact. One can try to point to context as to why we shouldn’t penalize Pele too harshly for those failures, but one can do the same for Messi or for any other all-time great. They all have a lot of failures. Having lots of failures doesn’t stop you from being the GOAT, since everyone has them. The question is much more nuanced than that. It’s about looking at their successes and their failures, and the context in which those successes and failures happened, and also watching the players and assessing their individual quality, and then putting all that together to assess their overall greatness.

 

Santos only had 3 players on NT. Pelé, Zito and Gylmar. Didi, Garrincha, Zagallo and Nilton Santos were all from Botafogo. Djalma Santos were from Palmeiras. Vavá were from Vasco. Brito and Piazza were from São Paulo if I'm not mistaken. In 70 Tostão were from Cruzeiro and Jairzinho from Botafogo. Carlos Alberto Torres from Santos. So no, Santos weren't "much more stacked". In fact Botafogo were more stacked than Santos.

Overall I agree with your main point about how we should assess a player's greatness. Considering his successes and his failures at NT, Club, domestically and continentally for his whole career. That's the most accurate and nuanced way.

 

I’ve tallied this up many times on these forums before, including with reference to the other top teams. Santos had a lot more than just 3 NT players. Take a look at this post for some more info on just how many they had year to year: https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/pelé-is-way-overrated-as-a-scorer.2028357/page-3#post-33539787. And the post above that shows how they had more players on the Brazil WC teams in that era than even Botafogo. They were the most deeply stacked team in Brazil in the 1960s (and, in that era, that almost certainly meant they were the most stacked team in the world). And yet, as described in my last post, they didn’t always win—not even close. That’s definitely a failure. And I’ll note that, starting in 1970, they had a significant decrease in NT players and were no longer outrageously stacked (albeit they still did have more players on the 1970 WC squad than any other team, so they were still highly talented), and they basically didn’t win virtually anything for the rest of Pele’s time there (they won one regional league title in Pele’s last five years starting in 1970, and that was it). That, again, is definitely a failure. But failures happen in football. That’s my point. We cannot look at any player and say that they had a lot of failures and so they cannot be the GOAT, because if we did that then there’d just be no GOAT. It doesn’t ultimately seem like you really disagree with me though, given your second paragraph.

 

you saw how many whole matches .... Of Didi ... Nilton Santos... Garrincha .. Mario Lobo Wolf Zagallo ... ???

for example ... Didi Folha Seca and Garrincha .. were better than Ronaldinho .. easily.. on my view

for Behaviour ...in Big matches ...



What's the spanish Player has World Cups ... won like Didi and Garrincha ???

 

It doesn't make much sense for you to mention players who weren't even starters in the World Cup wins. Pepe was Zagallo's reserve in 58 and Edu was Rivelino's reserve. In the starting lineup, as I mentioned, there were only 3 players from Santos and 4 from Botafogo.

1958:
Gylmar (Santos)
De Sordi (São Paulo)
Bellini (Vasco)
Orlando (Vasco)
Nilton Santos (Botafogo)
Zito (Santos)
Didi (Botafogo)
Garrincha (Botafogo)
Pelé (Santos)
Zagallo (Botafogo)
Vavá (Vasco)

I'll not count Djalma Santos cause he only played 1 game

So 3 players from Santos (including Pelé so only 2 Pele's teammates)
3 players from Vasco
4 players from Botafogo

1962:
Gylmar (Santos)
Djalma Santos (Palmeiras)
Mauro Ramos (Santos)
Zózimo (Bangu)
Nilton Santos (Botafogo)
Zito (Santos)
Didi (Botafogo)
Garrincha (Botafogo)
Amarildo (Botafogo)
Zagallo (Botafogo)
Vavá (Palmeiras)

I'll not count Pelé since he only played 2 games cause he went injured

3 players from Santos
5 players from Botafogo
2 players from Palmeiras

1970:
Félix (Fluminense)
Carlos Alberto Torres (Santos)
Brito (Flamengo)
Piazza (Cruzeiro)
Everaldo (Grêmio)
Clodoaldo (Santos)
Gerson (São Paulo)
Jairzinho (Botafogo)
Pelé (Santos)
Rivelino (Corinthians)
Tostão (Cruzeiro)

3 players from Santos including Pelé

And yes, I agree with you on some points.

 

It absolutely does make sense to talk about players who weren’t starters, because we are talking about a Brazilian league that only had Brazilians. Being on the reserves of a NT team essentially means you’ve been deemed the 2nd best player for your country at your position (or, put differently, one of the 22 best players for your country). Since the Brazilian league back then only had Brazilians, if you are a reserve on Brazil’s World Cup squad, then you have basically been deemed the 2nd best player at your position in the entire Brazilian league (and perhaps the best if we are talking about the regional league, since the starter may be from another region). That’s absolutely a star player in that context! It’s incredibly relevant to assessing how stacked the team was.