The analogy would be more apt, if the discussion involved was not whether Diego Maradona could play as a forward, but whether he could have matched Romario in terms of goal-scoring output. Their movements seem quite different. Diego Maradona's movements does not seem to be as natural, when he is burdened with maximizing reception value up top, from the short Barcelona clips I've watched. I personally think the value of Diego Maradona decreases exponentially the less of the ball action he gets, and is forced to exploit space without the ball, alone and isolated.
Maradona could do whatever he wanted, on every role in the offensive department, in fact for me? he could have been just the best winger ever. Yet indeed because of his tendencies, his ability, he would not want to run into channels time and again, or to wait up there, to do more striker alike stuff. That period mentioned in Argentinos he never played as a 9, yet he was a lot more goal oriented and had stamina for days. As a side note, not even Pele wanted to move himself from a Ponta de lanza role to a more classic 9 (like for instance Saldanha wanted of him). He would have been perfect, yet he just didn'''t feel it at all to do such role fulltime ina match. I recall even a more human alike fella like Rooney recalling that when he was more used as plain forward, asked to score more and be more striker alike, he did it, yet he hated it. Some players need to be more involved, need to drop deeper, are less or more "team oriented" and at times they fluctuate within all those phases during their carreers. Aguero never was that box striker the English seem to only see on him, yet the chubby lazy bastard started to like it in England and made a job of it, while leaving behind his more mediapunta days from indpendiente and Aleti, in his case, it looked that he didn't wanted to waste as much energy and bigger spaces to cover from his youth, less when he looked that that EPL period his fitness was at least suspicious in terms on how he actually took care of himself and suddenly he had Silva, De Bruyne and cia to assist him.
With the ball? He is as good as any I've seen, but wingers are not tested for their ball reception and movement nearly as much. Being able to receive the ball in isolated scenarios through movement alone is a skill in itself, and players generally do not gain world-class levels of movement out of nowhere, just because they get bored of playmaking and want to do something else. The absolute level of ability with the ball only, does not always correlate with the best predatory movement, and I think similar arguments can maybe be made against Roberto Baggio, and why he was later replaced with Alessandro Del Piero. I am basically discussing whether Diego Maradona (similar arguments apply to Neymar also) had the necessary movement to maximize ball reception in dangerous zones, when all his natural instincts seem to conflict with that. Obviously he does not have the necessary presence to be a world-class target man. So being static in set-pieces scenarios, is not really an option. I am not asking whether Diego Maradona can do more with the ball, to bring greater value to the team, but whether he truly could have surpassed Romario as a goal-scorer given their profiles of natural movements. That's my topic of interest, anyways. Goal-scoring at the highest possible levels, always has the element of optimized movement. Sergio Aguero may not have the busiest movement, but he does have good predatory movement from what I remember.
You keep committing statistical and logical fallacies. You keep mentioning that you struggle to see the value in a player generating more dangerous chances frequently "if you're scoring the same amount as Neymar". You keep struggling with this because it’s not true, which is why you are struggling, Ronaldo isn't scoring the same amount, ye is scoring the same rate while playing significantly more. If Player A scores 0.5 goals per 90 but only plays 20 games a season (10 goals). If Player B scores 0.5 goals per 90 but plays 40 games a season (20 goals). Player B is infinitely more valuable, and a far better goalscorer, because they are delivering that elite efficiency twice as often. You cannot brush aside the sheer volume of matches Cristiano has played when comparing their goalscoring prowess. Here is the other clear flaw in your reasoning. You keep saying Ronaldo and Neymar are equal GPG with their feet but Ronaldo is 0.48 and Neymar 0.47. Those are not the same numbers. Let's look at what happens when you apply those nearly identical rates to their actual career volumes. Neymar's Volume: 500 games × 0.47 = 235 goals Ronaldo's Volume: 1,000 games × 0.48 = 480 goals Are those the same numbers to you? Nope, one number is more than double the other.
Btw, you are incorrect in implying that playmaking involves zero off the ball movement. It is not as pronounced and of the same kind as off the ball movement required by strikers, but let's make it perfectly clear: you can't be an elite playmaker without a certain standard of intelligent off the ball movement. The idea that playmakers constantly and magically receive the ball in their feet without doing anything and can still be elite in their domain is false. Elite playmaking is also heavily dependent on finding pockets of space and become available passing option through off the ball movement. If a certain playmaker is not successfully doing that, but rather constantly receiving passes 50, 60 meters away from goal, they will not be effective playmakers. Maradona and Neymar are no exceptions in this regard. Also Neymar is very underrated in terms of off the ball movement due to his later stint at PSG. During his time at Barcelona (more or less excluding the last season 2017), Neymar was exceptional off the ball: Sadly, his evolution as a player took the wrong turn when he joined PSG.
I thought since Trachta10's limited approach can misrepresent the overall goal-scoring capacity of classical strikers with dependable aerial presence, I thought that there would be other, older cases that WhoScored fails to capture. Since EPL records are the easiest to find, I thought Alan Shearer would be an interesting case study. Alan Shearer's "category D" goal records EPL Minutes played: 38,199 Total goals: 260 Headed goals: 46 Freekick goals: 7 "Category D" goals: 151 "Category D" goals per 90 minutes: 0.356 (for a contemporary reference point, Andy Cole has 0.453) UEFA Champions League Minutes played: 1,419 Total goals: 7 Headed goals: 2 Free-kick goals: 0 Penalty-kick goals: 3 "Category D" goals: 2 "Category D" goals per 90 minutes: 0.127 English National Team Minutes played: 5,447 Total goals: 30 Headed goals: 8 Free-kick goals: 1 Penalty-kick goals: 6 "Category D" goals: 15 "Category D" goals per 90 minutes: 0.249 So I was thinking that since other players can just choose to win more aerial duels, I was thinking that maybe Eidur Gudjohnsen, since his "category D" goals per 90 minutes in the English Premier League was around the same, maybe 0.35 or so, maybe we can honestly project the argument that he really, was on track to score over 200 goals in the league also, since Alan Shearer is a degenerate aerial troll, whose avenues of excellence deserves to be made fun of. If Gudjonhnsen was not burdened with being so much more talented than Alan Shearer at playing football, and far too important and valuable, to fully occupy himself with such an easy and narcissistic task that is beneath his loftly disposition, surely it is sufficient to project his overall goal-scoring capacity off his "category D" goal-rates per 90 minutes only.
We are derrailling a bit too much man. Anyway it's nice football oriented chat. To summarize, and perhaps is a good subject for another thread. The aributes you are mentiong, I'm aware of those. I do agree are needed for a more pure striker oriented player a 9, Romario type, or even more classic a la Batistuta or fellas like Artime in between. The diff perhaps I'm having with your view, it's to do some of those, demands of the role, for the majority of talented players, more with these special fellas, it's more of a mental aspect, than an overall footbal ability to do them and even adquire them. And since we are talking about Diego and such caliber of players, I don't find an issue if he had decided to do such role, yet would have been extremely rare for a player of his atributes and characteristics to want to play in such way, to feel that role, to inherently even in what we can call instictive way, played such role. At the end of the day, a waste of his talents. There have been lots of way lesser players doing such transition, like Higuain doing it in the middle of his carreer in the limelight in Madrid to survive mostly when he transformed himself in a forward/striker. Or the mentioned Aguero before (in his case, I feel that it was a waste, he was an excellent mediapunta). Or phenoms like R9 or even Cris, even Van Basten was a player that people do not remember but liked to play in deeper areas and had quite some dribble in him too. Anyway, my original post was to remark, that Diego ended scoring galore, not because of playing as a 9 at all, more of how his team was settle and how pacey and stamina galore was in those very young days to even playing depper, at times falling to flanks. still scored tons and never forgetting his enganche soul to bring others to play. PD: BTW my take of Diego having the perfect atributes to be the perfect winger, was just a side note of sthg I always felt with him, that of course would end being a waste of his array of talent. But at times in those imaginary all time Argie sides, I like to think of him being obedient enough to have him as a left winger, Messi as a right winger (even if he is not precisly a true winger) and Di Stefano in his young self version as a striker number 9 to make space for all of them, even if none of them would be in their best Wild card/I do all how I want kind of greatest versions.
I grew up with him, what I've meant it's that nobody should qualify him as a 9 or pure striker in the way he played, the teams he played and what those teams demanded of him. He played mostly as a mediapunta going forward as much as he could, yet dropping deep quite a lot too and at most as as support striker at times false 9. Yet the forwards where Quini, Alonso and cia Later in Napoli he couldn't even choose to be mainly a forward given such set up and at least he had an extraordinary fella like Careca upfront.
Up until the age of 28, Neymar had more goals (of every possible kind) than Cristiano Ronaldo. According to my reasoning, Neymar was the better goalscorer up to that point Then Cristiano started scoring more because he suddenly acquired the magical ability to score goals. It definitely, and under no circumstances whatsoever, had anything to do with a change of position.
Firstly, Neymar already started playing as a cf and in the brazilian league. Secondly, Ronaldo outscored everyone (strikers, wingers, attacking midfielders, etc...) in the top 5 leagues by the moment he became the focal point of ManU (2006-2009). We're talking about prime Eto'o, Ibra, Fernando Torres, Villa, Drogba, etc... Ronaldo outscored all of them in his last 3 seasons at ManU. This is what an atg goalscorer looks like
@Trachta10 I don't know if you know this Twitter account? All For The Center Circle on X: " Kenny Dalglish's career statistics : ️ : 1969 - 1990 : Liverpool FC : CF/SS ️ : 955 ⚽ : 374 ️ : 351 (including an estimate of his assists with Scotland) : 725 G/A : 0.76 G/A ⛰️1972/73 : 56 games, 39 goals, 35 assists (1.32 G/A) https://t.co/YE3K1xTx5G" / X That is I guess the best overall estimate for Dalglish, but there are players such as Alan Morton, famous Rangers winger from back in the old days, with numbers gathered from reports I see too (plus more modern players such as Littbarski and Rocheteau where the overall assists number isn't totally reliable but particular peak contribution seasons may be it seems)....
Interesting, I'm not familiar with that user. What I remember about Dalglish is that his assist numbers at Liverpool came from a source that did not use strict Opta criteria, and they were somewhat inflated. So if that user estimated his Scotland assists based on those numbers, they may also be somewhat inflated. He was undoubtedly a player with a lot of assists, but I don't recall anyone having done a truly serious investigation into his assist records using Opta criteria.
If football was a test, with a vast array of different subjects, such as: 1) Off-the-ball movements that opens up advantageous shapes 2) Ability to overcome situational disadvantage via superior athleticism 3) Game changing on-the-ball ability I feel that most classical strikers are tested more harshly on the first two realms than many positions, than they are for the third realm, which is more heavily tested for the withdrawn-forward types. The classical strikers are often the most isolated, relatively starved of opportunities to showcase on-the-ball ability, and are tasked with the unfair quest of having to outmaneuver or out-duel opposing defenders. Using metrics that benefit on-the-ball talents who also happen to be decent goal-scorers, and then ripping down every single work that a prolific forward did to elevate his goal-count, Think about it. If the 6-yard box is a player's main zone of operation, at least relativistically speaking compared to all the other roles, how can a player maximize opportunities to showcase your dribbling? Even Lionel Messi seems to have like less than ten dribbles completed within the 6-yard box for his entire goddamned career. The kind of spaces an on-the-ball specialist occupies, and the kind of spaces a player trying his hardest to stretch the field and test the defensive shapes for holes, are entirely different. Erling Haaland is a great goal-scorer, no matter what his level of on-the-ball ability may be. The level of his physical presence and level of movement, in that combination, are not commonly found, and cannot be just freely given to any godlike technician with an eye for a goal, to extrapolate their potential goal-count to the absolute extremes. Just because one can imagine such a case, does not mean they would bet their life-savings on it occuring in an alternate reality with reasonable degrees of changes. Even Romario, who is closer to a technical virtuoso than he is a physical specimen (I really do not like his level of stamina), had to streamline his actions on the pitch in a manner that maximized his goal-threat, and that comes with an opportunity cost. If he played in a manner that maximized the opportunity to impress with his on-the-ball ability, it could have been counter-productive from a pragmatic point of view, especially given his role as a striker. So if Diego Mardona had sufficient dynamism only in his earlier years, and had developed his on-field movements in a manner that most complemented his on-the-ball talents, it makes it extremely unlikely that he outscores the best goal-scorers in history even if we re-play his career multiple times with slight alterations in circumstantial detail. From the way you speak of him, it sounds like his goal-scoring peak came despite not having the perfect movements of a ruthless goal-scorer, and just came about as a by-product of his elite dynamism, stamina, and progressive on-the-ball threat. That is about the most ephemeral set of foundations an elite goal-scorer can have, in his quest to score hundreds upon hundreds of goals throughout his entire career. By the time we alter his fitness regime, the longevity of his dynamism, his idiosyncracies on the pitch, and just assume the most unrealistic set of circumstances just to buy into the idea that it might be feasible for Diego Maradona to have all-timer level goal-product, we are entering the realm of fiction, and that level of kindness being granted only to the most thrilling on-the-ball talents, is something that seems very unfair to me.
Nice find. It seems to come from this research. I compiled the stats of our very own King Kenny Dalglish throughout every season of his playing career. I was able to find numbers for the majority of the data but had to do a little estimation as well. Hopefully, this can give you a better understanding and appreciation for arguably our club's GOAT : r/LiverpoolFC Celtic: 154 Liverpool: 167 Scotland NT: 30 Total: 351 The Liverpool tally seems to be a slightly more conservative tally, compared to the tally I personally reference. It can be said to be of a rough OPTA standard, for a retrospective count, at least. Kenny Dalglish - LFChistory.net The numbers for Celtic and Scotland, for me, sounds like it was based on a lot of assumptions, if you read the nature of the numbers extracted, told by the poster on Reddit. I think he basically assumes his assist tally roughly matches his goal count, and proxies his Celtic and Scotland national team goal tallies to derive assist tallies.
I don't know, I think the assists from here are based on Opta criteria actually (for example, not with penalty assists included - if you remember I made my own run-down of his penalty-win assists in effect using Youtube): Kenny Dalglish - LFChistory.net There is the same number on the Twitter post, but it's possible that site was actually used for Liverpool (if known about) and that only the Celtic ones were researched directly from reports I guess. There isn't the same note about extrapolation of an assists estimate on that post that there is for the ones on Littbarksi or Rocheteau I mentioned (that I assumed maybe had estimates of there career assists a little bit akin to what you originally did for Eusebio for example, based on a partial data sample extrapolated...but I could be wrong about that) I see @Letmepost 's post now though - I guess the Reddit post isn't by the same guy on Twitter (who seems to be French, but with access to online newspapers from England, Argentina, Scotland, Germany, Brazil etc perhaps....). The one on Twitter references Scottish newspapers re: Rangers players for example, but I'm just making this quick reply now before going off to get some food then watch the Grand Prix qualifying, so I've not looked into it beyond skim-reading your reply Letmepost to be honest.
It's very possible that you're right and that they are using Opta criteria. I just have a memory of someone telling me that he reviewed some of them and found deflected passes, but I'm not sure. I just checked about 20 of them on video, and all of them were direct passes, so the numbers do seem to be quite accurate, at least for his Liverpool career.
Maybe still 'too soon' to call it but one World Championship seems to be on the way this season. After that it's difficult to say, because it's uncertain how cars will compare to each other next year and beyond (Alonso didn't win a championship since 2006 for example), but it seems feasible, maybe likely, given his age that he can get quite high up on all-time lists for races won, pole positions, fastest laps etc. Maybe even more difficult to say is how he compares in individual performance/'speed' to the best ever (already this year and/or in the short term or long term futures), but he seems to have gained a step (maybe partly because of expected improvements, knowing the tracks better etc, and partly because his style/abilities suit this years car and rules well - Verstappen also seemed to gain a step in qualifying pace especially in his 2nd/3rd season I think though for example anyway). Re: Dalglish at Celtic, there are some good goals videos and this one by the Celtic FC channel has dates for the goals shown, but I'm not aware of anything similar for assists, and yeah maybe it's possible @Letmepost that the Twitter-poster found that Reddit post and used it (I didn't look further into that yet though, and he does seem to have been looking at Scottish newspaper reports for old Rangers games from the 1920s for example...so feasibly he could for Celtic 1970s games too, and in theory if he independently matched or near-matched the Reddit guys' numbers perhaps it could point to good accuracy?):
Your guess is as good as mine, but I am somewhat skeptical, if both sources independently reached the tally of 30 OPTA or more assists for the Scottish national team (which is what the Reddit post would assume, in order to hit a final career tally of 351 assists). I think that international tally is rather generous. Which makes me question how generous the estimation was for his non-Liverpool matches in general. All For The Center Circle on X: "Ranking of the assist providers in history (excluding active players) : Matthews : 438 Meredith : 419 Puskás : 376 Cruyff : 356 A. de Souza : 356 Pelé : 353 Jair da Rosa : 312 (estimated) Dalglish : 304 (estimated) M. Carioca : 297 Lenstra : 290" / X This was a post from the same user, the two tallies are one day apart, and it had 47 less assists than the most recent tally. There is limited possibility of somebody uncovering 47 brand-new assists from newspaper reports in a single day, to reach a new final tally. I am suspecting heavy usage of extrapolated estimations. The final 27 matches of Kenny Dalglish for Scotland, seems to be all available on YouTube in terms of goal highlights, and these are the only assists I could find, which also coincides with the Transfermarkt tally. 1983 (March 30) Scotland 2-Switzerland 2 (EC Qualifier).mpg 1983 (March 30) Scotland 2-Switzerland 2 (EC Qualifier).mpg 1983 (October 12) Scotland 1-Belgium 1 (EC Qualifier).mpg 1984 (October 17) Scotland 3-Iceland 0 (World Cup Qualifier).avi 1985 (November 20) Scotland 2-Australia 0 (World Cup Qualifier).mpg So that's 5 assists in 27 matches. Maybe we are missing the most prolific years of early Kenny Dalglish, but I've even checked a couple of the older matches with available footage like the match versus England and the World Cup matches, and it is not like he is assisting every other game. If I had to guess, I think any loose involvements that may not be of OPTA standard were collected to extrapolate an optimistic count.
I had had him on 9 assists for Scotland (without counting assists on own goals), being able to check since 1978 for most games (finding 7) and being able to add on a couple more from pre-1978 (but without being able to check quite a lot of games/goals) https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/g...he-best-players.2112404/page-23#post-39734928 https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/g...he-best-players.2112404/page-22#post-39734766
I think that makes a little more sense, because it might be weird to see Kenny Dalglish assist significantly more than prolific playmakers from European powerhouses of that era. Kenny Dalglish had played 338 games for Celtic. That means to reach a tally of 351 assists from verified assists only with zero estimations, he has to assist at a rate higher than 0.5 assists per game for Celtic. Of course that is within reason, because Johan Cruyff did it for Ajax, but for now, I personally think this might be just the case of generously assuming that Kenny Dalglish scored and assisted to roughly equal volumes, whenever there are missing reports. The amount of freely given assists without an actual event associated with it, might be in the dozens or more.
Maybe I had noticed another user saying he used Scottish newspapers, while this one seems to refer to club archives but his posts including the Dalglish one say 'Made with AI' at the bottom. Maybe AI found the Reddit page you had found too?
Yeah, the Dalglish Twitter post I originally found does say "(including an estimate of his assists with Scotland)" so like Trachta was thinking I guess it's at least more likely that the 30 was an extrapolation (and probably an over-estimate). If the Reddit poster (Liverpool fan) was correct in saying he had 'the majority of the data' then maybe the Celtic numbers are more closely-estimated but I don't know. Probably I was hasty in posting the link to the Twitter page, but it's interesting anyway I suppose (and you did well to find the Reddit info, plus the other post with Matthews on the most assists is interesting too). I guess this one is known by Trachta anyway: Posts with replies by RolyBF2015 (@Bf2015Roly) / X
Let's say that even like I've said before, I agree on many things talked here, at this point I don't even know what those are been talked. Also in terms of some extraordinary talents like Diego and such adapting to a more fixed position as a primarly goalscorer, striker alike, I don't see even remotely an issue with it like it seems you do, not at all, BAR: their WILL to do it, that it's extremely important on itself. So in that regard, if you think iyt's not the case, we'll have to agree to disagree.