I don’t think it is fair to say that players had “equal conditions” at their clubs either. Ronaldo was on Real Madrid on a super team. Maradona played at Napoli. Cruyff had a great team at Ajax (though no team back in that era was like today’s super teams and neither were their opponents, so the context is still different), but then went to a Barcelona that hadn’t won a league title in 14 years and hadn’t won a European title in the club’s history except for the Inter-City Fairs Cup (think: the UEFA Conference League). You mention Pele, who I’ve detailed was on a Santos team that could certainly be fairly described as a super team. These are all different conditions, and Ronaldo’s club conditions were certainly amongst the best any all-time great has ever had. Meanwhile, I agree with you that Ronaldo’s Portugal team wasn’t a very top team. They were always merely a fringe contender for the World Cup, which could’ve in theory made a deep run but would’ve needed a lot of luck to do so (see, for example, Euro 2016). But I think we can still evaluate his performances within that context. And, even within that context, I think it is fair to say that his performances at the World Cup were disappointing. Meanwhile, it’s also the case that, while Maradona and Cruyff may have had more talented teams, their level of performance is extremely uncommon even for great players on very talented teams. Ronaldo’s level of performance in the WC was just not at all uncommonly good for a great player on a similarly talented team. I don’t think there’s any way to slice WC performance in a way that doesn’t leave Maradona and Cruyff far ahead in this regard. You mention elsewhere that Portugal had some of its best results with Cristiano. And that’s largely true (though their best WC result was in 1966). But the country’s results being generally better compared to its results in past decades (with completely different players and opponents) doesn’t tell us that Ronaldo played great. We can see his actual performances to evaluate whether he played well, and his WC performances were generally pretty disappointing.
I think besides 2006, Cristiano has had relatively disappointing performances in the WC. Irrespective of his team's qualities, I would say he underperformed in this matter. He is also responsible for the most successful period of his team's history, but those performances came in the Euro's (especially 2012). As for Messi, he started off as a winger/inside forward and became an attacker with a free role. The talk about his playmaking is extremely overdone. He has immense quality in his passing, but to claim that he shouldered the responsibility for playmaking is complete revisionism. Positional freedom so that he can avoid being marked out the game by big CBs does not make him the team's playmaker. What boggles the mind though, is how the "greatest player of all time" backed by not ONE, but TWO midfielders of superior quality to Zidane, of superior quality to Kroos and Modric, paired with strikers such as Ibrahimovic and Suarez, of superior quality to Benzema. How are the trophies and results not in keeping with such outrageous combination of quality? How is Messi the playmaker, when he has not one, but two GOAT midfielders? Did Ronaldo play with two guys who are better than Zidane and the best striker of his generation?
I disagree strongly. I always observed that Cristiano was a more daring, creative / innovative, and intelligent player than Messi. What elevates Pele and Maradona above him are their achievements with the NT, which Ronaldo could not replicate.
Fair enough, though I have a different view. If you don't mind me asking, which aspects of Ronaldo's game do you considering more creative, innovative, and intelligent than Messi's?
On Messi, I don’t think you’ve watched Messi very much if you think he didn’t shoulder playmaking responsibility. That responsibility was a bit less in earlier years when his midfielders were better (in that era he was not needed as much to progress the ball with passing, but did advance the ball a ton with dribbling and have primary final-ball responsibility), but he’s spent many years now effectively playing as a midfielder who is the player with the most responsibility for progressing the ball forwards in the attacking half. This is obvious just from watching, but just in case you need more concrete evidence: You don’t dominate your team (and indeed, in many cases, the world) in number of progressive passes, passes into the attacking third, passes into the penalty area, key passes, expected assisted goals, etc. without being a player with huge playmaking responsibilities (and that’s not even getting into ranking towards the top of his team even in stuff like long passes and progressive passing distance). He shoulders immense amounts of playmaking responsibility, and that responsibility has only increased with time. As for having Xavi and Iniesta, I’d note that the trophies and results were really good when he had them. He won the CL three times with them (not counting 2006)—more than Ronaldo won in that timeframe—while on a team widely considered one of the very best teams of all time (due primarily to the greatness of Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta). The gap in CL wins came after Xavi was gone, and the midfield was not nearly as good. And I note by the way that throughout this whole time there was a large gap the other way in league titles—which does actually matter quite a lot. Barcelona dominated domestically, against the other best team of the era (and against Atletico, which was also great). This is something you seem to never acknowledge or credit (not surprising, since it doesn’t fit your agenda). Indeed, despite playing in a league against the other best team of the era (and the other best player of the era), Lionel Messi has the most La Liga titles and most Copa Del Rey titles of any player in history. In any event, even with players as good as that, Ronaldo’s teammates in similar positions were not actually far off. Xavi and Iniesta are great, but Modric and Kroos are also all-time greats (I actually think Kroos is better than Modric, who himself is an all-time great), so the gap there really isn’t all that big. Benzema may be less good than Suarez (note: you mention Ibra, but I specifically said in that thread that I think Ibra was last amongst the listed players, i.e. below Benzema), but, as I discussed in that other thread, it’s a pretty close race either way there (and you actually think Benzema is clearly better). Meanwhile, Real Madrid was littered with other great players as well—on top of Modric, Kroos, and Benzema, guys like Ramos, Casillas, Marcelo, Bale, Di Maria, Ozil, Casemiro, Pepe, Varane, and Kaka were all amongst the best players of their generation (for instance, they all made at least 6 ESM teams of the month in their career). And there were other really good players as well (guys like Xabi Alonso, Isco, Carvajal, Navas, Higuain, etc.). Of course, Barcelona had other great players too (Puyol, Pique, Busquets, Alves, Fabregas, Neymar, Henry, Eto’o, Alba, Villa, etc.). But overall, I think you’d be hard-pressed to really argue that Barcelona had more talent on average during that time period than Real Madrid did—even if it is probably true that they had more talent than Real Madrid in the Guardiola era where they had their most success. And, again, Real Madrid won more CL titles, but Barcelona also won a lot more league titles and several more Copa Del Reys. It is just silly to act like Barcelona did not have great success when they won several CLs, dominated the league against the other best team of the era (and another team in Atletico that was a top 5 team of the era), dominated the domestic cup, and had a time period where they were considered a strong contender for the greatest team of all time. It is, in fact, quite consistent with being the GOAT to have been the best player on a club team that is widely seen as a top contender for GOAT club team. _______________ Edit: Also, regarding your last sentence, please note that Xavi and Suarez only overlapped on Barcelona for one year (a year where Xavi was admittedly not really a key player). And they won the treble. So, to the extent that Messi did “play with two guys who are better than Zidane and the best striker of his generation,” he won everything there was to win when he did so.
To correct one minor thing I wrote above: Messi does not have the most La Liga titles of any player in history—he has the 2nd most, behind only Gento.
I think your statement that "Cruijff scored pretty close to the same level on Ajax" is a bit of an exaggeration. Ronaldo scored 60+ goals in 4 consecutive seasons and scored 50+ in 8 if I'm not mistaken. I don't think Cruijff is anywhere near that level of goalscoring. Much less Maradona. Besides Cristiano already scored 20+ assists in 2 seasons and 15+ in several others, so I don't think "there’s a bigger playmaking gap than there is a goalscoring gap" although I recognize them as superior Playmakers. If I'm not mistaken Ronaldo was already on the IFFHS list of the best playmakers in the world in one season at Real Madrid and he was almost always the player with the highest number of assists after Messi in The World. In fact, at Real Madrid he was always on the podium for his team in terms of the number of assists. Well, France football has already made a correction with a list of players who would win the golden ball if the non european players were eligible and at the time, Maradona won 3 and Pelé, 7 if I'm not mistaken. Cristiano Ronaldo won 5 and he would have easily won 6 if not for the 2018 collective spurt. He was also 2nd in almost every year Messi won. For Cruijff, as I already said, the gap between Ajax and the other teams (in national and international competitions) was at the time the same between Real Madrid and the other teams. Even Ronaldo's Real Madrid won 2 out of 8 possible LaLigas. You mentioned Feyernord as a rival of Ajax in Holland but Real Madrid had Barcelona. And sometimes Atlético that reached the UCL final twice and won one of the LaLiga titles in the period. Ajax was a relatively small team in terms of number of titles. But in terms of competitiveness, it was the most dominant team of the 70s next to Bayern. Just like Real Madrid and Barcelona were in the 2010s. In the case of Cristiano Ronaldo, practically half of his goals were in the Champions League knockout stage. If I'm not mistaken he only has 10 more goals in the group stage than in the knockout stage. He is the top scorer in the finals, semifinals and quarterfinals. I think the amount of money is not as relevant to our discussion as the level of competitiveness of the teams in the period. Just look at Real Madrid's Galacticos in the second half of the 2000s and see what a fiasco they were, breaking transfer records year after year. The time Ronaldo joined Real Madrid, there were irrelevant in Europe. The last time they won it was 7 years before and since then they have reached the semis only once and were knocked out from the 16th rounds 5 years in a row. Meanwhile Man United were champions of England 3 times in a row and finalist in CL 2 years in a row while winning it once. Ronaldo left an established and successful team for a team that was far inferior back then and starting a rebuild. He didn't join Real Madrid while being at their top. Just a correction here in your sentence: "we can tell that his team had a big talent gap with its opposition, based on how they dominated their domestic league AND THE EUROPE WINNING 3 CL IN A ROW". The fact that they score as many goals as Real Madrid and Barcelona and are so dominant in the domestic league and in Europe just proves my point that the gap between Ajax and other teams was the same between Real Madrid and the other teams at domestic and European level. I consider Ronaldo's absolute peak to be between 10/11 and 13/14. Between 14/15 and 17/18 he changed his style of play to stay on top after a knee ailment. And the pre-real Madrid version was definitely below its peak peak. Of course, this has to do with his role and his teammates. But this is also true for most other GOATS. Including Cruyff. Ronaldo's version in his first year at Juve is also considerably inferior to the version from 10/11 to 13/14. I think the 28-year-old Ronaldo would produce more for this Juventus than the 35-year-old. With the same teammates. The fact that he won the Ballon d'Or has more to do with what he did in the World Cup with Netherlands than in Barcelona. I agree that the role change and again teammates played a part. But I find the Ajax version considerably better. It's the same as saying that Messi in 2021 was still in the same shape as in 2012 because he won the Ballon d'Or. We all know the 2012 version is superior and that has a lot to do with his role and teammates. But it also has to do with the fact that he is no longer at his peak either physically or technically.
Sure, I'll bite. A lot of Messi's game was very patterned. The same cut and lofty pass to the left wing, the same trough ball, the same types of dribbles, the same types of goals and shooting positions. What elevated him is the level of execution and consistency of these actions. No player could repeat these actions as often and successfully as him, perhaps in the history of the sport. Nevertheless, the limitation in innovation to me (in relation to roadblocks in terms of mentality) is what held him back when performing under different and more difficult conditions. When he would play for Argentina, it was not the same Messi, because he could not execute the same patterns of play as his teammates would either not make the same runs, or he would not find himself in the same game situations. You look to a player like Cristiano and you find that he will find the path to success by any means necessary. Daring overhead kick? Speculative shots from distance? Innovative dribble? Volley with the left foot? He will find new ways to hurt the opponent and showed a great adaptability and flexibility in his play. He will attempt the things he would find difficult as a player, and in return, find success. That is a mark of intelligence and character. Look at the video that @carlito86 uploaded - there is such a variability and plethora of plays. Cristiano finds many, many solutions. You look at players like Maradona, Pele, you will find them attempting new things. Messi rarely gave me that feeling. Perhaps that goal where he topples Boateng over in the CL. And that was a big factor behind his struggles with the NT, and some of his mediocre matches in CL.
This is honestly a crazy post. Messi has possibly the most diverse collection of goals from any all-time great. For a guy who always does the same thing, he still managed to score 100 right foot goals and 26 headers. He has way more goals from outside of the box and more free kick goals than Ronaldo... In football they don't use the term triple threat (basketball jargon) but that's what Messi is when he gets the ball on the outside of the box. He can smash it in, he can pass it to someone with a throughball, cross, lob etc. or he can dribble through the defense and then do something. He may honestly be the most difficult player to guard ever. That's why he's always denied space and shadowed by multiple players against any halfway serious opponent. Because anywhere remotely close to the goal he can take a shot, or pass or dribble. And he's elite in finishing, passing and dribbling arguably the GOAT at one or more of these categories. Struggled is a strong word. Perhaps he couldn't put his stamp on every game but who can. Apart from Pele/Puskas who peaked in higher scoring eras, who else is doing a lot better than Messi in big games. @lessthanjake spent half of this thread elaborating and defending a very simple argument that even just looking at CL knockouts it's not clear at all that Ronaldo has been better than Messi given Messi's enormous advantages in playmaking. He's just a superior player through and through and most Ronaldo fans unless they're super biased have admitted that.
Messi does not have the most diverse collection of goals. Where are the volleys? Where are the bicycle kicks? Halfway-line goals? We can go on. Don't argue something that is clearly incorrect. You are blinded by your fanboyism. If we compare the general play to Maradona's playmaking, he pales in comparison. Yes, a player of his caliber who had I believe 0 knockout WC goal before 2022, struggled. That is a monumental asterisk. Messi is not a better big game player than Ronaldo - that is laughable. We've been over this. 6 Champions league finals, 2x as many goals in finals, semifinals, and quarters.
You've been answered in the past few pages by @lessthanjake who debunked pretty much all of your points regarding the CL. I'll just post this. How about KO stages at the WC? Messi: 5 goals, 6 assists in 12 matches Ronaldo: 0 goals, 0 assists in 8 matches How about KO stages at the Copa/Euro? Messi: 5 goals, 12 assists in 16 matches Ronaldo: 3 goals, 2 assists in 11 matches And that's just the end product. No mention of playmaking where Messi dominates. Scoring goals from the halfway-line? Are you freaking serious... I'm not blinded by fanboyism. I am using numbers (= facts) to make my claims. 100 right foot goals 26 headers 87 outside of the box goals 60 free kick goals And of course every type of footed goal inside the box.. solo goals, give and go goals, volleys/one-timers, lobs/chips, near post, far post, nutmeg, powerball, tap-in, dibble the goalie, even bicycle kick this season.
You do not resort to honest discussions. We spoke about previous failures. I told you Messi had no goals in knockouts prior to 2022. Zero goals. In 4 World Cups, including a run to the final. If you consider that the performance worthy of an all-time goalscorer (which he is), I do not know what to tell you. I have already spoken about Cristiano's WC record. It is poor. So, the comparison with Cristiano does not really bear anything to the subject. If you think Messi has a diverse museum of goals, as compared to some of the greatest players of the sport, I will not discuss further with you.
Maradona is something that needs to be better analized. But Cruijff, Pelé, Puskas definitely played in a team as dominant as Real Madrid, which makes the comparison much fairer than the Dutch carousel, the Magic Magyars, the flat back four of Pelé's Brazil compared to Ronaldo's Portugal. I fully agree that Maradona and Cruijff were individually better than Ronaldo in the World Cup. I never said otherwise. I just said that doesn't have to be a point against Ronaldo when compared to them because he just couldn't do anything even close to what they did. And this has much more to do with the context in which he was inserted than with his own performance. Do you have any doubts that if Ronaldo played for Germany in 2014 or by france in 2018 wouldn't he produce an ATG performance in the tournament?
Without wanting to be dragged into a Messi vs. Ronaldo discussion, I will say that I can see where you are coming from in regards to Messi's distinct patterns of play and Ronaldo's wide range of abilities. But I think we are maybe interpreting the "creative" part differently. Bicycles, step-overs, long shots, etc... weren't invented or even really innovated on further by Ronaldo, but rather just executed to an extremely high level. It's the whole basis for the popular comparison of Ronaldo to a cyborg, while Messi is popularly compared to an alien. He does things that other players don't think to do. I agree Messi had distinct patterns of offensive play at Barca, but there is plenty of room for creativity within that; split second moments where there is no space, or no pass in sight, and yet somehow, he finds a solution. Messi does this regularly. His assist at the World Cup against the Netherlands was one such moment, where it seemed like he was the only one in the stadium who could imagine the pass let alone execute it. Ronaldo, I don't think, does not often demonstrate this level of vision and imagination. Or for instance, this chipped goal against Betis, which is only one example of many creative use of chipping the goal keeping as a means of finishing.There was only one way to get the ball in the net and Messi saw and executed it in a split second. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfGVaghdZ8o. You simply don't see Cristiano imagine or perform these kinds of things with any regularity. Hatting Almunia, who had closed down the angle for conventional finishing https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CGxRRcm4tGI Or the clever, quick free kick right into the top corner against Atelti And of course Messi is extremely creative with his dribbling, which I don't think we need examples for. As a passer, a finisher, and a dribbler, he quite regularly did things that were beyond the imagination and abilities of all his contemporaries. It's why "magical" is the word often used to describe Messi where for Ronaldo, I feel like "unstoppable" is a more common adjective.
@lessthanjake I know you've already seen and even participated in the conversation, including praising the post by @carlito86 as a "very good post". But I think posting the link here would add value to this conversation considering we want to analyze the context of Maradona at Napoli in a Serie A of the 80's compared to other GOATS who played for such a dominant club. All of these aspects are addressed in Carlito's post which I consider to be an excellent poster on this forum. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/was-maradona-overrated.2123900/page-2#post-41060441 https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/was-maradona-overrated.2123900/page-3#post-41071253
Sorry dude, but the "game ideas" of Michels were mocked by the players themselves (read the books written about it with interviews/quotes about it). They would let Michels talk and decide themselves what was needed to win the match.
Doesn't that make him more astonishing in a way? For him to achieve as much or more than the "geniuses" while lacking the same "tools" for lack of better term? At the end of the day, does it matter how one skins the cat?
There is nothing to prove. I was actually in your ballpark anyway that I don't think his WC record should be held against him too much. If we wanted to be harsh we could ask all sorts of questions about Ronaldo's performances: Without winning, why can't he have a similar performance to Modric 2018 or Stoichkov 1994? Or better yet, Eusebio 1966. It's not like his Portugal was particularly worse than those teams. In the EUROs where his team has performed better, where is the equivalent of Platini 1984? Why is Ronaldo never overachieving in international tournaments, except maybe in EURO 2004? Personally, I don't even entertain these questions too much, but you can be unfairly harsh if you wanted to be. These things swing both ways.
True, over multiple tournaments, the talented generation will end up doing pretty close to their talent level.
Yes I do think Messi has an extremely diverse portfolio of goals. And again the data I posted supports me on that. Looking at just the SF and F of the C which are the highest stakes. 2009 F vs Man United - header 2011 SF vs Real Madrid - insane solo goal 2011 F vs Man United - outside the box 2015 SF vs Bayern - outside the box 2015 SF vs Bayern - ankle breaker on Boateng then chip over Neuer 2019 SF vs Liverpool - 35 yard free kick screamer
You’re talking about total goals scored in a season, but goals per match is what is relevant to measuring goalscoring. After his first season where he didn’t play much, Cruyff scored 0.79 goals per match for Ajax, and I believe that’s while not being the team’s penalty taker. I believe Cristiano Ronaldo scored 0.85 non-penalty goals per match for Real Madrid. Of course, 0.85 > 0.79, Ajax as a team scored slightly more per game in that era than Ronaldo’s Real Madrid did, and I’m not certain Cruyff had no penalty goals for Ajax. So I’m not saying it’s as good, but we aren’t talking about a goalscorer that is way far off—at least during his time at Ajax. And I do think Ronaldo was further off as a playmaker—with Cruyff being one of history’s greatest playmakers ever. This is a player who averaged about 0.5 assists a match for club and country (including in his time at Ajax), and, beyond assists (which are quite far from a perfect measure of playmaking), is just well-known to be an all-time great playmaker. He also was off Cruyff’s level as a dribbler. Again, I’ll just reiterate that the context for award-winning in the past for top players was not the same as now. Winning awards is, in large part, a function of being watched, getting recognition, and winning big titles. It’s easier to get/do that stuff if you play for one of several top teams, and that’s what top players get these days. But things were different in the past, and it was just harder for guys like Cruyff and Maradona to get that consistent recognition/winning for awards purposes, while playing for the teams they played for (and in an era where lesser teams’/leagues’ games were actually not easy for people to watch). As I noted, for instance, Cruyff got virtually no Ballon D’or votes at all for a large portion of his prime years while at Ajax, before the recognition came because Ajax made the European Cup finals. So I don’t think we can really just count number of award wins between players of very different eras and mechanically say that the player with more was better. It’s not quite so simple. We’re talking about goalscoring in all competitions (or at least I was, and you seem to clearly be doing so too, given that you mentioned Ronaldo scoring 50+ and 60+ goals in a season). The point was about comparing Ronaldo’s goalscoring and Cruyff’s. I noted that Ronaldo played for a super team so his overall goalscoring needs to be understood in that context. You said they played similarly good teams in the CL KO stages. I said that’s not most matches. In virtually all matches, an elite super team like Real Madrid had a massive advantage, and I think that advantage did juice up Ronaldo’s overall goalscoring stats a bit. The fact that his scoring took an immediate leap when he went to Real Madrid and an immediate dip after he left is strongly suggestive of this, but it’s also just obvious by seeing team goalscoring stats and having watched the games. And this is the sort of thing that needs to be taken account in these comparisons, particularly with someone like Maradona, who absolutely did not play on a super team (and for whom differences in scoring in different eras comes into play too). With Cruyff, it’s not as important a factor, since Cruyff’s Ajax team was so good. Yes, revenue doesn’t make a team automatically good, but it’s a huge help (as is the prestige associated with playing for Real Madrid). And, in this case, Real Madrid did put together an incredibly great team, which actually was meaningfully more talented than many other teams that we’d still call super teams (teams like Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Man City, etc. were super teams but also meaningfully less talented in that era). Talking about Real Madrid in the years before Ronaldo is a bit misleading, since the year they brought in Ronaldo was a monumental year in which they spent a ton of money to bring in a load of really talented players—among other things, they brought in the two prior years’ Ballon D’or winners, as well as a future Ballon D’or winner, and a world class midfielder in Xabi Alonso. Real Madrid was immediately the most talented team in the world besides Barcelona. And things mostly only went up from there in terms of talent. I’m not arguing that the talent gap between Ajax and their average opponent was less than that between Ronaldo’s Real Madrid or Messi’s Barcelona and their opponents. I’m expressly saying it was similar (including in what you were responding to there). And this is all relevant context. For purposes of comparing to Cruyff, I think the team advantage is roughly the same when Cruyff was at Ajax. So that makes comparing goalscoring relatively straightforward. When comparing to someone like Maradona, though, we really need to take the context into account, because there was no way a player could score like Messi or Mara That’s all fine—and I generally agree about Ronaldo’s absolute peak. But it doesn’t explain the rather significant increase in goalscoring the moment he went to Madrid and decrease in goalscoring the moment he left Madrid. I don’t think he got massively better or worse those years. What actually happened is Madrid was even more talented and a higher scoring team than those Manchester United or Juventus teams were (even though those teams were really good), which naturally allowed Ronaldo to score a bit more at Madrid. Real Madrid was just at a bit of a different level of super team, compared to ManU’s and Juventus’s more garden-variety super team level. And that’s relevant context. I’m not saying Ronaldo couldn’t have scored a bit more at ManU or Juventus if he’d played in those teams in his absolute peak years. All I’m saying is that his scoring wouldn’t have been as high if he’d been on a garden-variety super team instead of at Real Madrid. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial. Real Madrid was a notably higher scoring team, and he experienced a notable increase in scoring upon joining RM and a notable decrease in scoring upon leaving. It’s just common sense. Those are fair points. And again, I defer to others on the exact details of Cruyff’s career, which I’m far from an expert on.
Agreed on all of that. All those guys spent all or much of their career on very dominant, high-scoring teams. And that context is relevant to all of them, as it is for Ronaldo. The point about Ronaldo playing on a super team was mostly relevant to this discussion as it related to Maradona. With Cruyff, he played for a team with a similarly big talent gap to its opponents, and he scored quite a lot but not quite as much as Ronaldo—suggesting he’s a great scorer but not quite at Ronaldo’s level. With Maradona, he scored a lot less than Ronaldo, but the context is so incredibly different that it’s hard to compare goalscoring. I don’t think Maradona was as good a goalscorer as Ronaldo—and, as you mention, Carlito has had some interesting insights regarding Maradona’s goalscoring—but, given the hugely different contexts, the gap is surely not nearly as big as the raw numbers would suggest. I agree that Ronaldo didn’t have the context that would’ve made a Maradona or Cruyff-like World Cup all that plausible. But there are plenty of examples of great players on lesser NT’s having really impressive performances in the WC (for instance, Stoichkov, Modric, Hagi, Forlan, etc.). And Ronaldo did not produce anything like that either. Maradona and Cruyff produced World Cup performances that were uniquely incredible even given the relatively favorable contexts they had. Ronaldo did not produce World Cup performances that were uniquely incredible given his context. So the World Cup weighs significantly against Ronaldo in an overall comparison with Maradona and Cruyff.
This is a caricatural post. Let me show you what I mean: Impressive header goals: Volleys: Compilations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuQqhbt9Jfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfS5MI_3_WE I took 30 seconds to prove a point. My point is Messi does not innovate relative to himself. He executes actions on the pitch that are in his comfort zone.
I think I recall you making similar arguments to this years ago. And, as then, I think it’s a fair point in some sense. Like most teams do these days, Messi’s teams essentially run certain set plays, such that we see certain types of passes from him a lot—which, as you say, he executes incredibly well. (I note that I disagree somewhat about his NT not executing those same patterns of play—indeed, I’ve personally been in the stadium to watch him make that exact lofted pass from the right wing that you talk about, in the Copa America for Argentina). I don’t think that making passes that are essentially set plays can be defined as some kind of creative genius. Rather, what he’s doing in those situations is more just incredible execution, as you say (note: Obviously he also makes many, many incredible passes that aren’t set plays—and those do involve lots of creativity—and even the set plays require decision-making on who to pass to given what the defense does). But I do also think he displays a kind of creative genius in the more moment-to-moment actions he takes. His dribbling isn’t flashy in the sense of doing tricks. But there’s reasons that great defenders find it really difficult to get the ball off of him. And it has a lot to do with him making spontaneous and unforeseen micro-adjustments to the ball to avoid challenges—things like quick chops to make the ball hop over a challenge, quick touches to nutmeg defenders, etc. This is not something that can be rehearsed, nor is it something that you have virtually any time to think about before you do it. It comes from instinctively knowing what’s coming from defenders and instantly improvising a way to deal with it. He’s definitely uniquely great at that, and I think that that sort of thing definitely goes in the “genius” category. In any event, though, to me none of this really matters much. If a player is effective, I don’t really care how that comes about—at least for purposes of ranking them as players, since obviously there will be styles of play I prefer to watch more than others. If a player scores a lot because they’re just freakishly accurate at shooting the ball, I don’t think that that’s inherently better or worse than someone who is less accurate but scores just as much because they execute lots of unexpected stuff or because they have a massive athleticism advantage. Nor do I think a flashy passer is necessarily better than one that is less flashy but just super accurate, or that a flashy dribbler is necessarily better than one that is less flashy but just as effective. Same goes for comparing players that are effective mainly due to sheer athleticism compared to ones whose effectiveness comes more from technique. To me, that’s all just a matter of preference as a viewer IMO. If you ask me what player I’ve liked watching the most, my answer would be Totti or Ronaldinho, not Messi. But they’re not better players than Messi, because they weren’t more effective.