Perfomance at the WC: Maradona `1986 vs Messi 2022?

Discussion in 'The Beautiful Game' started by Gregoire1, Dec 20, 2022.

?

Better perfomance

  1. Messi 2022

    8 vote(s)
    13.8%
  2. Maradona 1986

    50 vote(s)
    86.2%
  1. lessthanjake

    lessthanjake Member+

    May 9, 2015
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    #1126 lessthanjake, Feb 8, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2023
    I’m often confused by this “stat padding” concept.

    Is the suggestion just that there were some weak teams in La Liga that Messi naturally scored/assisted a good bit against because they were weak? Because if that’s the suggestion, then it’s true of pretty much every all-time great, because every player plays in a domestic league and every domestic league has relatively weak teams that are easier to score against. And I think you’ll find that those players generally did score/assist quite a lot against those weak teams. Like, are we supposed to think that Pele didn’t score/assist lots of pretty meaningless goals against weak teams, when he did things like score over 1.5 goals a game in a league season in 1958 where Santos won games 10-0, 9-1, 8-1, 8-1, 7-1, 7-1, 7-3, 6-0, 6-1, 6-1, 6-2, and 5-0? Or that he didn’t score/assist lots of pretty meaningless goals against weak teams in a season where he scored 1.8 goals a game in a relatively short league season in 1961 where Santos won games 10-1, 7-1, 5-1, 6-1, 5-1, 6-1, 7-2, and 6-2? Every great player on a great team ends up racking up tons of goals/assists in blowouts against bad teams.

    Is the suggestion more precisely that Messi had a particularly easy time against those weak domestic league teams because his team was so good? That seems like a more valid point, since Barcelona really was a great team. But that’s certainly also true of most other all-time great goalscorers like Pele, Puskas, etc., essentially all of whom played on dominant teams (and, in fact, often had teams that peaked out for several years at notably higher team scoring per game than Messi’s Barcelona ever did—indicating the team was even better compared to their weak league opponents than Barcelona was).

    Or is the suggestion that despite not necessarily having a bigger team advantage against weak teams than other great players have had, Messi simply had a particular personal mentality of wanting to just score endless goals in games against weak opponents that his team had already won much more than other great players did? Because that seems fairly implausible to me, given the…shall we say…energy conservation that Messi often obviously engages in in those matches.

    __________________________

    EDIT: One quick thing I’ll add is that perhaps the suggestion isn’t really about “stat padding” against weak opponents, but more about not dominating scoring/assisting against the very strongest opponents (i.e. a team like Real Madrid). For one thing, though, that’s not really about “stat padding” against minnows at that point, unless you define like every La Liga team besides Real Madrid as a minnow. I’d also note that Messi often plays a materially deeper role in those games, because his midfield needs more help in order to control the game like Barcelona always wanted to, so Messi’s raw stats will naturally be lower. And this was more true as time went on and Barcelona got much less good in the midfield and therefore needed more help—which is a good part of explaining why he didn’t score nearly as much against Real Madrid in later years.
     
  2. Doc_Exec

    Doc_Exec Member

    Jul 7, 2004
    Good to see your explanation of why Messi performs so well against minnows and much less so against the likes of Real Madrid. Is it unusual to be almost 3 or 4 times worse or is that fairly standard?
     
    SayWhatIWant repped this.
  3. Sexy Beast

    Sexy Beast Member+

    Dinamo Zagreb
    Croatia
    Aug 11, 2016
    Zagreb
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Croatia
    No.. its to demonstrate what small sample size can do within the performance of the same player. Cherry picking is comparing sample size of 47 games with 6.

    Milito scores 2 goals per ucl final. He is the ebst of all

    Its not contrary to the evidence. Messivsronaldo has stats vs top 3, top 5, top 10, bottom 10, bottom 5 teams..

    Messi scores more against weaker opponents, but fractionally, within the reason that a consistent performer will score more goals vs weaker teams. Hey surprise.
     
  4. Doc_Exec

    Doc_Exec Member

    Jul 7, 2004
    You seem to be hung up on one particular table. I did not claim anything about R9 using that table (precisely because of the small no. of games played by him relative to Messi).
     
  5. Sexy Beast

    Sexy Beast Member+

    Dinamo Zagreb
    Croatia
    Aug 11, 2016
    Zagreb
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Croatia
    Youve shared it with an intent to discredit Messi..

    Ive nevery cherry picked Messi's first 20 el classico games to prove a point, that would be wrong of me, but I simply pointed out a fallacy in your argument. Whoever did the table has had a clear agenda against Messi.
     
  6. Doc_Exec

    Doc_Exec Member

    Jul 7, 2004
    I shared it as part of a post addressing one person saying Messi is a normal player built up solely by the media and another saying that he has usurped everyone in the history of football, both being gross exaggerations that cannot be supported by data.
     
    SayWhatIWant repped this.
  7. Sexy Beast

    Sexy Beast Member+

    Dinamo Zagreb
    Croatia
    Aug 11, 2016
    Zagreb
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Croatia
    The data youve shared only puts Pele ahead of Messi anyway.. i dont see anyone saying Messi has surpassed Pele by far. But there are in the league of their own. Quite clearly.

    Messi btw has the most goals against english top 6 while never playing in epl. Atletico, Sevilla, Real, Valencia, Athletic Bilbao, Vilarreal, etc.. all of the best Spanish teams in the last 20 years are amongst his best victims.

    And again. To reduce Messi to just goals and assists is ridiculous.
     
  8. moodiomemo

    moodiomemo Member

    sao paulo fc
    Jul 15, 2007
    Club:
    Sao Paulo FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    AND YOU YOUNG GUYS DO NOT TRYING TO "DISCREDIT" PELE CRUYFF MARADONA PLATINI ZIDANE VAN BASTEN PUSKAS ETC WITH A LOT OF BULLSHIT INFORMATION - NUMBERS NUMBERS AND NUMBERS??????
    AGAINST THE OTHERS OK .
    AGAINST MESSI CANNOT DO IT BECAUSE IS A SIN?????
    OK.
    RIGHT
     
    carlito86 repped this.
  9. moodiomemo

    moodiomemo Member

    sao paulo fc
    Jul 15, 2007
    Club:
    Sao Paulo FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    WAITING TILL NOW 2 PAGES LATER YOU PUT MESSI DRIBBLING AS RIVELLINO OR MAKE A GOAL BETTER THAN RIVELLINO HERE
    LISTEN
    I NOT WROTE CR7 MARADONA PELE ETC
    RIVELLINO
    PLZ SHOW TO ME
     
  10. Sexy Beast

    Sexy Beast Member+

    Dinamo Zagreb
    Croatia
    Aug 11, 2016
    Zagreb
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Croatia
    Also showing that Mesis has scored a ridiuclous amount of goals against weak team like Eibar is not an indication of Messi stat padding because for every Eibar there is a team of the same statue that Messi hasnt scored ridiculous amount of goals because Eibar happened to be the team that Messi has had few great performances against.

    Its not like Messi was waiting Eibar each season to explode. It simply happened liek that

    Thats statistical distribution within the reason.

    When you look at bigger picture, you see that Messi has normal distribution of goals against the difficulty of an opponent.
     
  11. lessthanjake

    lessthanjake Member+

    May 9, 2015
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    #1136 lessthanjake, Feb 8, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2023
    Just to add more about this “stat padding” concept, @Doc_Exec we should be careful to realize that league seasons do involve tough games against weaker opponents. A huge part of winning the league is doing well in those games, and doing so is often not at all stat padding. It’s obviously not “stat-padding” to get two goals in a 2-1 victory against a weak team, for instance.

    So how should we define “stat padding”? There’s no perfect way of doing it, but I think it seems reasonable to define it as Messi’s scoring in a game Barcelona won by at least 4 goals where the opponent did not get a Champions League slot in the league that year (i.e. a blowout against a much weaker team). Of course, this is a sample of games we’d expect Messi to score quite a lot more than normal in. After all, it’s literally a sample of Barcelona’s easiest/best games, and they probably wouldn’t win by that much without Messi doing really well. But exactly how much has Messi scored in those games? How much did he score outside of those games? And how do these compare to other all-time great goalscorers?

    Well, by my count, in 13 league seasons for Barcelona starting in 2008-2009, Messi played in 85 league games like that. Messi scored 147 goals in those games (1.73 goals per game). As expected, that’s certainly higher than his average goalscoring rate. However, that still leaves him with 296 goals in 357 other league games (0.83 goals per game) in that timeframe. How does this compare to other all-time great goalscorers? Well, let’s take Cristiano Ronaldo, as an example. In his 9 seasons at Real Madrid, he played in 58 league games like that. He scored 121 goals in those games (2.09 goals per game). That leaves him with 190 goals in 234 other league matches for Real Madrid (0.81 goals per game). So Ronaldo scored more than Messi in the easy games, and scored a bit less otherwise. And, of course, Ronaldo’s time in Real Madrid coincides with his absolute goalscoring peak, while we took a longer time period for Messi, so Ronaldo’s scoring outside of those sorts of matches is surely even lower over a more comparable time period. And this is not to pick on Ronaldo specifically. He’s just another truly great goalscorer that I have this data on. And the fact is that the data shows that Messi “stat padded” less and scored more outside of blowouts against much weaker teams. And I suspect you’d find something similar about other great scorers too—great players score quite a lot in games against weaker teams. Messi is not really a “stat padder” compared to others. @Sexy Beast
     
  12. moodiomemo

    moodiomemo Member

    sao paulo fc
    Jul 15, 2007
    Club:
    Sao Paulo FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    THATS THE MAIN POINT I WAS WAITING YOU COMMENT HERE
    WHOS THE MESSI OPPONENTS???
    CRUYFF HAD BECKENBAUER NETZER JAIRZINHO RIVELLINO KEEGAN
    PELE ILL NOT COMMENT - SIVORI PUSKAS DI STEFANO BOBBY CHARLTON ETC
    MARADONA HAD PLATINI GULLIT PAOLO ROSSI ETC
    AND MESSI
    WHO WAS THE GREATEST MESSI OPPONENT???? CR7??? ARE YOU SERIOUS THIS GUY IS A GOD TOP OF THE TOPS AND THE MICHELANGELO PERFECTION
    I HAVE A FRIEND AND HE HAVE MY AGE
    HE ASKING ME TO WATCH ALL THE BARCELONA GAMES PEPE GUARDIOLA PERIOD WITH MESSI IN HIS PRIME - 2008-2011
    I COLLECT SOCCER/FOOTBALL GAMES SINCE I START HERE IN BIGSOCCER IN 2007
    I CANT FELL NOTHING WATCHING THAT GAMES WITH THAT STYLE OF PLAY BECAUSE TO ME REPRESENT NOTHING
    HERE IN BRAZIL WE HAVE A EXPRESSION SAYS - KICKING DEAD DOG - CHUTANDO CACHORRO MORTO
    THIS MEANS FOR EXAMPLE MESSI BARCELONA DO NOT HAD AN REAL OPPPONENT TO CHALLENGE AND THATS THE REASON THEY WIN A LOT OF TROPHIES
    BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAD A TEAM THE SAME LEVEL. THIS SHOW FOOTBALL LEVEL DECREASE A LOT
    IN 1992-1993 THE CRUYFF BARCELONA DREAM TEAMS WAS REAL (WITH MICHEL ZAMORANO PROSI HAGI ETC) MILAN(GULLIT VAN BASTEN) JUVENTUS(BAGGIO) MARSEILLE(WADDLE PAPPIN) ETC ETC ETC
     
    carlito86 repped this.
  13. lessthanjake

    lessthanjake Member+

    May 9, 2015
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    #1138 lessthanjake, Feb 8, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2023
    I think you’re misunderstanding. It’s often not a question of performing “well” or not. It’s that his role is often not the same in the tougher games, and that became more and more true as time went on. You see, Barcelona always wants to play a particular style where they control possession. The better the opponent, the harder that is to do, though, since your midfielders may not be better than the other teams’ midfielders. But Barcelona still wants to play that way, so the way that they continue achieving that possession control in those games is by overloading the midfield more than in other games. This means Messi drops even deeper and and even more often into the midfield in order to give Barcelona superiority of numbers in the midfield. This allows them to generally keep asserting midfield control against really good teams, but it makes it substantially harder for Messi to score, since his role and positioning is different and even further from the goal. This tactical change became more pronounced as the years went by, since you are more likely to need a midfield overload to retain control in those games when your midfield no longer includes prime Xavi and Iniesta. And that naturally led to Messi scoring less in matches like the Clasico in later years.

    Crucially, this isn’t really about performance quality exactly, because the role is different. It’d be somewhat like comparing Antoine Griezmann’s performances in WC 2022 and in World Cup 2018 (or Euro 2016) and saying Griezmann was way worse because he didn’t score a goal in WC 2022. It’s true he didn’t score, but his role was completely different (and to be fair, perhaps even more different in that case than what I’m referring to with Messi), and he actually played extremely well in that role despite not scoring. Making some simplistic analysis like this to come to the opposite conclusion would be dumb. Which isn’t to say Messi’s always had great games each time against the best opponents—obviously that’s not the case for him or anyone. But the simplistic analysis of comparing goal contributions in these games in large part conflates a tactical difference with a difference in performance quality.
     
  14. lessthanjake

    lessthanjake Member+

    May 9, 2015
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    #1139 lessthanjake, Feb 8, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2023
    I know you’re trolling, but I think you’ll find that Messi’s Barcelona won a lot of league titles during a time period where Real Madrid was clearly the other best team in the world (and indeed, Real Madrid won the Champions League 4 times), and even Atletico Madrid made two Champions League finals during that time. There was surely no harder domestic league in the world to win than La Liga during that time period, considering who you had to finish ahead of.
     
  15. Doc_Exec

    Doc_Exec Member

    Jul 7, 2004
    I don't think this can be claimed based on the data. Pele is clearly ahead in every aspect. However, you discredited his stats saying who knows what has been added to it.

    In my reply to @PDG1978, I wrote that Messi has put up data, which if you remove Pele from the equation, can be argued to be superior than almost anybody else's (not that I have seen data from every player). However, using data, it is also possible to argue in favour of other players depending on the performance metric chosen. This is what you guys do, i.e., pick a metric that shows Messi being better at something than his compatriots. So, yea, it is not unequivocal that Messi is in league of his own relative to other greats although there can be arguments made in his favour using several metrics.

    We should use ball progression stats then if that suits his dataset better. However, that would entail gross extrapolations for past greats. :oops:
     
  16. lessthanjake

    lessthanjake Member+

    May 9, 2015
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    #1141 lessthanjake, Feb 8, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2023
    Yeah, you are right that it’s impossible to know ball progression stats (among other things) for past greats.

    But what we do know about Messi, based on data is: (1) Messi is clearly one of the top few goalscorers of all time; (2) Messi is pretty clearly the best provider of the final ball of his era (with only a few even remotely close); (3) Messi is pretty clearly the best player of his era at progressing the ball to more dangerous areas in the attacking half through passing and dribbling; and (4) Messi is pretty clearly the best player of his era at directly creating danger through dribbling.

    We know all of that from hard data, much of which I’ve provided in this thread. And even though we don’t have the same kind of data for past players, I don’t really know that there’s anyone else in history that could even plausibly lay claim to combining all of those things and to have done so as clearly as Messi. For instance, it’s not difficult at all to imagine complex stats might show Maradona being able to lay claim to #2, #3, and #4 (though who knows? Would he be clearly better statistically at the final ball than Platini and Zico? Unclear). But Maradona was merely a good goalscorer, not one of the top few of all time. Same with Cruyff, except maybe I’d say he’s closer to being a truly great goalscorer, depending on what we think of the quality of the 1960s and 1970s Eredivisie. Puskas can plausibly lay claim to #1, #2, and maybe even #3 from what I’ve been reading of Trachta’s posts, but I don’t really think anyone would say Puskas could lay claim to #4. Pele is probably the only other one that could potentially lay claim to all of these. He’s definitely got #1 locked down. And I think he was really good at the other stuff (i.e. stuff relating to passing and dribbling), but was he the very best of his era at that stuff, let alone clearly so? I don’t know. Was he a clearly better dribbler than Garrincha, Eusebio, or Jairzinho? I’m not so sure, but maybe? Were there others in his era better than him at providing the final ball? Maybe not. He certainly had tons of assists, but I don’t know if he was at the greatest-final-ball-provider-of-his-era level. I’ve seen footage of quite a lot of his assists/passes, and to me it doesn’t quite look like a best-of-his-era level final-ball provider, and more resembles the final-ball provision of someone like Thierry Henry (who himself did rack up tons of assists and was very very good at this, but just not the best of his era). But there’s limited footage (for both Pele and others of his era) from which to come to any conclusion, so it’s hard to say for sure and the lack of data in past eras is relevant here. I do think there’s a very good chance Messi is the only person to meet the above criteria though.

    And to me that’s strongly suggestive of Messi being the best player of all time, since those areas pretty much encompass the main aspects of attack in football, and I think Messi very likely outstrips his peers in these areas more than anyone else did to their peers.

    Potential Reasons this Conclusion Could be Wrong & Thoughts on Those

    Of course, though, it’s possible someone who doesn’t meet all that criteria could be greater. For instance:

    - Maybe one of them is so much better than Messi at one or two of these things that they’re still better overall despite not meeting all four criteria. I think that’s unlikely, given that Messi was clearly the best of his era at all but goalscoring and even there he’s still clearly one of the top few all time. So it’s hard for me to think anyone else could way outstrip him in one of these areas. But it’s possible, and you can make a statistical case for it with Pele and perhaps Puskas.

    - Maybe someone wasn’t clearly the best of his era at one of the above, but only because they had someone idiosyncratically good in their era at that area of play. For instance, Messi isn’t clearly the best goalscorer of his era because his era happens to have Ronaldo, and maybe one might say someone like Pele wasn’t clearly the best dribbler of his era but only because you think, perhaps, Garrincha is a notably better dribbler than anyone of Messi’s era was, and therefore any inference that Messi being clearly the best of his era at dribbling indicates being better than Pele at it isn’t logical. Again, it’s certainly possible, but I don’t tend to think it is particularly likely that other great players in general were better in past eras when substantially fewer people played football and infrastructure for the game was substantially less good. It just seems statistically more likely that that’s not the case, and so my baseline assumption is that it isn’t. Though, again, it’s certainly quite possible, particularly if talking about just one or two idiosyncratically talented players in an earlier era. However, while that’s logically possible, I also don’t know that the eye test + raw goal totals backs up that anyone else would have claim to meeting all of this criteria in any era. For instance, as I mentioned, my own eye test tells me Pele probably wouldn’t be clearly the greatest final ball provider in any era, so that assessment isn’t about some other particularly talented passer existing in his era. And neither is an assessment that Maradona and Cruyff aren’t quite there in goalscoring.

    - Or maybe Messi is the most talented player because he meets all four of those criteria, but he’s not the greatest because of superiority of another player in team achievements/success/etc. That’s certainly a reasonable opinion to have, particularly with regards to Pele, I think, in light of Pele’s NT achievements. Or it’s plausible to say it about Maradona just on the basis of his WC 1986 being so good.

    - And finally, this criteria I gave is centered around attackers in particular, so obviously one might be free to think a CM or defender or GK or something is better and the above criteria wouldn’t be the way to measure that player. But I think most people don’t consider those players as having a claim to being the greatest ever, since we kind of all recognize that the best attackers are more valuable.

    - EDIT: There’s also another potential counter argument, which would be to say that that criteria misses defensive contribution, which isn’t particularly important or high-impact for an attacker but could in theory tip the scales. There, Messi obviously isn’t great and others like Cruyff certainly may have been better contributors, but I did do some statistical analysis in this thread showing that Messi is actually legitimately good at winning the ball back high up the pitch, compared to other attackers. So I don’t know that other attackers could derive that much of an overall defense-related boost over Messi, though, again, it’s plausible.
     
    Valudiaz, Gregoire1, Danko and 2 others repped this.
  17. moodiomemo

    moodiomemo Member

    sao paulo fc
    Jul 15, 2007
    Club:
    Sao Paulo FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    HEY PAL
    LISTEN
    IM NOT TROLLING NOBODY AND THATS NOT MY INTENTION HERE
    I DONT LIKE MODERN FOOTBALL. IS VERY SIMPLE. THE FOOTBALL PLAYED LAST 20 YRS IS HORRIBLE , AWFUL , MECHANIC , CREATED TO MAKE MONEY AND MIDIA
    I WAS CREATED WATCHING SOCRATES ZICO REINALDO CARECA DALGLISH KEEGAN ARDILLES KEMPES FRANCESCOLI RUBEN PAZ ALZAMENDI BUTRAGUENO ETC ETC ETC
    SORRY YOULL NEVER UNDERSTAND
    I CANT ACCEPT MESSI SUPERIOR THAN PELE CRUYFF MARADONA ETC
    SORRY BUT I CANT ACCEPT THIS
     
  18. moodiomemo

    moodiomemo Member

    sao paulo fc
    Jul 15, 2007
    Club:
    Sao Paulo FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    TO MY GENERATION PUT MESSI AHEAD MARADONA PELE ETC IS NOT ACCEPTABLE
     
  19. Sexy Beast

    Sexy Beast Member+

    Dinamo Zagreb
    Croatia
    Aug 11, 2016
    Zagreb
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Croatia
    There are no video records of a half of games he played, and even that other half is a poor resolution and cropped out in a way that sometimes one can barely recognize what is going on on the pitch. And then you imply that those stats can be claimed with any kind of certainty? it is an estimation at best, especially for assists.. quite likely overestimation.

    Yes, gods know what kind of assists he was added, deflections, dummies, maybe even preassosts, etc. Its not like they had opta to count them. Did they even record assists in 60s? It was probably not even a thing.

    So those stats dont mean much. The only way you can judge them is the way lessthanjack described. Its virtually a thought for thought my process on coming to the same conlcusion. It's unlikely that anyone has ever been better than Messi. Only Pele seems to have a good enough case but we will never know for sure.
     
  20. lessthanjake

    lessthanjake Member+

    May 9, 2015
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    #1145 lessthanjake, Feb 8, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2023
    I think discussion of Messi as not being “creative” only really makes sense if we define creativity in a very narrow way. Messi doesn’t often do dribbling tricks, and or flicks with random body parts or things like that. He’s stylistically not that type of player. And, of course, those sorts of things are creative things that players do. For instance, anyone would say that Ronaldinho was a really creative player.

    But I think Messi is really obviously an extremely creative player, if we just understand what he’s constantly managing to do. Remember, this is a player who is the greatest dribbler of his era (and perhaps ever), despite not being the fastest player or the strongest, or even really having the best acceleration (and certainly not in his older years, where he’s nevertheless still remained a ridiculous dribbler). So then how is he beating defenders so often? Obviously, he’s got incredibly close control of the ball while dribbling, but we are talking about the world’s best defenders here. They can still reliably kick a ball away that’s close to someone’s feet. Close control is not even close to enough to be this good. The only way for him to beat defenders so much better than anyone else is to really frequently do things defenders are not expecting. Which is to say, almost by definition, he beats them with creativity. He doesn’t do that with elaborate tricks or flicks. Instead, he largely does it with quick, subtle micro-adjustments of the ball that defenders don’t expect. For instance, when defenders go in for a slide tackle on Messi, you often see the ball somehow just hopping over their legs. How is that? Well, Messi is doing things like chopping the ball to make it hop up in the air over the defenders’ legs. This is a very creative solution that the defender was clearly not expecting. And he does stuff like this all the time. It is not possible to be such a great dribbler without being incredibly creative, because it is not possible to beat world-class defenders if they know what you are going to do. Messi’s dribbling creativity just looks different than other peoples’. He doesn’t do their creative flicks and tricks, but they also don’t do his creative micro-adjustments.

    So that’s dribbling. As for passing, I suppose there’s an argument that he doesn’t do as many flashy things like rabonas, outside the boot passing, etc., and that a good bit of his passes come from set, practiced plays. But the bare reality is that he’s really often picking out visionary passes that no one expected, and that’s a huge reason why his final balls are so successful. We just saw a great instance of this in the World Cup against the Netherlands. That is creativity.
     
  21. lessthanjake

    lessthanjake Member+

    May 9, 2015
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    #1146 lessthanjake, Feb 8, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2023
    I really like Iniesta, but there is essentially no area in which Iniesta is a better creator than Messi. Iniesta was an amazing player, but he was not anywhere near Messi at providing the final ball (except perhaps in the very early years before Messi had fully developed in this regard). I hate to say it, but there’s really just no comparison. Messi’s range of passing, vision, and accuracy/weighting is just definitely better. No shame in that for Iniesta, of course, since Messi is pretty clearly the best of his era at this. And to the extent you’re talking about creating with dribbling, obviously Iniesta was amazing at creating danger with dribbling, but he’s definitely not Messi at that. Messi is an unambiguously better creator than Iniesta. To the extent Iniesta had anything over Messi as a player, it was just having a notably better motor, such that he could run around a defend a lot more than Messi, while also offering a diet version of Messi’s dribbling and passing (but, of course, not offering the scoring essentially at all).

    Except that Messi is a better dribbler than Robben (as great as prime Robben was at it), a substantially better creator than Iniesta (see above), and on top of that is one of the greatest goalscorers of all time (which neither of those two were even remotely close to being). So he’s substantially better than this hypothetical combination of these players. And that’s leaving aside the fact that combining the best aspects of two all-time-greats that aren’t in the GOAT debate would obviously create a player better than either of those two players.
     
  22. Sexy Beast

    Sexy Beast Member+

    Dinamo Zagreb
    Croatia
    Aug 11, 2016
    Zagreb
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Croatia
    I used to say Msssi is like David Silva, Hazard and Aguero combined together, except better.

    It's truly remarkable what we were lucky to witness for 15 years.
     
  23. Dominican Lou

    Dominican Lou Member+

    Nov 27, 2004
    1936 Catalonia
    I get what you're getting at and yes, they're both exaggerations, but I think one of them is more egregious. I think when you put numbers into it, it becomes more real. When I hear that a player is "ten times" better than another one, I imagine scoring 10 times more goals, dribbling 10 times the number of players, etc. So unless I'm comparing an all-time great to a bench or second division player, I'm careful about putting numbers to express how much better one player is over the other. Saying something like "he's way better" leaves more room for interpretation.

    A pretty good example of Messi's greatness is the amount of times he gets compared to an alien by fans, commentators, former players, managers, etc. I can't remember another player getting these comparisons. Watching him in his prime, I certainly felt like I was seeing things not seen before. I've honestly never experienced this before with any other player. The only one that comes close was Ronaldo in his one season at Barcelona.

    And yeah, being at arguably the best club in history certainly helped his numbers. But if you ignore the numbers and just watch his individual performances, you come to the same conclusion. Utter disbelief at the level of ball control, accuracy in passing, decision making, etc.

    An Argentinian contemporary of Maradona (which is saying something) said it best. Something like, "Maradona in 1986 was the peak of footballing performance. But Messi has been having a June 1986 for 6 years now."
     
  24. Dominican Lou

    Dominican Lou Member+

    Nov 27, 2004
    1936 Catalonia
    I stand by my statement.

    Scoring is the only dimension that Ronaldo outshines Messi in and even there, it's only by a little. And of course, it's due to Ronaldo's much greater desire for individual glory. He wants goals more than anyone and he's a great player so he gets them in bunches.

    But in every other area, I see Messi as very much ahead of all the players I mentioned and for the reasons I mentioned in my post above.
     
  25. SayWhatIWant

    SayWhatIWant Member+

    Jan 10, 2015
    Yeah, this is so far into the realm of fanaticism, I don't know what to say. If we have stooped so low as to psychoanalyze Ronaldo vs. Messi and make a determination that Ronaldo's propensity for goals is the result of some moral inferiority to Messi, I don't know what to say. That Ronaldo's goalscoring ability is reduced to him "wanting goals more than anyone" isn't a serious assessment.
     

Share This Page