Signori did do his bit in creating the goal, deflecting a long ball as the defenders went towards him but that doesn't mean that Baggio's chances of scoring were all clearcut. Salinas for Spain had an easier chance to score than Baggio but his shot went straight into Pagliuca. There were moments where the Italian midfielders had put in the hard work but there weren't any players to finish off the chances like Baggio did. Conte had a chance to score against Spain and what he should have done was that he should have controlled the ball (there were hardly any defenders near him) and possibly dribble past the goalie like Baggio did. Instead, he shot with his first touch, the shot was weak and it went wide. Baggio wouldn't have squandered a chance like that.
spot on,baggio was a great player..the best italian player i have seen.will never forget those goals in 94
I think Sports Illustrated put it best when they said: "His legend was not created by titles, but by moments..."
In Günter Netzer and Wolfgang Overath, Germany had some of the purest top class number 10s one could think of. Both epitomize the classic no. 10 here in Germany.
Overath played in the 1960s and 70s for Cologne and Netzer played in the 60s too but his best football was in 1970s. He played for Borussia Moechengladbach and Real Madrid when he was at his best and for Grasshoppers when he was past his best. Overath played in the 1966, 1970 and 1974 World Cups and Netzer played in West Germany's Euro 72 win. Both Netzer and Overath were fantastic players in their own right and are among Germany's greatest players.
There is really isn’t a new thread specifically dedicated to baggio so I’ve had to resurrect this ancient thread from 2005 There is a new youtuber who has been releasing a lot of rare footage of 80s and 90s players A lot of the titles seem to be click bait to gain more followers but the quality of his footage is without question some of the best on YouTube Above is a 20 min compilation of baggios rare skills,i watched 10 mins and it seem to fly by which usually means your enjoying yourself a lot How great is baggio? I used to think I knew but now I’m not too sure With baggio we have a player who reached an exordinary level playing since 1985 on one knee. Even when baggio was “match fit” he was arguably never able to perform at full capacity since he was 18 years old Honestly I never saw what made maradona in Napoli a higher quality player than prime baggio (diego was a significantly better playmaker but baggio was pretty much better at everything else) I won’t lie I have a soft spot for virtuosos and not many(if any) where better than baggio at fulfilling this role I don’t think baggio had an inferior technical skillset to any top ten all timer If he did it was just by a hairline and due to his glass knees was never able improve on his already phenomenal level Personally I think he had all the tools to become the greatest European player in history (what he showed in that 1.5-2 years between 92-94 is as good a level as any footballer I’ve seen) @Edhardy @leadleader @greatstriker11 @Danko @ko242 @Tropeiro @PuckVanHeel @PDG1978
@carlito86 I agree with you, he had the tools to at least be in the discussion of greatest European player. The injuries and playing through pain really derailed him. He was also somewhat unlucky with coaches and timing generally. Left Juventus just before they entered their golden era, joined Milan as they were leaving theirs etc. Him and Lippi never got along either, and just as he was settling at Inter they signed the same Lippi who was happy to kick him out of Juve. I believe he's amongst the greatest technicians of all time, and he had incredible mentality too to always bounce back from his down moments. In an all time sense it's hard to place him. I personally have him top 20
Well I've already given my take a few times. I see him as the main candidate for the best 1990s player (with a handful contenders but Baggio is in 'pole position' so to speak) and tend to agree with some of your points. His apex coincided with the apex of the Serie A, has a memorable World Cup and was very good in a couple European campaigns. There are however a number of (interrelated) problems. 1) Managers struggled to accommodate him and find a stable place. The list of managers getting tired of him is longer than his trophy cabinet. This was already signaled before he made his move to Juventus. Then Italy manager Azeglio Vicini called him a "mine field". Sven Goran Eriksson understood him as well as anyone, but even he said: "Baggio was an individualist. He played as a rifinitore, a second striker, in a free role behind the advanced striker. He was hard to fit into a system, but you had to give some players free rein to do what they did best - win matches for you." (autobiography, 2013). Michel Platini summarized it in 1993 this way: "He is not a number 10 and not a number 9. He doesn't make a team tick, he doesn't score a lot and needs freedom." Were Juventus, Milan and Inter really worse without him? Alessandro del Piero was perhaps more one-dimensional, less enigmatic, but could be placed in a team structure. 2) Loads and loads of penalties. There are seasons, like the one for Bologna, where over half of his goals are penalties. Also not really a great assister (not for Italy, not in Europe, not in Serie A), suspect long passer and somewhat dependent on set pieces. Even at his peak, he was seen as a man for sporadic moments (which I think is obvious to see if you see the matches where also Cantona is playing, or Zola etc.). There were matches where his stamp was more obvious throughout a game, but those were few and far between. 3) The accolades show an irregular and unreliable pattern. It was always strange how he went from 0 points in 1991 and 1992 BdO to suddenly the winner in 1993. This has possibly a multitude of causes, maybe one of them is his teaming up with IMG in 1992. Then after 1995 he no longer received votes. In his case it does cause problems and increases the fog. 4) He only won four trophies in his career. In three of them he played a minimized/minimal role. The 1994-95 title saw him in only 17 games; he did not play in the final rounds of the 1995 Coppa Italia; the 1995-96 season had also issues and run-ins with Capello. Maybe it's harsh. Trophies are not everything, but this connects back to the question whether Milan/Juventus/Inter did worse without him and missed something crucial. In 1990 Fiorentina reached the UEFA Cup final, but Baggio his own contribution to that was again minimal (only 1 goal in 13 games, for example). I'd say he merits consideration for being the best player of the 1990s, he needs to be part of the benchmark, but at the same time one can wonder how many good Champions League games (other than the memorable substitute appearance against Real Madrid it is rather dissapointing), World Cup games (three? four at best?), European Championship games and UEFA Cup seasons (two-and-a-half I'd say?) he played that did a service to his legend. He did come back, was one of the faces of the Serie A and did do unexpected things, in the good sense of the word.
As mentioned before, this is a good discussion by 'qualified' people, with pros and cons: https://www.acast.com/thetotallyitalianfootballshow/the-divine-roberto-baggio
Fantastic insight from marcotti and the rest of the panel Is 18 months of being a consistent elite game changer too short,I’m not too sure How long exactly was George bests peak for or even Ronaldinho for that matter Historical Revisionists will claim anything up to 5 years.i really don’t want to get into a lengthy discussion about this but suffice to say this is demonstrably false Baggio was a World class player for Fiorentina capable of producing moments of pure genius that not many( if any) in the Europe at the time could replicate His goals vs league champions Napoli,Czechoslovakia in 90 are just a few moments before his peak that point towards him being a fully developed world class player His lengthy injuries in Fiorentina however prevented him from producing the consistent world class performances he was able to for juventus Scoring loads of penalties has only been a negative in this age of advanced statistics and of course amongst some Barcelona fanboys Nobody mentioned it as a negative aspect of Ronaldinhos goal Record (31% of his Barcelona haul were from the spot 29 pens out of 92 goals) maradona scored 41 penalties for Napoli (37% of his total goals and if you include his free kicks/goal from corner against lazio it will jump to around 50%) So I don’t think baggios goals from set pieces was an outlier even within the context of his own era (or even compared to Ronaldinho for Barcelona or riquelme for Villarreal
"18 good months where he was a difference maker and he was very good" for Juventus, Milan and Internazionale combined is seen as "too short" (your words) or a complicating factor in the context of being Italy's greatest player ever or thereabouts. The context is not Ronaldinho, Best, Riquelme, Rivaldo, Totti etc. He's commonly held in a higher regard than many of those anyway (e.g. unlike Rivaldo he actually was often the most productive player of his team in non-penalty goals + assists). See also a similar discussion here: Italian publications have a long tradition of showing the penalties next to the goals scored by a player. It is not something of the past 10 years. When Baggio reached certain milestones, it was again showed by Gazzetta et al. Baggio has three seasons with 10+ non-penalty goals or more in his career. That there are legitimate and less legitimate factors that can override this and push it into the background (for example Ronaldinho his 2004-05 season), I agree. For me there are a few luxury players (Riquelme included, who is not of Baggio his level) who were flat out overrated and overhyped by the smoke machines. His spell at Fiorentina is for me the toughest to rate and indicate a bandwidth for. I will try to explain later.
It's an almost scandalous fact that Baggio didn't play one single Euro game in his entire career and only 16 WC games. Conflicts with coaches (a leitmotiv, unfortunately) and the conviction that he couldnt "coexist" with Zola, Del Piero or Totti because of "excess in quality". Baggio received the following marks in his WC games: Roberto Baggio's ratings in World Cups and Euros 1990-98 1990 World Cup Czechoslovakia 2-0 : 7,50 [1] Uruguay 2-0 : 6,20 Ireland 1-0 : 6,00 Argentina 1-1 pen : 6,30 England 2-1 : 7,30 [1] average : 6,66 1994 World Cup Ireland 0-1 : 5,50 Norway 1-0 : not rated Mexico 1-1 : 4,60 Nigeria 2-1 : 7,20 [2] Spain 2-1 : 7,00 [1] Bulgaria 2-1 : 8,20 [2] Brazil 0-0 pen : 5,80 average : 6,38 1998 World Cup Chile 2-2 : 7,30 [1] Cameroon 3-0 : 5,90 Austria 2-1 : 7,00 [1] France 0-0 pen : 6,40 average : 6,65 Overall average : 6,55
I've collected the complete Euro/World Cup careers in marks (mainly Italian, French, German) for the following players so far: 6,83 Maradona 6,77 Messi 6,73 Iniesta 6,70 Xavi, F. Baresi 6,66 Arnesen 6,63 Mbappé 6,61 Ronaldo 6,59 Zidane 6,58 Platini 6,57 Brolin, Pirlo 6,56 R. Baggio 6,52 Elkjaer 6,41 Modrić 6,35 M. Laudrup 6,33 Gullit 6,30 Kroos 6,28 van Basten 6,25 Cristiano Ronaldo 6,20 H. Larsson, T. Müller 6,16 Ibrahimovic 6,12 Beckham 6,09 Raúl 6,06 Kane I won't tire you with details, but you can find them all here: https://football-ratings.blogspot.com/
I find it strange to see Gullit and Van Basten so low. 1990 was a flop but 1988 and 1992 was the best performing and most technically advanced team. Maybe the average level of opposition? 1988 is per OPTA and sofascore the most 'dominant' winner, in terms of margin to #2. Van Basten team of the tournament in 1988 and 1992 as said, also statistically in the index. In 1990 2 assists and 0 goals in 4 games. MOTM in one. Van Basten had a goal incorrectly ruled out in 1992 vs Russia/CIS and shot crossbar vs Germany. In terms of the ones who played really well over three or more tournaments: I'd say De Bruyne, Ceulemans possibly, Sneijder (2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 KO stages), Robben when fit, Bergkamp, Krol. Maybe also F. de Boer and Koeman when looking at what the index comes up with. A few names to maybe have a look at. edit: also Scifo perhaps. 1984, 1986, 1990, 1994 as good tournaments or something like that (the latter three I think).
I was almost upset when I saw Marco's ratings materialize. Marco van Basten was one one my heroes, from when I saw him shine vs Malmö FF in the 1987 CWC 1/4-final. But here we go, I shouldn't interprete ratings, just publish them. What is sure is that Holland should have played the Euro 1984 (Spain scored twelve goals in their last qualifier vs Malta...) and that van Basten's peak was in the 1992/93 season, right before he had to quit. Marco van Basten's ratings in World Cups and Euros 1988-1992 Euro 1988 Soviet Union 0-1 : 5,30 England 3-1 : 8,40 [3] Ireland 1-0 : 6,20 West Germany 3-2 : 7,50 [1] Soviet Union 2-0 : 7,40 [1] average : 6,96 1990 World Cup Egypt 1-1 : 6,20 England 0-0 : 5,60 Ireland 1-1 : 6,20 Germany 1-2 : 4,70 average : 5,68 Euro 1992 Scotland 1-0 : 6,30 CIS 0-0 : 6,40 Germany 3-1 : 6,80 Denmark 2-2 pen : 4,60 average : 6,02
Ratings from which newspapers? I think this is important information. Certain countries can take it harder/lighter with certain players. I remember how the Brazilian press hated central midfielder Dunga, for example. Or the Argentinian press didn't like Higuain either
It's Gazzetta dello Sport, Corriere dello Sport, France Football (with corrections), L'Équipe, El Mundo Deportivo, Kicker, La Stampa, La Repubblica and - when I could find them - The Guardian, The Times etc. From 1980s WCs, El Gráfico (Argentina) as well.
Neymar's ratings in World Cups 2014-22 2014 World Cup Croatia 3-1 : 7,50 [2] Mexico 0-0 : 6,60 Cameroon 4-0 : 8,10 [2] Chile 1-1 pen : 6,50 Colombia 2-1 : 6,00 average : 6,94 2018 World Cup Switzerland 1-1 : 6,20 Costa Rica 2-0 : 6,10 [1] Serbia 2-0 : 6,60 Mexico 2-0 : 7,50 [2] Belgium 1-2 : 5,30 average : 6,34 2022 World Cup Serbia 2-0 : 6,70 South Korea 4-1 : 7,10 [1] Croatia 1-1 pen : 6,70 [1] average : 6,83
MJWizards https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/the-best-players-of-the-season-2003-4.2109442/page-5#post-39577321