Sheva has proven everywhere he has been he can impact a game at any time. This is something he has been able to do, since his days at Kiev. Batigol on the other hand was a hot player only for a stretch of yeays. He played on a Fiorentine squad with no one else and when at Roma only proved to be effective for one year on a stacked roster. There is no question Sheva is better, but he will never get the glory cause the Ukraine is not a deminant force in Euro football, where Argentina will always be up there with great players.
shevy just watch him play need i say more. batistuta is a good talent but he just is not consistent enough right now. schevy in the other hand is lifting ukraine to the wc and milan as a scoring machine.
of course he ain't consistent now, he's like 35 now, no? my vote is for batigol...argentina always has top-class strikers...and he stuck out in his prime...
Batigol was at Fiorentina for like 8 years and he owned the league without having a good supporting cast. He was already past his prime when at Roma. Shevchenko has had Seedorf, Kaka, Rui Costa etc, feeding him balls so Bati gets more merit.
Sheva still has work to do to be considered comparable to Batistuta. But he still has time, so we shall see.
This is an interesting question since these are two of my favorite players of all-time. But let's look at the stats of both of them in the only league they both played, Serie A: Gabriel Batistuta 183 Goals / 306 Apps (.598) 1 capocannoniere (1994-95) Andriy Shevchenko 100 Goals / 162 Apps (.617) 2 capocannoniere (1999-00, 2003-04)
Dynamo Kiev wasnt......and they werent knocking off euro giants while Sheva was there.........Roma on the other hand..well I dont need to get into detail
what about Ukraine? have they been to any WC recently? They need to start knocking off some giants huh?
Check out the current WC qualifying standings: http://www.uefa.com/Competitions/WorldCup/Standings/Round=1915/Group=1898.html And if Batistuta played for Ukraine he would have been to as many WC's as Sheva has been to.
no matter who your favorite is, nobody should be using the phrase 'by a mile' in this comparison - they are both wonderful players
is it over? are they qualified yet??? I just figured that if the almighty Sheva could lift Kiev to such hieghts...what has taken him so long to do it with ukraine?
Sheva is not God, and I don't beleive anybody in this thread has said thus. He has gotten Ukraine to the brink of qualification of a major tournament a few times. Losing out in the playoffs to Slovenia and Germany. But he can't do it all by himself. Look at Adriano this year at Inter, he is scoring boatloads of goals but Inter can't win games in Serie A. Is that Adriano's fault? Of course not. He does his job but he needs help from his teammates. If you put Marco Van Basten and Gerd Muller on a team with 9 pub players what position would they achieve in a major league? I'm guessing they are getting relegated.
Blaming Sheva for not doing more for Ukraine is idiotic. Who here can name Ukranian national players? I thought so. Remember, Batigol got relegated with Fiorentina. I give a very slight edge to Sheva only because Batistuta was somewhat known for piling up goals against weaker opposition and slightly disappointing against top teams. However, both were phenomenal players.
Batistuta has an international goals sheet matched by like only five players in the history of the game. He was all money all the time.
sigh I can't make great threads anymore for a while now can I? Gringo batistuta is not in the top 5 or 10 for that matter. Numer Uno is Soltan Ali Daie with 102 goals and counting. I'd like to see bati try to score 6 past the maldives all star keeper. He can't do that but he is still better than sheva and any other striker that has played in serie a for that matter JMO. Adriano is pretty good too... but has a long way to go before reaching the other 2's status.