Harry Boulton, your comparison of the 1992 Premiership (wasn't it still the old First Division back then? 1991-92?) with today's EPL is not convincing. The English League in the early 1990s before it became the EPL had almost no non-British players in it. Of course it was easier for less talented chaps to make it to the top division in that climate. Today the EPL is the world's richest league and the clubs can afford to lure a high number of the world's greatest players. Naturally the level of play has increased almost dramatically to the early 1990s. And don't forget the European ban of the mid-/late-1980s which also played quite a big part in the lower level of play of the English First Division in those days. You should have compared Serie A of the early 1990s (when they ruled European football) with that of today and you would probably arrive at a different result, namely that the quality of play in Italy 15 years ago was superior to that of today's Serie A. The same is probably true for the Bundesliga. Just two examples.
So your major argument is basically that today's players benefit from higher developed training methods and better diets etc. and thus possess a better fitness. But this has already acknowledged by us, it is a total no-brainer. Of course today's players are fitter. But that is the result of something today's players have no influence on, it is something brought to them from outside, it has nothing to do with their skill level on the ball, their vision and football intelligence. These are the factors you have to base the comparisons of players from different generations on, not fitness. It's kinda like claiming a mathematician of today is superior to Einstein because he can calculate intricate formulae much faster with a PC than Einstein ever could standing at the slate with a piece of chalk in his hand. It's a totally pointless way of arguing. And I have some doubt that everyone of today's players is a "better athlete" automatically. Compare Ronaldinho with Eusebio, from what I've seen of Eusebio, he was a real beast. A very powerful, strong player but also exceptionally skilled. I wouldn't bet on Ronaldinho being a superior athlete... Another point you raise is the better equipment today's player can use. Again, pointless. These are outside factors that today's players are not responsible for. Also, a player of the 1950s actually had to possess a better technique exactly because the equipment (shoes and the ball) was inferior to today's equipment. I would love to see players of today playing on a muddy 1950s pitch with inferior footgear and a inferior ball in rainy weather, with a referee not whistling at the slightest contact like today's refs. This equipment thing is actually a point that speaks against your argument. Your point about goalkeepers playing without gloves and thus being worse than today's is about the same theme. Of course more goals were scored partly because in the 1950s and 1960s goalkeepers did not have the advantage of high quality gloves. But we are not arguing that goalkeepers of the past were superior to those of today's. We are talking about field players. And yes, I know you mentioned that to show that scoring goals back in Pele's days was easier. But then no one in here seriously claims that someone like Pele was the greatest player ever primarily because he scored so many goals. This is a mistake often made by Pele distractors. They think people argue Pele is the best because of the 1,200+ goals he scored, but people well-acquainted with football history will never use that as an argument to prove his greatness. Look at Feanor, he is not arguing that Pele was the best ever because the number of goals he scored. That's why it is useless to point to the fact that goalies didn't use gloves at his time. Your argument that everything improves over time is really flawed. The technique of today's players is not automatically better than that of players from the 50s, 60s or 70s. One of the reasons is that players in those days spent more time on the ball when they were kids as football was the only thing they dedicated themselves to in their free time, while today's kids can choose from countless other activities to do other than football. That is a factor you must take into account. For the development of "ball sophistication", nothing is more helpful than spending countless hours on the ball at young age, practicing is the best way to learn how to treat a ball perfectly, and past players - by and large - have a clear advantage to modern players as they simply spent more time on the ball as kids and in their teens.
It has probably never entered your mind that there are people out there that have actually seen the players they are talking about, unlike you. Take this from someone who has 19 complete Pele games plus the essential documentary "Eterno" in his library. Your preconceived ideas about the quality of play in the past are just that, nothing more. I am tired of hearing people talk about things they have not sufficient knowledge of.
And there is another thing, very important in my opinion. The quality of the ball. In 1970, when Pele tried a shot from half the pitch, it was astonishing. So, what's the big idea, someone might say, many players do that today. Well, what's the point : it was almost impossible back in those days to score from such distances because the balls were heavier and their aerodinamic was worse. What do I want to say : the ball of that time demanded a higher degree of skill from the player since it was harder to control. It was heavier and its aerodinamic qualities much inferior to what we have today. Practicising with those kind of balls will make the skills of the player better simple because it was more difficult. And not only that. Today everything is designed to make the player's life easier. One heavy rain and all players start bitching about the pitch. The rule favors the offensive player : no more tackles from behind, for instance. And many other aspects.
And, btw, something I want to add : old games were played at a slower tempo. It's true that present players have superior stamina, but also the fact that there were no substitutions allowed at that time, not even in case of injuries, has something to do with this slower tempo...
One thing I have noticed while watching European Cup games of the early 1970s was that there was a very high pace in games with English or German participation. I urge anyone to watch the 1970 Everton vs. Mönchengladbach game to revise that notion that games were played a lot slower in those days. It might have been the case in warmer regions like Southern Europe and South America, but in the northern regions with colder climate, players were more likely to move faster simply to avoid getting too cold! Often people quote the 1970 World Cup to prove how slow the pace was back in those days but Mexico 70 was an exception due to the kick-off times at noon at very high temperature and the height of the venues. This distorts the picture somewhat today's people have of the pace in the past. Of course today games are generally higher paced, but it still is too general a comment for my tastes. For instance, I would venture to say that the pace of aforementioned Everton-Gladbach game from 1970 (or of a F.A. Cup final of the same era) was easily on par with (if not even pacier than) anything I see in a CL game involving sides from Portugal or Italy.
No they have not, you have skirted round alot of my very valid points. You rather naive assumption that because the game was slower back then automatically makes the players technically better contradicts itself. The game was slower because it had to be. The players lacked the skill, or the equipment, to play long raking balls from one side of the field to the other therefore swithcing the channel of play in an instant? A slower game doesn not make a more technically adept one? And you also appear to be unclear about which era you are referring to? On one hand you talk of Puskas who played in the 50's and 60's and on the other people are talking about Romario, who played predominantly in the 1990's? Atleast I have made my boundaies clear. I refer to modern football being, at the very latest, 1990, although the majorty of my points focus on the 1992/93 season, the first FA Premier League season. Use your head. If athletes in all walks of life have become faster, from hurdlers, to sprinters to swimmers and bowlers, it makes sense that football hasn't stayed in the past. With the increased conditioning of athletes, the inevitability that footallers have become more superior athletes than their predecessors means that the mere suggestion that they are not quicker with or without the ball is without logic or rational thought? Asking for proof of speed is like asking me to prove that man invented the wheel? Were you around to see it invented? Then how do you know he did? Because to think otherwise would be plain naive and, more to the point, stupid. Did they not play in the 1980's? Given that the Premier League has only been around since 1992, that makes them irrelevant to my point. The English game has moved on from the 1980's and the 1990's. Since the induction iof the EPL in 1992 there has been an extremely limited number of south american players who have succeeded. Read my post again. I did not say that. I said the leagues then, as is the case today, were not upto the level of their european counterparts. If you even suggest that the south american game is the same quality of that of La Liga, Serie A or the PL, then you are indeed a fool. Why do the likes of these league a) not only make more money, but b) attract the finest talent from around the globe? The best players play in europe? However, a great many top south american players have come to europe and struggled. The ones I mentioned, which you avoided talking about?. You can include Diego Forlan in that to. He came to Man Utd with a decent price tag and a good reputation and was the very personification of average there. Granted, he had a good season at Seville, but one season does not make a great player. He was great in south america, and average in europe. Go figure. But the argument was never about natural ability or talent, and that is where the lines are being blurred? It was about technical ability. The ability to make the ball do what you want. Pass it accurately over distance and in a small space, shoot powerfully and accurately, run at pace while keeing control of the ball. This requires great technical ability. My obsession with speed is not misplaced, but if you can achieve the same task as someone else while doing it quicker, it makes you more efficient and technically adept at the task. A cave man invented the wheel, the greatest invention ever, does that make him more intelligent than the guy who invented viagra? Or the next cure for cancer? No. Because what we have today allows us to push ourselves further than we could previously and that is why keep trying empahsise that the equipment and technology we have today makes such a difference to the people using it. Stop giving the olden goldies the sympathy vote. "Oh they had this, they never had that". That's missing the point, what they had isn't the issue, it's what they could do. I do believe that the likes of Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos learnt their trade playing with flat balls in dingy back streets or on the beach. If that isn't hard, I don't know what is? Also you seem to be avoiding the point that keepers back then were as good as useless. The only exceptions being Lev Yashin and Gordon Banks and even then none of them could touch someone like Kahn or Schmeichel or even Buffon? The position had not been deveoped to the point that it has been today, most of the time they were static men who made the saves that they could, but not the ones that todays keepers should. We are clearly not going agree here. My opinion that todays players are technically better than those of 40 years ago is based on the fact that football, like every other sport, has developed and that improvement both technically and physically are by-products of that. Exceptions can be used in many different ways, but if you were to take the average, mid table team player of 40 years ago and compare him to somone today like Emre at Newcastle or Gareth Barry at Villa, the difference in technical ability would be astonishing I think. The best player in the worlds play in europe. That is almost a fact and it has almost always been that way, which is why David Beckham, at the age of 31, while still good enough to play MLS soccer, has been over looked by the majority of europes bigger teams while the cream of south american talent has come to Spain and Italy to play, the odd one even to England.
Does the bold part applies to you as well ? I already mentioned this in this thread, I repeat again, maybe this time you'll notice : The fastest sprinter in 1968 ran 100 meters in 9.95 seconds. The fastest sprinter now runs 100 meters in 9.77 seconds So, if those 2 guys start running from one end of the pitch, the guy from Pele's time will be 0.18 seconds behind the guy from our time when they reach the other end of the pitch. And we are talking about professional sprinters here, the ones who improved most. Do you still have the courage to say your points have not been torn to shreds ? Let me break it for you. The required speed today for players is 11 seconds for 100 meters. Gento was runing 100 meters in aprox 10.7-10.8 seconds. Ok, I'll play along. How many premiership players have succeeded outside of England ? Didn't Henry, for instance, suck in Serie A only to be the most prolific forward in Premiership ? Some players flop, some don't. It's a matter of adaptation. Where did players like Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Batistuta came from ? From the moon ? Applying these paradigm to your beloved Premiership, it results that it sucks in comparison with Serie A, because Henry tore England apart, but he struggled in Italy. Isn't that so ? This gem deserves special highlighting. Oh, aren't you an interesting fellow here ? Such a perfect comment... You have reached the pinnacle of mental greatness. The epithome of everything smart. So, great technical ability has nothing to do with talent. Good one. Please, share with us your amazing football knowledge. You come up with the greatest unintentional pieces of humor I have ever read. If you wanna wholeheartedly be funny then just share your honest football views, trust me, we will have a blast laughing at the blah, blah, blah you state. Excuse me because I'm about to sin and refute the utter nonsense displayed in bold. The best players ALWAYS played in Europe... That's probably why the brazilian national team tore everyone apart in the times of Pele. How funny, all its players came from their own league, so much inferior to the fantastic european leagues... That's why Santos managed to score 8 goals against Benfica in 2 games in the Intercontinental from 1962 and 7 goals in 3 games against Milan in the intercontinental from 1963. As you see, you're such knowledgeable. No one matches you football wise as proved above ! All hail you ! Ah, you advise us to study the average player ? But why have you not studied at least the greats ? I seriously doubt you took the average player from 1966 and compared him with the one from 2006. The players today more technical ? The best player today is Ronaldinho and his skills put the ancient skills of Pele into shade. At the last World Cup, Ronaldinho really set the world alight with his turbo speed and insane skill ! He is so much better than the wrinkled prune which was Maradona ! 5 goals and 5 assist from Maradona 20 years ago ? Bah ! They are nothing. Maradona and Pele could have never scored such crazy goals that this new star consistently banged in from all angles, with all sorts possible and an unstoppable assortment of alien-like skill. Ronaldinho was clearly demonstrating how the skills of the new stars got better and better on the world's biggest stage ! He surely ran 30 kilometres every game in the last WC ! And how anyone did not notice that incredible goal scored against France when Ronaldinho blasted a shot straight in the top corner to save his team from elimination ! Probably all these new stars are just misunderstood...
The Ultimate footballer... Well, Pele certainly comes to mind as one of the best to play the game. He overcame the racism that plagued the world. He was largelly the target for many of the European players while he was at any major tournament. He won the World Cup twice, was the heighest goal scorer and changed the game and remains as one of the most popular footballers. He's got a household name and even if people don't know much about football they know who Pele is. At the same time, many of his goals are quite controversial, in the sense that many of the games were planned only for him to get his statistics up. He never played outside of South America professionally. As for Maradonna, he was a great who blew it all away, and although I dislike him, I do not feel my personal opinion gets in the way of the fact that I would not claim him to be the worlds greatest footballer of all time. I would not give him the accolade on the basis that he was an individual player and football is unfortunately filled with them, just because they can play well by themselves does not make them into greats. Zinedine Zidane outstrips him with the silverware and Zidane was one of the class midfield players who really provided service like hardly any other player could. If I had to choose out of the three, I would rather chose Zidane than Maradonna and between Pele and Zidane it would rather be a hard choice but I think as Zidane played in three different leagues with different sets of pace and a totally different football style, Zidane would outweigh Pele. Really though, I feel this is all silly. How can we limit ourselves to one greatest footballer when there have been many footballers who have walked the Earth who have been great within their own weight. Pele played in a different time, when both the football and boots were of inferior quality to the ones that are around now. Perhaps Pele would not be as great as he was during his high, perhaps he would be better.
Mate, I respect your choice of Zidane, but the argument that Pele never played outside of South America really does not stand the critic. Instead of putting again the same argument, I will ask you the next question : The reason why the european leagues attract the best players in the world are only down to economical reason. I guarantee you that if the south american clubs could match the european ones in terms of financial strength, not even a quarter of the players who currently go to Europe would make that move anymore. So, let's play this scenario : last week, LA Galaxy has offered Beckham an insanely big contract, better than any other player has. Other players could notice the big pie which awaits them across the Atlantic and seriously consider a move to MLS. So, if the clubs from MLS will start to give the players better contracts than their european counterparts, thus attracting the cream of the football players towards USA, the quality of MLS would increase. The richer the league, more good players will come. So, if in our imaginary scenario, MLS, by a natural process of evolution, would slowly become the best league in the world, something similar to the mastodont which is the NBA, depleting the european and south-american leagues of their best players, are you going to take anything from Zidane because he did played in France, Italy and Spain and not in this imaginary best league from 2040, MLS ? What would you say if someone tells you "Zidane is not as good as player X because he played in the small leagues from France, Italy and Spain" ?
A couple of points. If modern players are faster and stronger today, and the game is played faster, as most people on this forum have agreed, won't you need to improve your technique to play a faster game as you have less time on the ball? In the end, the debate really comes down to a debate over who had better qualities in the game apart from the physical and strength aspects. However, the difficulty of determining technical superiority among eras renders the comparison impossible. Try to start a debate on who the top 3 most technically gifted players are today. I think there will be quite a diversity of opinion. You cannot really compare technique among eras because technique itself is a many faced beast. There are so many components to technique all of which are prioritised differently in different leagues and eras. So, who are the top 3 best technical footballers in the world?
Of course it's much better now. But that has nothing to do with your arguement. As one poster pointed out, the lack of quality back then compared to now is more so due to the fact that the best teams in your premiereship today buy almost all foreign players. Maybe with the exception of ManU(even though their top goal scorer this season is foreign), Chelsea and Arsenal are all foreign. So it's not because of new technology and better training that the quality of play has increased, rather the quality of play has increased becaused they've brought in quality players.
Feanor mate, I respect your opinion, and I do somewhat agree with it. I wanted to reitirate the point that it's almost impossible to really state who is the worlds best all time player, since all the players listed and those that continue to play, did not play at the same time, they did not play with the same teams, nor with the same equipment. So this whole thread is really useless in divising one player who can top'em all.
The obvious answer is Di stefano... PS: an 11 seconds 100m dash is by no means a standard. the standard is 13.4 seconds and this considered an average yet adequate time
At first glance this sounds logical. But ... The fastest football in the world during the 1950s, 60s and 70s was played where? In England. The style of play was much pacier than in Southern Europe or South America and the players were also by and large stronger physically than their southern European or South American counterparts. BUT did English players in those years necessarily possess a better technique because they played the ball faster than Italians, Spaniards, Argentines and Brazilians? Of course not! So much for that argument ...
What about players from industrialized European countries? I would like to see the Gerrards, Ballacks and van Nistelrooys play a competitive game in 1950s gear with a 1950s ball on a muddy pitch with the rain pouring down. I bet they wouldn't look too good in these circumstances. Gross over generalisation. What is the most basic and important ability a goalkeeper must have? It's the ability to fully concentrate in every of the 90 minutes of a game. Such a high level of concentration allows him to show-off lightning fast reactions. A goalkeeper in 1960 could that just as well as one from 2007. There were far more great goalkeepers than Gordon Banks and Lev Yashin. This shows that you do in fact have not the slightest clue of what you are talking about. You just named the two most prominent goalies you could come up with. Lev Yashin, for a start, was not even the best goalkeeper during his time. He had an awful World Cup in 1962 and was not the best keeper in 1958 and 1966 either. Yashin became a myth in European football because he was the first goalkeeper to participate actively in the built up of his team. In South America, Amadeo Carrizo had already established this more daring way of goalkeeping ten years before Yashin. Here are the names of some excellent goalkeepers from the late-50s/early-60s not named Banks or Yashin: Gregg, Carrizo, Beara, Grosics, Kelsey, Herkenrath, Soskic, Mazurkiewicz, Iribar, Schrojf. Your total lack of respect for the achievements of these goalkeepers is deplorable. Some people act as if today's keepers were error-free supermen compared to the 'useless clowns' of the past. What a misconception. You could compile a highlights reel of Oliver Kahn's greatest blunders and show it to a kid 30 years later, he would be convinced that goalkeeping in our era must have been a total joke, based on the fact that this Oliver Kahn dude was voted World's Greatest Goalkeeper for a number of years. Take this EPL season, you could compile a highlights reel of blunders that would give the unsuspecting a totally wrong idea of the actual level of goalkeeping. I could give you a different example proving exactly the opposite. If you look at the technical abilities of German players today compared to those from the 60s and 70s, an almust unreal drop of quality is noticeable. You may have noticed that right back Arne Friedrich in this 2006 World Cup? Well, this guy would have had no chance breaking into the starting XI of Germany in the 60s, 70s or even the 80s. Yet during the past 4 years, he has collected almost 50 caps! The overall level of technique among German players is without a shadow of a doubt inferior to those German players of the 1970s. According to your theories, it should be the other way round. To illustrate the difference in basic technical skills, watch this video of 60-year-old Franz Beckenbauer competing with 20-year-old Lukas Podolski at target shooting in a TV show back in 2005. EDIT: Just noticed that the video is no longer available.
Who cares..i never did anything but that..never ran track after the ninth grade..im no al bundy..that stat doesnt mean sht to me.. "why would i lie"?...lol
So at 14/15 you ran the 100 faster than most nfl players ever did? And you didnt pursue track and field? Seems crock to me.