I remember reading Maradona's biography, at the end he lists his greatest ever players and for Baggio he describes him as an amazing player who never fully took off. Would you say that was an accurate description? In terms of talent I would say he was no inferior to Maradona, like Maradona he had amazing close control and excellent touch he was also an excellent passer and a superior goal scorer than Maradona. The most technical player in European history along with Zidane. He's probably scored the most solo goals I've ever seen in Serie A. Juventus suddenly became great as soon as he was sold, why was that?
AC Milan won the scudetto the season baggio was sold by Juventus (1995/96) Roberto Baggio played for AC Milan in 1995/96
Injuries and clash with coaches Even so, Baggio has a great career (ballon d'or, world cup silver ball, etc.). Baggio was a very technical player, who in several seasons reached, or almost reached, double figures in goals and assists, great free kick taker etc. Maybe his career lacked a MVP in a major tournament (world cup, ucl, euro).
The missed penalty just overwhelmed his reputation. And today, 30 years later, he's remembered as that guy who was brilliamt but got overshadowed by a missed penalty. Very cruel stuff and the footballing world should've done a better job of communicating his brillance to the younger gen.
Football has 150 years of history. Millions of footballers passed through it. Baggio is considered top 50. I think he has taken off and flown very high.
Yeah, I think both his peak is recognized as one of the highest of the early-mid 90s and his longevity isn't too bad compared to his peers. What's so amazing is that if Italy had won in 1994, that campaign would've gone down as one of the best ever as well, and Baggio would probably be knocking on like top 25-30 door.
I don’t know how seriously you want to take this award and obviously @SayWhatIWant will be delighted that I am posting this UEFA did a poll back in 2004 (the year Roberto Baggio retired) The poll was a vote on Europe’s greatest players of the preceding 50 years Zinedine zidane was voted first place Franz beckenbaur was second Johan cruyff was third And Roberto baggio was 24th Many of his contemporaries/semi contemporaries finished ahead Be it Van basten(4th) Gullit(13th) Matthäus(15th) Riijkard(21st) Many others did not Micheal laudrup(25th) Ronald koeman(26th) Gheorghe Hagi(28th) You are all free to disagree but it definitely gives us a view on how the public(150,000 of them) viewed iconic European stars back in 2004 (including Roberto baggio who like I said retired the exact same year the poll was taken) More striking than Roberto baggios placement is that Thierry Henry is not mentioned at all and Thierry Henry was literally at his very peak at this point Thierry Henry had just come of 2002/03 and 2003/04 and was not even viewed as a top 50 all time European player at that point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Golden_Jubilee_Poll Luis figo was Raul was David Beckham was Ruud Van nistelrooy was It seems public perception was not feeding into the premiership hype machine back in 04 Of course by 2004 Van nistelrooy was already a 2x champions league top Scorer Raul was also a 2x champions league top scorer by the time this poll was taken He scored in a final and was voted the best forward in 3 consecutive champions leagues etc Beckham was the best on a treble winning team which obviously includes a champions league(9 assists in that campaign) How/when did Henry 2002-2004 get propelled into the untouchable realm?
The Arsenal fans social media hype machine, honestly But yeah, I think if players like Beckham was getting in the list, it makes a lot of sense for Henry too.
He just seemed to fall off hard after 1994, I know he won the scudetto then next year but he wasn't the same. It's criminal how he just won a pathetic 56 caps for Italy whereas Del Piero got 91. He didn't even make the squad for Euro 96, I know Italy had a lot of good creative forwards in the 90s but at no point should Zola have started in front of him. He was no inferior to Zidane in my opinion, his 1994 World Cup performance was better than Zidane's WC 2006 and Euro 2000.
Tbf, including Baggio did not mean Del Piero or Zola had to be omitted, given thse those two were playing very well in the mid-late 90s. Maybe it was a personal reason by Sacchi, I don't know.
Yes he said Sacchi and Lippi were jealous of him. What Italy would do to have a forward of Baggio, Del Piero, Zola, Mancini or even DiCanio's quality today! Italy should have won something in the 90s.
I think their squad in '98 and '00 was stronger than in '96 and arguably than '06 even. They lost in the closest of margins in '98 and '00 both times to France. In an alternative universe, we would view Zidane and Totti very differently.
For the same reason you dont rate Salah 2017/18. Majority of people take time to give credit.. probably at the time they thought: "premier league is not what it used to be. It was tougher back then. Back then players like x, y, z used to play and now the best defender is this guy..." Sounds familiar? Predictable. Normal
Yes the 98 squad was very good especially with Vieri up top, he was on fire. Cesare Maldini bottled it by playing Del Piero against France even though he was coming of an injury and Baggio was playing well. The same Del Piero missed some easy chance against France in Euro 2000, those misses were far more costly than Baggio's penalty miss, he cost them the match. What people don't remember is that even if Baggio scored that penalty all Brazil had to do was score the next one and they would be champions. If you put Baggio in Del Piero's place in both 98 and 2000, despite being older and past his best the chances of Italy winning goes up. It's criminal how underused Baggio was for Italy. He should have been a starter in the 1990 World Cup, he was already 23. What kind of idiot pairs Vialli with Schillaci? Two poachers with no creativity or ball skills. Talk about cowardly tactics.
I think the Golden Jubilee votes had come in before the end of 2003, or at least early in 2004 uefa.com - UEFA (archive.org) rsssf shows a longer list of the results (that arose from voters choosing 10 players for each decade, from shortlists of 50), with Henry in 60th place UEFA Awards (rsssf.org) 1 Zinédine Zidane (France) 123,582 2 Franz Beckenbauer (West Germany) 122,569 3 Johan Cruijff (Netherlands) 119,332 4 Marco van Basten (Netherlands) 117,987 5 Dino Zoff (Italy) 114,529 6 Alfredo Di Stéfano (Spain) 107,435 7 Eusébio (Portugal) 103,937 8 Lev Yashin (Soviet Union) 101,862 9 Michel Platini (France) 99,380 10 Paolo Maldini (Italy) 95,497 11 Ferenc Puskás (Hungary/Spain) 94,361 12 Paolo Rossi (Italy) 91,194 13 Ruud Gullit (Netherlands) 91,001 14 Bobby Charlton (England) 89,921 15 Lothar Matthäus (West Germany) 86,798 16 Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (West Germany) 86,649 17 Franco Baresi (Italy) 83,800 18 Gerd Müller (West Germany) 82,668 19 George Best (N. Ireland) 79,036 20 Kevin Keegan (England) 78,840 21 Frank Rijkaard (Netherlands) 71,333 22 David Beckham (England) 71,299 23 Bobby Moore (England) 70,884 24 Roberto Baggio (Italy) 68,239 25 Michael Laudrup (Denmark) 67,484 26 Ronald Koeman (Netherlands) 66,661 27 Peter Schmeichel (Denmark) 66,463 28 Gheorghe Hagi (Romania) 62,383 29 Sepp Maier (West Germany) 62,375 30 Oliver Kahn (Germany) 58,151 31 Luís Figo (Portugal) 58,078 32 Raúl González (Spain) 56,880 33 Berti Vogts (West Germany) 55,398 34 Johan Neeskens (Netherlands) 54,796 35 Gianni Rivera (Italy) 53,874 36 José Antonio Camacho (Spain) 53,873 37 Marco Tardelli (Italy) 53,732 38 Just Fontaine (France) 53,612 39 Peter Shilton (England) 50,841 40 Bernd Schuster (West Germany) 50,247 41 Raymond Kopa (France) 49,504 42 Eric Cantona (France) 48,436 43 Stanley Matthews (England) 47,915 44 Ruud van Nistelrooij (Netherlands) 47,398 45 Valentin Ivanov (Soviet Union) 46,022 46 Gary Lineker (England) 44,787 47 Alessandro Nesta (Italy) 44,667 48 José Emilio Santamaría (Uruguay/Spain) 43,690 49 Alessandro Del Piero (Italy) 43,227 50 Alessandro Costacurta (Italy) 42,511 51 Kenny Dalglish (Scotland) 36,630 52 Andriy Shevchenko (Ukraine) 36,207 53 Germano (Portugal) 35,024 54 Billy Wright (England) not listed 55 Gordon Banks (England) 34,651 56 Zbigniew Boniek (Poland) 34,046 57 Francisco Gento (Spain) 33,871 58 Ruud Krol (Netherlands) 32,799 59 Costa Pereira (Portugal) 32,781 60 Thierry Henry (France) 32,700 61 Duncan Edwards (England) 32,678 62 Claudio Gentile (Italy) 32,533 63 Luis Suárez (Spain) 32,325 64 Jürgen Klinsmann ((West) Germany) 31,277 65 Andoni Zubizarreta (Spain) 31,035 66 Bruno Conti (Italy) 30,902 67 Laszló/Ladislao Kubala (Hungary/Spain) 30,516 68 Fritz Walter (West Germany) 29,973 69 Nils Liedholm (Sweden) 29,925 70 Rudi Völler ((West) Germany) 29,902 71 Igor Netto (Soviet Union) 29,750 72 Paul Gascoigne (England) 29,749 73 Edgar Davids (Netherlands) 29,086 74 Paul Breitner (West Germany) 29,050 75 Fernando Hierro (Spain) 28,612 76 Jean-Pierre Papin (France) 28,044 77 Hristo Stoitchkov (Bulgaria) 28,006 78 Dennis Bergkamp (Netherlands) 27,745 79 Emilio Butragueño (Spain) 27,411 80 Oleh Blokhin (Soviet Union) 27,395 81 Erik Gerets (Belgium) not listed 82 Juan Alberto Schiaffino (Uruguay) not listed 83 Rui Costa (Portugal) 26,838 84 Sandro Mazzola (Italy) 26,679 85 Michel Preud'homme (Belgium) 26,621 86 Giancarlo Antognoni (Italy) 26,268 87 Hansi Müller (West Germany) 26,224 88 Christian Vieri (Italy) 25,388 89 Omar Sivori (Argentina/Italy) 25,277 90 Sándor Kocsis (Hungary) 25,125 91 Juanito (Spain) not listed 92 Zvonimir Boban (Croatia) 25,078 93 Branko Zebec (Yugoslavia) 24,747 94 José Juan Altafini (Brazil) 24,673 95 Alain Giresse (France) 24,408 96 Roberto Bettega (Italy) 24,400 97 Rinat Dasaev (Soviet Union) 24,197 98 József Bozsik (Hungary) 24,086 99 Pirri (Spain) 23,968 100 Luigi Riva (Italy) 23,649 The following year (around the end of 2003/04 season) FiveLive (a UK radio station) did do a public poll (this time restricting voters to their own shortlist of 40 players though), and Henry came in the top 5 (but of course UK-based poll and Europe-wide poll are not equivalent anyway): BBC - Press Office - Zidane is Five Live Euro Star 1 Zidane (France) 12% 2 Cruyff (Netherlands) 10% 3 Best (Northern Ireland) 8% 4 Van Basten (Netherlands) 6% 5 Henry (France) 5% 6 Platini (France) 7 Beckenbauer (Germany) 8 Moore (England) 9 Eusebio (Portugal) 10 Puskas (Hungary) 11 Maldini (Italy) 12 Baggio (Italy) 13 Di Steffano (Spain) 14 Charlton, Bobby (England) 15 Schmeichel (Denmark) 16 Dalglish (Scotland) 17 Charles (Wales) 18 Keane (Republic of Ireland) 19 Gullit (Netherlands) 20 Baresi (Italy) 21 Banks (England) 22 Law (Scotland) 23 Matthews (England) 24 Yashin (USSR) 25 Raul (Spain) 26 Matthaus (Germany) 27 Figo (Portugal) 28 Zoff (Italy) 29 Hagi (Romania) 30 Edwards (England) 31 Muller (Germany) 32 Nedved (Czech Republic) 33 Rummenigge (Germany) 34 Finney (England) 35 Kocsis (Hungary) 36 Fontaine (France) 37 Boniek (Poland) 38 Gento (Spain) 39 Seeler (Germany) 40 Kopa (France)
Premier league is not what it use to be? Defenders are not what they used to be? Used to be when? In your brain that nobody understands? Ruud Van nistelrooy was playing in the premier league in 2004 You’re a clown for real
You see quotation marks, you can read and understand the context of what I am saying which is that every time someone does something great, at the time there is a pushback with predictable, recyclable arguments that quality just isnt what it is used to be. This applies to any sport or any great individual achievement. Certainly, if you look at the comments on this forum at the time, you will see said arguments against it. History repeats itself. I am not taking a stance of which era was better but offering an explanation to the question you yourself have raised so your comment is completely out of the line and extremely hostile (not the first time) Ive reported you, btw. And will keep doing so because this is unacceptable behavior. Ive been temporarly banned for much less because few of you conspired against me so it is only fair the same standard is applied to everyone. You will have to clean up your act.
As you mention a UK poll isn’t remotely equivalent to a European wide poll At least we see the difference between how Henry was viewed in England in 2004 (a top 5 European player of all time) And how Henry was viewed in Europe in 2004(the 60th greatest European footballer of all time) Pre social media we can clearly see the premiership hype train held absolutely no sway over public conscience in Europe If the perception was you only shined in your domestic league and nowhere else you would be ranked exactly how you deserved to be ranked A domestic league great on continent with many other equally great domestics leagues Something can be said of the positioning of cantona vs Henry in 2004 but at that point they had the whole career of cantona(up until 31) to compare to Henry(still only 26 in 2004 I think) Even so I feel Henry had already done way more in Europe then cantona at that point(since Monaco) but cantona was at least perceived to be the catalyst behind the most successful team in English football which probably weighed more in the public conscience than merely a few good champions league campaigns At that point Henry had only two good champions league campaigns I feel(for Monaco and 2002/03 for Arsenal) Something can also be said of the positioning of zidane and the recency bias that propelled him into first place in 2004 over beckenbaur and cruyff Or even Beckham over baggio one might even argue but it is damning that Henry at his absolute peak (2004)was not even viewed as a top 50 all time European player Even recency bias doesn’t aid him
Stop waffling and better yet stop addressing me I don’t report people and I don’t ‘conspire’ behind people’s backs to people banned I don’t care enough about this forum to take things to such an extent Having said that You are a waffler and you are interjecting yourself into a topic you don’t understand In the slightest The big elephant in the room is Ruud Van nistelrooy the exact same Ruud Van nistelrooy who was playing in the premier league in 2004(the year of the poll) against the exact same defences as Thierry Henry. being the professional waffler that you are I am almost certain you are completely unaware who that even is in the first place. If you don’t have anything meaningful to contribute here then be silent.
I don't know whether recency bias or delayed reaction would be more of a factor (in his favour or against him respectively): probably makes sense if there was more of the former if anything in the Eurostars poll and more of the latter in the UEFA one. Like I say though the Eurostars poll was conducted several months later (though it does seem obvious he'd fare better in a UK poll at that time I'd think), with the voting period for the UEFA one being late 2003 it seems (potentially with the Inter Milan vs Arsenal and Germany vs France games right in the middle of it, so with some votes cast before those games happened). The voting system for the UEFA Jubilee poll was a bit unusual (although on the other hand more players were available to vote for than in the Eurostars poll), with no ordering by voters but just inclusion for 10 players per decade (with one vote going to each one). Basically less people left Zidane out of their vote for 94-03 than the number that left out Cruyff from their selection of 10 for 64-73 I guess for example (if every voter did have to vote for every decade anyway - in terms of younger voters it will have been the case that they knew Zidane better than Cruyff too of course, and Youtube wasn't a thing yet, albeit Cruyff was a very famous name and most people probably will have seen a bit of footage of him playing, from the 1974 World Cup for example, I guess). Beckham and Henry will have been in the same decade though (though on the flip side the journalists who came up with the Eurostars shortlist of 40 didn't include Beckham, and obviously did include Henry).
I suppose it could also be the case that more Manchester United fans than Arsenal fans voted in the UEFA poll, although I don't know that for sure obviously (and some Manchester United fans would surely be inclined to include Henry still anyway I'm sure). The bigger factors I guess are UK-wide vs Europe/worldwide, and the several months between the voting, I would think anyway (in terms of the differences in Henry's placings).
And Ruud Van nistelrooy who was playing in the Dutch league only two years before the start of this vote according to you(2003) I’m extremely against retrospective rankings The closest you will ever get to the truth PDG1978 is seeing how a footballer was ranked next to his contemporaries during their playing careers and preferably during their actual peak When we come to zidane vs cruyff then of course we can talk about the effect of recency bias working in the Frenchman’s favour But it doesn’t make sense in my humble opinion to talk about a delayed reaction(in terms of appreciation)when it is Thierry Henry and not Ruud Van nistelrooy who won a World Cup,a Euros and had just produced a 20+ goal+20 assist league campaign in 2003 A campaign that we have now come to value as being super ‘meaningful’ but was obviously not that meaningful in the mind of your average/typical/standard European football fan back in 2004
I don't want to get involved in arguments about it tbh (and I think it's better if things can stay pleasant). What might be suggested is despite the numbers 2003/04 as a whole was better than 2002/03 for Henry I guess (although at the end of it he had an unimpressive Euro 2004), and better for Henry than for Van Nistelrooy (who might have an argument to have been better in 2001/02 potentially at least). Henry would also have the longevity/confirmation effect after 2004/05 and 2005/06 I suppose (irrespective of who might or might not think he had a better season in either of those than what went before, or improved his game in certain ways or was better on his best days...which I understand could be doubtful). Some of it can just be randomness in terms of who voted (and even who realised they could vote). But some of it can be that some voters did appreciate/value more what Van Nistelrooy had done by that point, it's true. Van Nistelrooy was another one not even listed in the Eurostars poll of course though (not that the list of 40 is some definitive correct collection of names of course - I don't just say that so that I can then argue that Michael Laudrup should have been in or suggest Gianni Rivera could have been or something!). The actual Eurostars voting system was just to pick 5 of the players by the way, so quite minimalist I suppose (but Henry obviously got enough votes within top 5s in that case, to place 5th overall). Anyway, I'm leaving my posts here now, but maybe they helped clarify some things (even if I'm still not 100% sure of the voting window for the UEFA poll, only that it ended in early/mid December 2003 apparently, according to the UEFA page linked in my second post).