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Is Messi the greatest player ever?

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This debate is over.

What should we talk about next?
 
The day he can run the game without dribbling and flying past opponents comes, he will be the best ever.

Until then, he is not.

Maradona could run a game without a single dribble. Pelé the same. Zidane also did it.

Not Messi, he can't.

Those 3 players won world cups. Messi didn't.

The Napoli team was nowhere near this Barcelona. Alemão is no Xavi. Careca was a great striker but he was more dependant on service.

Hell Napoli wasn't as good as Milan at that time.

Look at the argentine team at Mexico... Take Maradona out and you have a pretty ordinary team. One of the weakest since I remember.

In Spain, Maradona got his leg broke. That shows how much Messi is fortunate. Usually defenders let him get away without trying to bring him down. Football in Spain is a lot different from Maradona's days. It used to be tougher and uglier. The spanish national team used to be known as the "spanish fury" rather than the tiki-taka.
 
The day he can run the game without dribbling and flying past opponents comes, he will be the best ever.

Until then, he is not.

Maradona could run a game without a single dribble. Pelé the same. Zidane also did it.

Not Messi, he can't.

Those 3 players won world cups. Messi didn't.

The Napoli team was nowhere near this Barcelona. Alemão is no Xavi. Careca was a great striker but he was more dependant on service.

Hell Napoli wasn't as good as Milan at that time.

Look at the argentine team at Mexico... Take Maradona out and you have a pretty ordinary team. One of the weakest since I remember.

In Spain, Maradona got his leg broke. That shows how much Messi is fortunate. Usually defenders let him get away without trying to bring him down. Football in Spain is a lot different from Maradona's days. It used to be tougher and uglier. The spanish national team used to be known as the "spanish fury" rather than the tiki-taka.
That was a fair bit before Maradona's time.
 

The day he can run the game without dribbling and flying past opponents comes, he will be the best ever.

Until then, he is not.

Maradona could run a game without a single dribble. Pelé the same. Zidane also did it.

Not Messi, he can't.

Those 3 players won world cups. Messi didn't.

The Napoli team was nowhere near this Barcelona. Alemão is no Xavi. Careca was a great striker but he was more dependant on service.

Hell Napoli wasn't as good as Milan at that time.

Look at the argentine team at Mexico... Take Maradona out and you have a pretty ordinary team. One of the weakest since I remember.

In Spain, Maradona got his leg broke. That shows how much Messi is fortunate. Usually defenders let him get away without trying to bring him down. Football in Spain is a lot different from Maradona's days. It used to be tougher and uglier. The spanish national team used to be known as the "spanish fury" rather than the tiki-taka.

This.

Let's face it, it's hard to call someone the world's best anything when the opposition defences are shackled by such attack-biased rules of engagement. Messi faces a slightly more sterner challenge in going through defences as he does slaloming through the cones in training.

He would have been an irrelevacy in the days when Maradona was in his pomp during the 1980s.
 
Messi is still 24, "he didn't win a World Cup" is a little premature. It will be good to see how he gets on in Brazil. You can't class him as the best player in the world ever, whilst he's still playing, it's obvious

He's definitely the best at the moment, Ronaldo is obviously up there probably on a par. He's got everything going for him to become the best ever though. It will be interesting to see how he gets on when he's lost a bit of his pace

And look at this challenge here. Those pesky cones hey

messi-ankle.jpg
 
Messi is still 24, "he didn't win a World Cup" is a little premature. It will be good to see how he gets on in Brazil. You can't class him as the best player in the world ever, whilst he's still playing, it's obvious

He's definitely the best at the moment, Ronaldo is obviously up there probably on a par. He's got everything going for him to become the best ever though. It will be interesting to see how he gets on when he's lost a bit of his pace

And look at this challenge here. Those pesky cones hey

messi-ankle.jpg

Oh, multiply that (practiically a one-off assault on this preserved creature) by one a game throughout the whole of Maradona's career and that point might stick.

As for the Ronaldo comparison: that'll be controversial for some, but I dont think there's an awful lot in it. Messi has achieved more in the game though, so I suppose that's why the emphasis is (rightly) on him. A (probably biased) comparison here from a former Madrid legend Santillana: http://www.goal.com/en/news/12/spai...-an-extraordinary-athlete-and-a-more-complete
 
Best player- ever? dont think he is, subjective though, in the vein of the game around him. put him in a Pele game where Pele used to get the S**T kicked outta him all game and still be feckin amazing. likewise todays game might be too fast and furious for pele. so like i say very dependant on the era. NOBODY will ever repeat Dixies achievement of 60 league goals in one season (1927-28) Maradona was more skilful (but a cnut) in todays game like mentioned above i think Ronaldo is close to Messi but not quite there yet.
 
You're all acting as if a few kicks would make Messi fall apart in Ledley King style. He'd take it just as well as Maradona, and these days if a player just kicks everyone he's seen as lacking ability. Maybe that shows a massive improvement in defending since the 80s.
 

Funny how history tends to favour winners isn't it? Lets bare in mind that had the assault by Schumacher on Battison been dealt with properly it would probably have been France rather than a mediocre German side that would have faced Argentina in the final. You'd have to have fancied France to win that. Would we then be talking about Platini being the best ever? After all he achieved as much as Maradonna did in club football. Or should we say Mathaus is an all time great because he inspired an average West Germany to the Italia 90 crown over another poor Argentina side, not to mention inspiring Inter to rare success around the same time?

And lets face it, if you want to see training cone defence you only have to look at the goal Maradona scored against us. Peter Reid god bless him was blowing out of his arse after a few metres of chasing him and the rest of the defence was abject at best. At least in the identikit goal Messi scored he was sprinting the entire way rather than jogging as Maradona was.
 
Watched programme on Messi other day. He said that Maradonna was mucho mucho better than himself, and that anybody saying otherwise doesnt know what theyre talking about??........so thats settled that.

He also said that Osman is better than Iniesta and that Rufus Brevett is his all time fav player.

Just passing it on....
 
Footballing has changed since Maradona's day, I'm not denying he wasn't hacked down every other minute, but it's not Messi's fault or to his downfall that people don't try and break his leg every week. You can pick up a yellow now for taking your shirt off FFS, hey you can even get sent off for not even fouling someone - see Jack Rodwell. Let's not pretend Messi isn't fouled though or doesn't have players flying in on him as much as the next guy if not more. He's a dribbler, by his very nature he's going to draw more fouls and challenges than most

It's all opinions anyway, it's almost impossible to judge. You can only do it on medals won I guess. Saying that, lets conpare it to music, I'm pretty sure Westlife have as many number 1's as Elvis. The games changed, it's not Maradona's fault he's not playing now either, god knows how he'd perform.

It's Zidane anyway
 
There's another argument I've put foreward before. How much does the team make the player in some instances. If Pele had been born Peruvian. Stayed at Sporting Crystal all his life and never won the world cup, would we be talking about him at all in this conversation. Despite having exactly the same attributes and ability. Winning leagues constantly in Peru and maybe even dragging them into a semi final in the WC. We'd probably be talking about him the way we talk about Carlos Valderrama.

If Platini's France had been able to count on Desailly and Thuram in defence, Maybe they'd have won more than that Euros in 84
 
Funny how history tends to favour winners isn't it? Lets bare in mind that had the assault by Schumacher on Battison been dealt with properly it would probably have been France rather than a mediocre German side that would have faced Argentina in the final. You'd have to have fancied France to win that. Would we then be talking about Platini being the best ever? After all he achieved as much as Maradonna did in club football. Or should we say Mathaus is an all time great because he inspired an average West Germany to the Italia 90 crown over another poor Argentina side, not to mention inspiring Inter to rare success around the same time?

And lets face it, if you want to see training cone defence you only have to look at the goal Maradona scored against us. Peter Reid god bless him was blowing out of his arse after a few metres of chasing him and the rest of the defence was abject at best. At least in the identikit goal Messi scored he was sprinting the entire way rather than jogging as Maradona was.

That's all very valid and true, but until someone comes up with a better way of calculating greatness we're stuck with it. In any case, I think you're being overly harsh: these judgements are made on aesthetic and tangible stuff like counting medals. There's players with W/C, EC, multiple championships and even a few international awards thrown in who we'd never class as 'world's best.

We do make an overall, all round evaluation as best we can, and that's where the arguments come into it - when the aesthetic part of the equation is emphasised above actual and tangble achievements in order to elevate someone is when I start to question it.
 

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