I think the statistics that stack up so favourably for Messi are in no small part due to the state of the modern game.
When I were a lad there were literally dozens of fairly equally matched sides all of whom had great players in their teams and built up for years their 'History'
In the modern era you have this skewed financial marketplace that allows a team such as Barcelona to continually lock out the best players. Now obviously they are a sort of exception as they brought players like Xavi, Iniesta, Messi and Busquests through so they do have some claim to a 'fair' dominance, but even with that they still can just poach the cream of worlds football to supliment that. Likewise Real, City, Bayern and all those clubs who sit at the top table.
It wasnt always that way. You used to have great clubs from all over Europe who were fantastic and made these competitions hard to win, hard to dominate. Remember that until the 'Modern' era Barca I think had ONE European title.
Would Messi still have these astonishing numbers (Ronaldo too) in an era when Ajax, Benfica, Sparta, Liverpool, AC, Saint Ettiene, not to mention great teams from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland etc sat alongside Madrid, Juventus, Bayern etc as real powers in the game?
The power sits with a chosen few (you can argue they earned it if you like but its largely irrelevant) and 90% of the games they play domestically and in Europe are against teams who have already lost their best players to one of these big monster clubs.
When Maradonna, Pele, Best, Dalglish etc were in their pomp EVERY game home and abroad was against a cracking team normally containing at least one big match winner. Would Matt Le Tiss have stayed at Southampton in todays game?
Its always going to be easy to look good when you have a massively uneven playing field.
Not to say he isnt amazing, he obviously is one of the all time greats, but the stats mean nothing to me.
Maradona is and will always be the best for me, because he took a club like Napoli to the pinnacle, he single handedly (no pun intended) won a world cup for Argentina, and Napoli werent in a position where they could easily beat most of the teams they faced 6 or 7 nil.
Leagues were stronger, tournaments were harder to win, football was better.
Zidane is the second best and then Messi sits with all the other GREAT players just below that.
When I were a lad there were literally dozens of fairly equally matched sides all of whom had great players in their teams and built up for years their 'History'
In the modern era you have this skewed financial marketplace that allows a team such as Barcelona to continually lock out the best players. Now obviously they are a sort of exception as they brought players like Xavi, Iniesta, Messi and Busquests through so they do have some claim to a 'fair' dominance, but even with that they still can just poach the cream of worlds football to supliment that. Likewise Real, City, Bayern and all those clubs who sit at the top table.
It wasnt always that way. You used to have great clubs from all over Europe who were fantastic and made these competitions hard to win, hard to dominate. Remember that until the 'Modern' era Barca I think had ONE European title.
Would Messi still have these astonishing numbers (Ronaldo too) in an era when Ajax, Benfica, Sparta, Liverpool, AC, Saint Ettiene, not to mention great teams from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland etc sat alongside Madrid, Juventus, Bayern etc as real powers in the game?
The power sits with a chosen few (you can argue they earned it if you like but its largely irrelevant) and 90% of the games they play domestically and in Europe are against teams who have already lost their best players to one of these big monster clubs.
When Maradonna, Pele, Best, Dalglish etc were in their pomp EVERY game home and abroad was against a cracking team normally containing at least one big match winner. Would Matt Le Tiss have stayed at Southampton in todays game?
Its always going to be easy to look good when you have a massively uneven playing field.
Not to say he isnt amazing, he obviously is one of the all time greats, but the stats mean nothing to me.
Maradona is and will always be the best for me, because he took a club like Napoli to the pinnacle, he single handedly (no pun intended) won a world cup for Argentina, and Napoli werent in a position where they could easily beat most of the teams they faced 6 or 7 nil.
Leagues were stronger, tournaments were harder to win, football was better.
Zidane is the second best and then Messi sits with all the other GREAT players just below that.
