South American defenders GOAT

I agree with you both. Diego still the GOAT, but he is fighting a losing battle, with time. The gap is closing by the match and it becomes harder and harder to deny Messi is the greatest ever with each passing season. I don't think I can imagine 3 or 4 years down the line that we won't have a Michael Jordan-esque universal consensus on the matter.

lol 2p2

world cups is like 100x moar important than regular club and international games

messi is very sick, he's amazingly good off-the-ball at making runs and is historically elite in his tactical intelligence

yeah i really think a high variance 7-game Cup competition is the best way to judge individual players in a team sport.

good point.

You guys keep missing the point, you think my point is "Maradona won a world cup lalalalalala". When my point is that Maradona could carry the Argentina team in a way Messi cant...yet. I guess we understand the game in a different way, to me the performance Messi had against Colombia away in which Argentina scrapped a win is more valuable than the performance today. I think that Messi is probably going to be better than Maradona but Maradona will still be more special. Di Stefano completely raped club football too but he isnt up there with Pele and Maradona for a reason, whether you like it or not in a sport like football you also need to perform at international level.

greatness in the sport is measured in world cups, jus how it is

lol2p2mod

I willing to bet that a very high percentage of obviously young people arguing in the thread that Messi is better than Maradona have never watched an entire Maradona game in their lives. Watching their favorite player, Messi, doing some incredible things on the field, they find it hard to believe that someone could be even better than him. Guess what, Maradona was really better.

I have seen Maradona decimating incredible teams like England of 86 (which to me still remains easily the best English team ever to play the game since fricking 1966) almost single-handedly. This is really hard to describe, but, Maradona had some sort of "presence" in the field which Messi still does not have.

Every time Maradona got the ball somewhere in the mid-field, you could see the English team (or the incredible Belgium team of 86, which defeated the best Soviet team of all times-yes, even better than the Soviets of 88 which almost won the European Championship of 88-, for that matter) trying to get into some defensive formation against Maradona. Yes, not against Argentina, but against Maradona. It is as if they were feeling that this little guy had the capability of doing some unbelievable thing at any moment. The sheer respect they were giving Maradona was something palpable, and guess what, he often did something utterly unbelievable and extraordinary. I was watching the 86 world cup with my now deceased dad, who have seen Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff play live, and he was commenting all the time, saying that he always thought that nobody could play football better than Pele, but there it is: Maradona was playing better.

And think about the rest of the Argentinian team of 86 for god's sake: Valdano and Burruchaga were the other "stars" of the team, LOL. Maradona was the heart and soul of that team. He was "everything" for them at once. Messi is not "everything" for Argentina, let alone Barcelona. He is not still at that level.

Do not misunderstand me, Messi is a very fine player. He is incredibly talented and extremely intelligent. But one could make a good case for Ferenc Puskas or Alfredo di Stefano (very underrated) let alone Franz Beckenbauer or Johan Cruyff to be better players than Messi. The only player you could even compare to Maradona, on the other hand, without sounding totally ridiculous, is Pele. Enough said.

Instead of watching ten minute clips of Maradona on youtube, try to download his entire games in the 86 World Cup and watch them. You will understand what I mean by his "presence" on the field (although you will probably not be excited about his game as I was in 86) . Messi is really good: I would definitely pick him to be one of the best 10 or 15 players of all time. Maradona on the other hand is simply the best.

i mean messi's on goat form and that but let's not use all-time european scoring as a barometer for anything, with the inflated amount of fixtures nowadays it's pretty much useless, i mean the various top 10's only have historically hypermegaelite talent like di stefano, eusebio, puskas and muller in, then it's all "finish fourth play 10 big cup games anyway" era players

.

Guess what, lol.

How don't you understand, that this just won't happen anymore. The game has developed so far, that there is no way one man can carry a bad team to success. No matter how good.

hahaha, the grauniad's website are doing a messi=goat pole, the options being messi, diego, pele, di stefano, cruijff, zidane, best, cron, puskas and beckenbauer

now i'm not the greatest lover of united but i'm pretty sure that neither of the united players there should be anywhere near a GOAT list

edit - ROFL messi has 64% of the votes and best is ahead of cruijff

I think you are right if you are talking about eras gone by. The world cup was once the pinnacle of football in every measurable way.

However, with each passing year the Champions League is gaining more and more historical relevance. It's already consensus that the best club sides can outperform the best international sides these days, and I think players from this era will be be judged on their champions league exploits rather than their international career.

That's not to say the world cup has been significantly marginalised, its still the biggest tournament in the world bar none. But I do get the feeling that it is becoming a (still fascinating) side-show to what has become the real meat and bones of competitive football: club competition.

Messi is a great player. What most of you fail to understand is Barca's system and what every player there brings to the game. Without Xavi and Iniesta, there is no Super Messi. Without Guardiola, there wouldnt be Super Barca.

Watch every game Messi played for Argentina and then tell me THAT player is the GOAT.

In my opinion, Iniesta and Xavi are more important for Barca's game than Messi. He's just in the position to shine more and people tend to overreact to goals and forget about the midfields hard work.

PS:GOAT scorer in terms of individual skill is obviously Inzaghi

For those who can't be arsed to watch 100 year old videos, this famous photo demonstrates it pretty well-

I've watched the entire 86 World Cup. Maradona wasn't as ridiculously dominant as people like to recall. I mean, he was great and everything, best player in the tournament, etc, but even watching what is supposedly his best tournament ever, I still don't see him as head and shoulders above Messi.

You realise they all just broke from a wall after a free kick, right?

48 goals, 20 assists in 42 games so far this season. Just wow.

How much would you have to pay Barca to get Messi atm?

Would they sell him for $300M?$500M?$1b?

messi goat

But you can smell the fear

How much money is Messi making from football alone right now?

Argentina is such a bad team

good post. The most important part of your post is the "presence", Messi is simply not quite there yet. The problem is that is something you cant explain on a argument, otoh 5 goals sounds way more awesome.
But of course people in 2+2 know better than most argentinians who have watched both players.

Keep avoiding the point.

People atleast a while back were saying that Messi will never be as good as Maradona, until he leads a bad team to success. That's not possible in today's game. And Argentina in last WC. Yeah, bad team.