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Nooo, I think he was saying that Ronaldo could've been considered the GOAT going into this era, instead of Pelé and Maradona. That is, we wouldn't be debating whether Messi is better than Pele/Maradona, but rather whether he is better than R9.

I think Suarez is a top 30-50 player ever, or at least will be if he keeps playing at this sort of level for a couple more years.

I think it's too low a sample size of matches to really say Messi is at some new, lower level. But don't players who age often just become less and less consistently great? That is, they still can have great matches, but those great matches get rarer and rarer. That's not inconsistent with...

Messi has been the best finisher in the world for years. The percent of shots he scores above what the "expected goals" is for the shots he took has been the highest of anyone in the world. One somewhat off night of finishing doesn't change that.

I don't mind that we lost the Spanish Super Cup. That's the least important competition Barcelona goes in. The sextuple would've been nice, but this Barca team has already done it, so it's not a particularly meaningful landmark, in my opinion. The fact that the sextuple is in the cards will...

Sure. I'm not saying we'd always lose if one of MSN went down, but the chance of losing points in that situation is much higher without Pedro. Also, as for scoring 4 goals today, a good deal of that has to do with Messi being in a form that he won't be in every match. If Messi plays like he...

A real good way for Pedro to end his time at Barca. We're going to be in trouble if one of Messi, Neymar, and Suarez is out before January (when we'll be able to reinforce). And that WILL happen eventually. None of them is injury prone, but you don't go half a season without any injuries to...

I think you make some valid points, but there's a few random things I'd like to mention/point out. - You said: "Once when Tiki-Taka was figured out, we couldn't win CL trophies even with still almost prime Xavi, Busi, Iniesta and Messi. (Ok, we didn't have Pep anymore, but still..)." I think...

First of all, as a factual matter, Xavi consistently ran more than anyone else on the pitch. Rakitic has a similarly elite work rate, but he's not better in that regard. Xavi covered insane amounts of ground. Second, I think you're perhaps right that Rakitic fits current Barca more than a...

Obviously, head butting someone is bad, especially when it's in a meaningless friendly (i.e. why let your emotions run so high?). And this is the second time he has done something like this very recently (he did something similar but less bad in the Copa America). Hopefully this isn't the...

Please, please look at my postings on BigSoccer forums. I beg you to do that, and then tell me I'm a pretend Messi fan. The amount of time I've spent defending/talking up Messi on internet forums is almost embarrassing, and certainly exceeds you. So back off. EDIT: Just for fun, I'll direct...

Huh??? http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150722145031-messi-gabon-exlarge-169.jpg Essentially everyone there is wearing a suit or at least business casual clothing. There's only one person in the background who doesn't seem dressed up. Also, I'm uncertain how you could possibly...

Here's what it comes down to: Did Messi get paid to go to Gabon? It's certainly not incomprehensible. Denials do nothing to change that. But it's also a non-issue EVEN IF it IS true. The stories seem to operate under the theory that if you report an allegation and label it a scandal then...

Okay, we'll rephrase that then. Do you think that 1.5% of your net worth (which is what 3 million is to a 200 million net worth) is peanuts ? I highly doubt it. It's a meaningful amount of money to him, for sure. Hell, we know its a meaningful amount of money to him, since he has renegotiated...

3.5 million is not peanuts. As the poster just below you said, that's about 10% his total yearly earnings. That's not peanuts to anyone. Would you consider 10% of your income to be meaningless? If YOU paid attention to my post, you'd see that I wasn't even criticizing him. My point was that...

Messi surely was paid to go to Gabon. A "promise made years ago to visit Gabon" is a pretty weak explanation, and Messi has no actual ties to the country. And OF COURSE the Gabon government denied it; they'd obviously not want it to seem like they had to pay him to show up. But they surely...

Your argument boils down to saying that Pedro should've gotten more shots. But you can't get that many shots if you're not even close to being the first option that teammates look to pass to. It's not like Pedro isn't constantly making runs. And his runs are generally pretty intelligent. But...

You guys realize that Pedro has scored 0.49 goals per 90 minutes in the last 2 seasons, right? For a player typically playing on the wings who is not even remotely the focus of the team, that's quite good. Relatedly, consider also that Pedro has scored 25.9% of his shots in the last two years...

He's probably not good enough to really start for us, but he's a hell of a backup to have. And we needed a super sub with Xavi having left (not that they're similar players. I just mean that Xavi gave us real quality from the bench).

I agree. But to be fair, he did actually have more touches of the ball than any Argentine attacking player. And by a significant margin. Furthermore, you're saying that Messi should be force fed the ball, but people also criticize Argentina for constantly just passing to Messi and hoping he...