10 - Lionel Messi - v4

[Jamie Cal]

Messi >>> all of 'em. No differentiating.

 

[Aryagorn]

Listen here matey, I'll be honest.
The only reason people like you bring up the world cup argument, is because messi still hasn't won one, he's the best player to ever grace a football field and this nonsensical point is the only one left to belittle his overwhelming genius.
People like you are just trolls and haters, you don't care about facts or football, because just watching the little magician play can quickly convince anyone of his quality.
If higuain/aguero/palacio weren't completely useless last summer messi would have a WC now and people like you would say "yeah but he had higuain/aguero/di maria helping him, he didn't do it alone like maradona" or "yeah but pele won 3".

Now lets debunk the idiotic logic you used.
First of all, he doesn't have to win with argentina to prove anything, that's biased and faulty logic. Plenty of top players haven't won the WC but it's not held against them, it's only held against messi, best, cruyff, weah and plenty of others. You dared even mention baggio, the man who failed to win for italy by missing the penalty, platini also didn't won the WC. You are a really bad troll man.
Messi could retire right now and he would go down in history as a GOAT.

Every way you look at this, by looking at him play, by comparing stats, by comparing trophies, whatever, messi is the greatest and has certainly joined pele and maradona in the GOAT category.

Messi's just 10 short of Giggs.... The most decorated footballer ever, at club level. Hoping his health permits, he got every chance to beat Giggs I suppose. In fact he is only 16 short of Pele's achievements (country + club), so if I don't end up jinxing Messi's career he probably stands a chance to beat Pele trophy-wise and may be finally get to shut people up over the stupid World Cup logic

 

[ceefoo]

Why do you guys put so much emphasis on this whole GOAT thing, I'm not arguing that Messi is not one of best players the the history of the game has seen, but then again I doubt any of us if not the majority watched Maradona, Pele etc each week live in this forum, so I don't understand why some of you claim Messi is the goat and claim it as a fact.

But then again it's hard to imagine anyone from past history exceeding Leos play, I mean this guy has it all, plus its hard to imagine someone else dominating the world of football for so long like he has.

+1

I am not one for denigrating an individuals ability or achievements in order to inflate another's. All those players that [MENTION=9847]ejuventus[/MENTION] mentioned are all undoubtedly great players, and earned tremendous distinction on the international stage. However, whichever way you look at it, there is a disparity between Messi's national-team record and his club record.

International titles don't come around as often as club honours, so that's one explanation. Barcelona is one of the most offensive teams in the world so it's only natural that Leo will get more attacking opportunities for his club than for his country. If Pep Guardiola were to become coach of Argentina, that may change, but as things stand that is the reality.

As to who I think is the GOAT; I can only go by what I've seen. And as I have not watched every footballer of note for the past century perform against every type of opponent, in every conceivable way, I cannot definitively state this as fact. There is a culture in modern society that recent means best. This is not only disrespectful to the greats of the past but it's simply not true. At least in some cases. It is also the case that we romanticize about things from the past; only choosing to remember the positives when the fact could be something entirely less flattering.

All culés that have watched Messi develop over the past ten-or-so years, can give a pretty accurate assessment of his career to date, because we've seen the good, the bad, and the indifferent. I cannot say that about Di Stéfano, Pelé, Cruijff, Platini or Maradona.

What I can say for certain is that Lionel Messi is the greatest footballer I have ever seen in my lifetime. Because that's all the time span I am in a position to judge on.

 

[Vlom]

We've seen Zidane and Baggio mate, and they're shit compared to Messi. And I completely forgot about that missed penalty

We're really too polite in here, that ejuventus guy is clearly a troll, and a bad one.

 

[Catalan Fan]

Must admit, I hate this term GOAT.

How can anyone be the "Greatest Of All Time", when time doesn't stop ? 100 yrs from now, they will be saying so n so is the GOAT.It's fairly pointless in my opinion.Disregarding other wonderful players, just to try and prove a point is annoying as well, not to mention disrespectful.

Comparing players from different eras is nigh on impossible, let alone players from different positions.

Messi is the best player I've even seen and I doubt I'll see a player like him in my lifetime.But please don't dismiss other great players whilst discussing him.

 

[6 Ballons for Messi]

Must admit, I hate this term GOAT.

How can anyone be the "Greatest Of All Time", when time doesn't stop ? 100 yrs from now, they will be saying so n so is the GOAT.It's fairly pointless in my opinion.Disregarding other wonderful players, just to try and prove a point is annoying as well, not to mention disrespectful.

Comparing players from different eras is nigh on impossible, let alone players from different positions.

Messi is the best player I've even seen and I doubt I'll see a player like him in my lifetime.But please don't dismiss other great players whilst discussing him.

We can't judge accurately, for obvious reasons, players who were the best in different eras.
But we can categorize them, up top, better than all the others, for 2 decades now were sitting pele and maradona.
All we are saying is that messi belongs in that category, not that he's indisputably the best.
Don't you agree?

 

[Alarcón]

be a fan, not a fanatic

I was talking about NT perfomances.
In order to that, there's plenty of Juve players better than Messi: Platini, ZIdane, Baggio about n° 10, or Scirea,Cannavaro and others (24 in total) that lead Italy NT to win 4 World Champions title.

I can easily state that there are also some other Barcelona's players better than Messi on a international level: easily Xavi and Iniesta, above all.

Take it easy, and enjoy your MEssi

I have never made sense of this argument. By your logic, Arbeloa should be rated higher on a NT level than Messi as he partook in a World Cup winning team while Messi didn't. There is no mathematical way of measuring a player's impact on a particular team but Messi led an average team with an average manager into the World Cup final while Xavi, Iniesta and the likes led arguably the best national team in years to a World Cup title. Apart from the fact that there are tons of variables involved that no player can influence and that between winning and losing a single match, luck and randomness become deciding factors: think Messi away from Argentine and they might not even have passed the group stages; think 1 out of Xavi or Iniesta, arguably the most influential Spaniards ever, away from Spain and you still have a world class team. So if you're talking about pure impact, I'd argue there have been only a handful of players in the history of football who were as influential to their national team as Messi, despite the latter's obviously better performances for Barcelona.

Whether or not a player has won a World Cup in his career should anyway not be an acceptable measure for that player's individual class as it is dependent on the level of his team-mates in a team that he can't choose and has to stick with his whole life. Not to mention that there is an important NT tournament every 2 to 4 years and it consists of merely 7 games, so that consistency and merit decrease in importance in favour of, again, luck and randomness.

 

[ceefoo]

Brazilians supporting Argentina? WTF!?

I thought they hated each other!?

Have I stepped in to the Twilight Zone?

 

[Jamie Cal]

^ Alarcon gets it.

 

[footyfan]

I have never made sense of this argument. By your logic, Arbeloa should be rated higher on a NT level than Messi as he partook in a World Cup winning team while Messi didn't. There is no mathematical way of measuring a player's impact on a particular team but Messi led an average team with an average manager into the World Cup final while Xavi, Iniesta and the likes led arguably the best national team in years to a World Cup title. Apart from the fact that there are tons of variables involved that no player can influence and that between winning and losing a single match, luck and randomness become deciding factors: think Messi away from Argentine and they might not even have passed the group stages; think 1 out of Xavi or Iniesta, arguably the most influential Spaniards ever, away from Spain and you still have a world class team. So if you're talking about pure impact, I'd argue there have been only a handful of players in the history of football who were as influential to their national team as Messi, despite the latter's obviously better performances for Barcelona.

Whether or not a player has won a World Cup in his career should anyway not be an acceptable measure for that player's individual class as it is dependent on the level of his team-mates in a team that he can't choose and has to stick with his whole life. Not to mention that there is an important NT tournament every 2 to 4 years and it consists of merely 7 games, so that consistency and merit decrease in importance in favour of, again, luck and randomness.

You can't really say that without Messi, Argentina wouldn't have gone past the group stage. Not 2 months later, a Messi-less Argentina trashed the World Champions Germany 4-1. Obviously it was just a friendly, but to think they wouldn't have been able to beat Bosnia and Iran is really presumptuous.

 

[Catalan Fan]

We can't judge accurately, for obvious reasons, players who were the best in different eras.
But we can categorize them, up top, better than all the others, for 2 decades now were sitting pele and maradona.
All we are saying is that messi belongs in that category, not that he's indisputably the best.
Don't you agree?

My outlook is this... what a player Pele was, what a player Messi is etc.I'd sooner celebrate great players than try and use facts and figures to prove who is the "GOAT".

I'll repeat myself, but he's the best player I've seen and am 52 yrs old.So that will give a clue as to how I rate him

I just don't like to catergorize players is all.

 

[reDIOS10]

You can't really say that without Messi, Argentina wouldn't have gone past the group stage. Not 2 months later, a Messi-less Argentina trashed the World Champions Germany 4-1. Obviously it was just a friendly, but to think they wouldn't have been able to beat Bosnia and Iran is really presumptuous.

Disn't USA also win against Germany in a friendly too?

 

[Sumlit]

You can't really say that without Messi, Argentina wouldn't have gone past the group stage. Not 2 months later, a Messi-less Argentina trashed the World Champions Germany 4-1. Obviously it was just a friendly, but to think they wouldn't have been able to beat Bosnia and Iran is really presumptuous.

Messi directly won two games for Argentina in the group stages so it's really not very far-fetched to presume he directly caused Argentina to win 2 of their 3 games. And friendlies after WC are usually bad for the winning team. Spain also got thrashed 4-1 by Argentina and Portugal I believe after they won in 2010.

 

[Luftstalag14]

GOAT is a subjective term, there is no way that everyone agrees on the same GOAT, so give it a rest guys.

I hope he does well at the Copa, at least individually to dispel the myth that he can only thrive with us, not at the NT (yes, there are still people believing that).

 

[Alarcón]

You can't really say that without Messi, Argentina wouldn't have gone past the group stage. Not 2 months later, a Messi-less Argentina trashed the World Champions Germany 4-1. Obviously it was just a friendly, but to think they wouldn't have been able to beat Bosnia and Iran is really presumptuous.

They struggled a lot against Bosnia until Messi scored. They struggled against Iran until Messi scored in the last minute. I don't think it's presumptuous at all. This Argentina team was average. They conceded few goals because everyone was defending, and in offense it was all Messi and a bit of Di Maria. And they won against Germany because Tata improved their team a lot, that team was wholly different from the one a few months prior.