Andrés Iniesta

[antonnn]

There's more to football than numbers, why would Iniesta be so highly regarded if he isn't that good? He may not get the direct assist but I could guarantee he's provided the pass before the assist many times. He does so much more than just trying to provide a direct assist or get a goal.

I hope that Justin isn't a Chelsea fan, how embarrassing. It's a lot more likely he's a Man Ju fan the way he's talking.

 

[Cule Angles]

Obviously some of the game's greatest luminaries have yet to be informed of Justin's indisputable facts, once he's finished putting us all to rights on here he should be sure to email his thesis to the likes of Ferguson, Hiddink, Juande Ramos, Luis Aragonés, Vicente del Bosque et al who clearly know nothing about football compared to the J-Man.

 

[Beast]

Why are we even talking about Zidane, who has retired. Zidane scored many goals and had many assists unlike Iniesta. I remember Zidane scoring many goals, like in the cl final and wc final, and giving many assists to Ronaldo and Raul.

How can Iniesta be considered one of the most creative, when all season long he only gave 10 assists, i.e. created 10 goals. In contrast Fabregas has already given 9 assists this season with servicing inferior strikers.

Lampard is superior to Iniesta. The stats back it up. Scoring goals and making assists is what makes the difference, not fancy touches and flicks with no end product. It's not only Lampard's 20+ goals per season, but also Lampard's creativity, his assists. As I mentioned before Lampard had 18 assists for Chelsea last season, compared to Iniesta's 10 assists, so clearly Lampard is more creative, unlike what most say.

As I metioned before Iniesta is merely a system player who only 'looks' good because he playing with 30+ goals forwards like Messi, eto/ibra and 30+ assists midfielders like Xavi. It's common knowledge you have a easier time if you are playing with superior players.

Just imagine how good the likes of Lampard and Fabregas will be at Barca, given the fact they are currently creating more goals for inferior fowards. Surely Lampard and Fabregas will get much more than 10 assists, if they had Eto'o, Henry and Messi ahead of them.

People only say Iniesta is good because of aesthetics which is just personal taste. People defending Iniesta are running away from the hard, solid unbiased stats, and making excuses. The stats (5 goals and 10 assists) show that Iniesta contribution is minimal, a mere system player. Whereas true difference players like Fabregas and Lampard and Xavi can be every bit as skillful, but their football brain allows them to make those assist passes and also get into good positions to score goals.

U have the potential to be the next Florentino Perez
u know Makelele pass the ball for 4 meters while Becks is better cause he can pass the ball 40 meters .

Zidane is goddish no doubt but take into consideration the following:

When Zidane was in Iniesta age his "STATS" in goals scored for Juve was 24 goals in 5 seasons.. do the math . Zidane came to Real when he was 28 years old .. 3 year older then Iniesta atm and his stats improved with Real
Zidane had 2 distinguished features that make him ahead of Iniesta which is freekicks (he was awesome ) and Penalty kicks (main taker for France national team ) and that change the whole dynamics for your stats considering Cesc take corners at times and if they resulted a goal it's counted in his name .. same thing for Lampard who is the main Penalty taker/freekick & corner taker for Chelsea.
Iniesta isn't doing any of the above and to judge him u need to start watching Iniesta on the pitch and not through Wikipedia and Soccernet pages.
he is a dynamic player that make his team tic , the ball barely leaves his feet and quite dangerous from the side, it's very obvious to see the difference he make when he is injured and when he is a back a player u expect a consistent 8/10 from him all the time
out of all Barca stars the only player Real Madrid wanted 3 years ago was Iniesta and almost paid his release clause if it wasn't for Laporta - Calderon relation and Iniesta own loyalty not Dinho,not Messi not Xavi not Eto'o
there is a reason why prominent managers like Aragones & Del Bosque prefer Iniesta over Cesc and there is a reason why people like Rooney (and me personally ) called him the the best player in the world last year

 

[AnfieldEd]

Fantastic post Gio I fully agree with you.

 

[Cal-FCB]

The thing is to have the viewpoint of Justin you have to have watched such a minimal amount of Iniesta. He probably only saw the Chelsea games and the final. Anyone who saw more than 3 games of Iniesta last season would understand just exactly what he brings to the team.

 

[Vecellio]

The bit that made me laugh the most was Justin said 'Zidane was much better than Iniesta' and then later on 'Lampard is miles better than Iniesta'. Now where i come from 'miles' means even more than 'much'.
So accordingly we can conclude that Lamps is in fact, better than Zizou.

 

[yusuf]

well the stats back it up

 

[La Furia]

The thing is to have the viewpoint of Justin you have to have watched such a minimal amount of Iniesta. He probably only saw the Chelsea games and the final. Anyone who saw more than 3 games of Iniesta last season would understand just exactly what he brings to the team.

That wouldn't make sense either because Iniesta tore Manchester United up in the final like Cesc never has, despite playing Manure plenty more times.

If anything, he doesn't watch football at all and merely reads gamecasts or something. Or the "justin" in his name is a reference to justin.tv and he's so used to watching crappy streams in languages he doesn't understand that he can't tell players apart and has to resort to statistical analysis.

As far as I'm concerned, goals and assists never give the complete picture, and what they do tell mostly concerns forwards, whose job is to, if not score the goal, at least set up the last move. Assists are an interesting stat but the only players they can tell a lot about are wingers and second strikers.

Honestly, anyone who doesn't recognize how great Iniesta is doesn't even appreciate football.

 

[yusuf]

i like how you tried to dissect him nolan very detective like

 

[maz]

Iniesta isn't doing any of the above and to judge him u need to start watching Iniesta on the pitch and not through Wikipedia and Soccernet pages.

That's the most profound thing you've ever said! I completely agree with your post..nice one mate.

 

[AnfieldEd]

Maybe this person is on a wind up surely?!

 

[justin]

So Sir Alex and other have praised Iniesta. Well, Scolari and Mourinho both said that Lampard is the world's greatest.

I have actually watched quite a few Barcelona games and all Iniesta is a mere system player, not a difference maker If you took Messi and Xavi out of Barcelona and rely only on Iniesta, Iniesta will look average. I never see Iniesta drive the team forward and inspire the team like Fabregas, Gerrard or Lampard. So how can Iniesta be rated one of the best in the word??

People say that Iniesta is dynamic and the ball barely leaves his feet but that it all aesthetics and personal taste.

People say that statistics don't tell the whole story. This is true but they give a very good indication as to how much the player is contributing, else why would people bother collecting stats. Regarding Zidane's stats he didn't score that many goals, but I am sure he managed loads of assists.
So what's the reason why Xavi is getting 30 assists and Iniesta only 10 assists yet people Iniesta is more important.

With his 10 assists last season how can Iniesta be more creative than Fabregas who has 9 assists already this season and Fabregas is servicing inferior fowards as well. Take away Fabregas assists from corners and free-kicks and Fabregas still manages more defense splitting assist passes for inferior fowards. Fabregas superior awareness allows him to create goals where as those fancy tricks Iniesta does very often result in no end product. Iniesta only gets picked ahead of Fabregas because of team politics. Only when Fabregas came off the bench did Spain get the goals (semi-final against Russia)

 

[Cal-FCB]

Maybe this person is on a wind up surely?!

Clearly is, either that or he's just absolutely deluded with no understanding of football.

 

[beautifulgame]

So Sir Alex and other have praised Iniesta. Well, Scolari and
People say that Iniesta is dynamic and the ball barely leaves his feet but that it all aesthetics and personal taste.

No, I would say that great control of the ball and dynamic, unpredictable style are two VERY important attributes of a footballer.


:crazy:

 

[Vecellio]

Fabregas superior awareness allows him to create goals where as those fancy tricks Iniesta does very often result in no end product.

The bizarre thing in all this Justin is that Iniesta is one of those players who pretty much never does tricks just for the sake of it. It is always for the sake of not being predictable or for the sake of the team.
He's the most economical of players really in that regard, actually in some ways a more direct and dangerous player than Zidane, in my opinion. Rui Costa was as good as Zidane in real terms i reckon, didn't do as many tricks though. And i think Andres will be too (albeit a bit different style). Which is not saying Zizou was a bad player at all - he was fabulous.

But anyway, as everyone is saying there seems little point in arguing with you. Your mind is firmly made up and in the statistics camp.