He is underrated as a playmaker (in his prime) in that he was good at it, say a 7/10. The issue is he's being compared to all-time great 9.5/10 level playmakers.
Other than that though, just wanted to say that assists have little correlation with playmaking ability - most forwards have more assists than midfielders as they play higher up the pitch. Haaland gets plenty of assists too.
Playmaking is more about the qualitative aspects - turning on a dime on the half turn, opening space, playing cute passes, dribbling, keeping the play moving. It isn't really about chance creation that much which is a different sort of thing, even though they overlap.
Overall that was a good post you made there, just wanted to say it's a mistake to equate assists with playmaking.
