Lionel Messi - v7

[Horatio]

Imagine if he stopped feeding his Bud Suarez. He would be banging 60 goals a season no problem.

Imagine if his teammates would find him inside the box.

 

[FinBarcelonafan]

Imagine if his teammates would find him inside the box.

Imagine if he could stay inside the box because his teammates can't create shit.

 

[Xtroverto]

It's a joke. His goals ratio dropping off when he should be overtaking Penaldo.

What are you even talking about? Messi is more than 60 goals ahead of Ronaldo at the same age.

Edit:

Actually, I take that back, the reality is Messi is more like 90 goals ahead of Ronaldo at the same age.

 

[booge]

What are you even talking about? Messi is more than 60 goals ahead of Ronaldo at the same age.

Edit:

Actually, I take that back, the reality is Messi is more like 90 goals ahead of Ronaldo at the same age.

and he doesnt even try to score. seems like the goals come themselves, a by product of his art work.
30% are golazo's. No one wonder every la liga footballer will claim messi was the greatest.

C.dog did well to run off.

 

[FinBarcelonafan]

and he doesnt even try to score. seems like the goals come themselves, a by product of his art work.
30% are golazo's. No one wonder every la liga footballer will claim messi was the greatest.

C.dog did well to run off.

CR will always look good in stat sheet but I don't understand people comparing him and Messi. It's not close IF you watch the games.

 

[Pedro]

Lovely goal from Leo

 

[wisconsincule]

Yet another outside of the box goal when we needed it most. This guy is absolutely insane.

 

[Hardy]

Don’t like him giving that pen away. Deserved to take it himself.

Suarez scored 1/3 of his goals literally on messi gifts. funny (or maybe better to say annoying) thing, messi on these days shots on target only when he's literally forced to do that because he doesn't have alternative for a pass.

Messi scoring these golazo is impressive but from another point of view having the best finisher in the world who can score only outside the box right now is simply depressing.

 

[booge]

Suarez scored 1/3 of his goals literally on messi gifts. funny (or maybe better to say annoying) thing, messi on these days shots on target only when he's literally forced to do that because he doesn't have alternative for a pass.

Messi scoring these golazo is impressive but from another point of view having the best finisher in the world who can score only outside the box right now is simply depressing.

what's ironic is the haters were saying he can't score from outside the box as good as you know who, and could not score free kicks as good as you know who...

now all messi can do is score from outside the box or freekicks LOL

 

[Ritchie]

What are you even talking about? Messi is more than 60 goals ahead of Ronaldo at the same age.

Edit:

Actually, I take that back, the reality is Messi is more like 90 goals ahead of Ronaldo at the same age.

He'd just gone a few games without a goal and then passes a Penaldo to Fatso

He can only score from his own genius outside the box, it's a travesty. He's relying on great goals to score at all now.

 

[Vilarrubi]

Crowded out of away games and Classicos. Needs games like this to score goals. He wont even score more than 30 this season in this bag of shit team with bullshit like that.

This sounds like the sort of thing a undercover Messi hater would say...... more like you HOPE he doesn’t score more than 30 this season.

You couldn’t be more wrong. He has 15 goals in 18 games this season without even trying, couple of those games as sub too. He will score his usual 50 goals in the 50-60 games this season. Quote this post at the end of the season if he doesn’t.

 

[KingLeo10]

Ritchie needs a ban until he gets his anger under control. Tired of flipping through pages to see this guy spreading unwarranted negativity. You'd think Messi has like 5 goals in 20 games with the way he's presenting this.

 

[eaman]

Brilliant goal. Does anyone have a still of the goal that was ruled out for offside? I saw where the lines were drawn and I'm fairly sure his arm was ahead of the alaves player not any part he could've scored with.

 

[RevoTeller]

You have the right to your opinion but for me these two are quite clearly the best 2 footballers in history. I can't think of anyone that surpasses them. Only R9 and Pele come close. R9 didn't have the longevity. Pele didn't have the same outrageous talent as the other two.

I will answer to you because you are one of the few on here who responded with a worthy post.
Maradona played with slower tempos compared to what Messi is currently used to, that's true.
However, Maradona played in arguably the hardest league ever (80's Serie A) for an offensive player.
Compared to Messi, he had to:

- Play on much worse pitches, with considerably heavier balls, shoes and shirts
- Play with a worse team than FC Barcelona has been, on average, during the last 10 years
- Play against much harder opponents week in week out compared to what Messi has to do. At the time, the league was so competitive because the talents and top notch players were almost evenly distributed among the different teams (just think to an all-time great like Zico playing for Udinese, e.g.).
Nowadays, 6-7 multi-billions worthy teams (Barcelona, Real Madrid, City, Liverpool, PSG, Juve etc.) have many of the best players in the world, making it easier for world class players to play together and score goals for fun against lesser teams.
- Play under much more stringent rules for the attackers (compared to today standards) and much more favorable rules for the defenders (compared to today standards).
Not to mention that the quality of the defenders back then was orders of magnitude greater than today. Lenglet is now a starter for a team of FC Barcelona caliber. In Maradona's era, Lenglet would have been lucky to even carry the bags to the football pitch for the true great defenders of the time.
- Play without a well-estabilished team system behind him. Maradona WAS the team system most of the times, while Messi often demonstrated in his career to be a wonderful system player.

Then, if we have to look at pure football abilities, to me Maradona

- Was more skillful overall technical than Messi. Maradona had more weapons and more flair than Messi in his personal inventory. Messi is of course a technically sublime player, with enormous efficiency in his plays, but Maradona was more skillful and had a wider set of abilities to counter for a harder (on average) opposition.
- Had much more leadership and charisma compared to Messi.

Now, people always bring up goals when they are short on argument when talking about football players.
Well, Maradona, given the considerably harder conditions he had to face as I explained before, playing as a midfielder or true "trequartista" for most of his career, still managed to have an equal or even better goal scoring ratio than the likes of Thierry Henry or Samuel Eto'o, who are two among the very best forwards of the last 30 years.
Now imagine a healty and "in his prime" Maradona playing in a today squad full of superstars surrounding him and against overall mediocre teams most of the times, with:

- Perfect pitches and modern balls
- Mediocre defenders facing him 99% of the games
- Modern rules which are extremely more favorable to offensive players, with the aim to promoting goals and the overall show

Imagine him, for example, playing in today Liverpool, where someone like Salah (with all due respect, a great player but no more than average if compared to a prime Maradona) scores around 30-40 goals per year.
It could be such an overpowered situation to see that it would almost be embarassing for the opponents facing him.

But then again, he would not be "Maradona" as football experts consider him to be today, because what it sets him apart from most of the competitors is to have done what he has done under such hard and difficult overall conditions.

As I told you in my previous post, I consider Messi to be in a top 6 players ever list and by far the best player gracing a football pitch today, but if we talk about Maradona at his prime I believe that he was an even greater force to behold.


PS: the same basically goes for pre-injury Ronaldo de Lima, who was basically something unseen before and after on a football pitch.

 

[eaman]

I will answer to you because you are one of the few on here who responded with a worthy post.
Maradona played with slower tempos compared to what Messi is currently used to, that's true.
However, Maradona played in arguably the hardest league ever (80's Serie A) for an offensive player.
Compared to Messi, he had to:

- Play on much worse pitches, with considerably heavier balls, shoes and shirts
- Play with a worse team than FC Barcelona has been, on average, during the last 10 years
- Play against much harder opponents week in week out compared to what Messi has to do. At the time, the league was so competitive because the talents and top notch players were almost evenly distributed among the different teams (just think to an all-time great like Zico playing for Udinese, e.g.).
Nowadays, 6-7 multi-billions worthy teams (Barcelona, Real Madrid, City, Liverpool, PSG, Juve etc.) have many of the best players in the world, making it easier for world class players to play together and score goals for fun against lesser teams.
- Play under much more stringent rules for the attackers (compared to today standards) and much more favorable rules for the defenders (compared to today standards).
Not to mention that the quality of the defenders back then was orders of magnitude greater than today. Lenglet is now a starter for a team of FC Barcelona caliber. In Maradona's era, Lenglet would have been lucky to even carry the bags to the football pitch for the true great defenders of the time.
- Play without a well-estabilished team system behind him. Maradona WAS the team system most of the times, while Messi often demonstrated in his career to be a wonderful system player.

Then, if we have to look at pure football abilities, to me Maradona

- Was more skillful overall technical than Messi. Maradona had more weapons and more flair than Messi in his personal inventory. Messi is of course a technically sublime player, with enormous efficiency in his plays, but Maradona was more skillful and had a wider set of abilities to counter for a harder (on average) opposition.
- Had much more leadership and charisma compared to Messi.

Now, people always bring up goals when they are short on argument when talking about football players.
Well, Maradona, given the considerably harder conditions he had to face as I explained before, playing as a midfielder or true "trequartista" for most of his career, still managed to have an equal or even better goal scoring ratio than the likes of Thierry Henry or Samuel Eto'o, who are two among the very best forwards of the last 30 years.
Now imagine a healty and "in his prime" Maradona playing in a today squad full of superstars surrounding him and against overall mediocre teams most of the times, with:

- Perfect pitches and modern balls
- Mediocre defenders facing him 99% of the games
- Modern rules which are extremely more favorable to offensive players, with the aim to promoting goals and the overall show

Imagine him, for example, playing in today Liverpool, where someone like Salah (with all due respect, a great player but no more than average if compared to a prime Maradona) scores around 30-40 goals per year.
It could be such an overpowered situation to see that it would almost be embarassing for the opponents facing him.

But then again, he would not be "Maradona" as football experts consider him to be today, because what it sets him apart from most of the competitors is to have done what he has done under such hard and difficult overall conditions.

As I told you in my previous post, I consider Messi to be in a top 6 players ever list and by far the best player gracing a football pitch today, but if we talk about Maradona at his prime I have almost no doubts in my mind that he was an even greater force to behold.


PS: the same basically goes for pre-injury Ronaldo de Lima, who was basically something unseen before and after on a football pitch.

That napoli team was a good side after they bought the players Maradona wanted and he was the star man that made turned them into champions. Kinda like this barca team and Messi. I dont really buy the whole defenders were better thing. Back then defenders played when not fully fit and if you were you probably had a field day against them. Nowadays all defenders are fully fit and very athletic so you rarely get them on a bad day. We will never know how Maradona would fare against today's defenders but I'm fairly sure messi would've had a field day against those slower and regularly unfit defenders