Lionel Messi - v7

[KingLeo10]

There's also some people here who expected Messi to win 6-7-8 CLs in the last 15 years. That's absurd. I think if he had given 100% effort (Roma, AM), he would have 1 more CL than he does right now. That's it.

This trophy isn't some cakewalk. Juve have lost 5 CL finals in a row. Bayern (the model of efficiency) have won this competition 2 times, and possibly 3 in the last 20 years.

 

[BarcaOG]

Messi is far above in League play, its not just an edge, 10 titles vs 7, 7 times topscorer vs 4, 6 times European Golden Shoe vs 4, 6 times leading the league in assists vs 0. Better peak and better career averages.
In CL, its 5 vs 4 in CR7 favour, 7 vs 6 in being topscorer of the competition. CR7 has the higher seasonal numbers but Messi again better career average in goals and assists. The CL is far closer.
Add other competitions into the mix and the gap agains widens in favour of Leo, more goals, more assits, higher peak and better career averages.

messi 4 finals w argentina- 0 losses
CR 3 finals w portugal (including the nations league which admittedly is a lesser trophy)- 2 wins 1 loss

if you add the international dimension into the discussion messi loses a lot of ground. again, i cant imagine what kind of supposedly best player ever would fail to make a decisive assist or goal in FOUR separate finals. you can only blame higuain for so long.

 

[DonAK]

Reading some of these comments and the ones from journalists and reporters in Mundo Deportivo like Cristina Cubero I'm pretty sure Messi will be disgraced the way Cruyff was when he leaves Barcelona. Sad.

 

[KingLeo10]

messi 4 finals w argentina- 0 losses
CR 3 finals w portugal (including the nations league which admittedly is a lesser trophy)- 2 wins 1 loss

if you add the international dimension into the discussion messi loses a lot of ground. again, i cant imagine what kind of supposedly best player ever would fail to make a decisive assist or goal in FOUR separate finals. you can only blame higuain for so long.

You're out there counting a friendly/mickey mouse competition like Nations League...did anyone ever mention Messi's Olympic gold? Because that's mickey mouse stuff.

Or crediting CR7's final prowess/decisiveness in a Euro 2016 final in which he didn't even play

I genuinely don't know anymore.

 

[serghei]

messi 4 finals w argentina- 0 losses
CR 3 finals w portugal (including the nations league which admittedly is a lesser trophy)- 2 wins 1 loss

if you add the international dimension into the discussion messi loses a lot of ground. again, i cant imagine what kind of supposedly best player ever would fail to make a decisive assist or goal in FOUR separate finals. you can only blame higuain for so long.

That's because there is no such thing as the best EVER. Messi has done enough to enter the conversation, just like a lot of other greats, including Ronaldo. Things stop here. All have big holes in their career.

 

[BarcaOG]

2 goals and 4 clear chances created (lets not forget putting Dembele alone in front of goal after he scored 2 in the first game) over 2 games against Liverpool, the best team in the World at that time thats as much as you can expect from anybody. The team failed him not the other way around.

i'd believe that if it had not happened so often, not just at anfield. again, i think your point would be a lot stronger if this had happened one or even two times. but it has happened on multiple occasions. at some point you need to look at what messi himself did or did not do as well. he is part of the 11 that was humiliated 4 seasons in a row. why is that always on his teammates but not on him? when barca succeeds we rightly praise both messi and the team. but when we fail messi gets a pass? sorry, i dont buy it. considering messi is also our captain, he needs to do better.

 

[BarcaOG]

You're out there counting a friendly/mickey mouse competition like Nations League...

Or crediting CR7's final prowess in a Euro 2016 final in which he didn't even play

I genuinely don't know anymore.

a trophy is a trophy. if messi won something similar, we would count it in his favour. right? in the last few years i heard a lot of madridistas undervalue La Liga because barca was winning it but exiting the CL while madrid could not win the league. thats bullshit. competitions matter. i agree its not a top tier competition but its not nothing.

 

[BarcaOG]

That's because there is no such thing as the best EVER. Messi has done enough to enter the conversation, just like a lot of other greats, including Ronaldo. Things stop here. All have big holes in their career.

yep, i basically agree with this.

 

[DonAK]

CR's disasterclass vs Chile in the Confederations Cup is far more relevant than Nations League considering he lost vs. a team people claimed was overrated because Argentina lost twice vs them.

 

[KingLeo10]

a trophy is a trophy. if messi won something similar, we would count it in his favour. right? in the last few years i heard a lot of madridistas undervalue La Liga because barca was winning it but exiting the CL while madrid could not win the league. thats bullshit. competitions matter. i agree its not a top tier competition but its not nothing.

No one is counting Messi's olympic gold...because it's a mickey mouse competition.

 

[Mitchell1978]

Ever since media ran with the importance of statistics to highlight the messi vs Ronaldo narrative since they are not comparable otherwise, the whole idea of a great footballer has shifted.

Now you can play badly,score and be a great player. Ronaldo made a career out of that in enpowered teams. Or is it coincidence strikers are scoring more nowadays?

Football went from being a great player to putting in stats.
Remember how Dinho and Kaka were the best in the world. If that was today people would rate Lampard above them.

Before social media best players got on the highlight reel. Why do you think your favourite narcisist did those useless stepovers at United before figuring out scoring gets you even more attention?

Ronaldo's whole career is smoke, mirrors and best pr ever when he cant hold a candle to Messi in the talent department. Nobody bar real Ronaldo before injuries and dinho post Maradona.

There is a reasin why nobody compares Gerd Muller to Cruyff. Beckenbauer wouldnt be that guy in this social media stats fettish era.

Would M?ller be playing today, Bayern would be pushing him, like they do with Lewandowski, as the best player in the world probably.

Now i think Gerd M?ller deserves to be ranked pretty high, top 20 for shure, one of the greatest goalscorers ever.

I always wondered why Ferenc Puskas isn't regarded as a top 5 player (or close to it), he has the stats, the trophies also.

 

[Hardy]

I was talking about his whole career. But as in my reply to serghei, the reason CR7 has been able to perform better overall the last 6-7 years was because he had an excellent team perfectly suited to him, just like we had for Messi earlier on in his career. If he was capable of winning the tournament by himself, juve would have done better.

nobody said that but Messi has been eliminated (pulling miserable performance) too many times for my taste even when he had the best or one of the best team in the world. At the end of the day Ronaldo capitalized at max when he had the team to win the CL, I can't say the same for Messi, I just can't say that.

 

[KingLeo10]

yep, i basically agree with this.

Nah, what you're basically doing today is working overtime as CR7's lawyer. It's fine to pick apart Messi's flaws/failures but you can't expect us to buy your neutrality when you don't do the same for CR7

 

[KingLeo10]

nobody said that but Messi has been eliminated too many times for my taste even when he had the best or one of the best team in the world. At the end of the day Ronaldo capitalized at max when he had the team to win the CL, I can't say the same for Messi, I just can't say that.

Part of the reason is that it happened after our golden period. RM didn't repeat our complacency v Chelsea or even Inter 1st leg. Not the whole reason, but part of it.

 

[Tackle]

There's also some people here who expected Messi to win 6-7-8 CLs in the last 15 years. That's absurd. I think if he had given 100% effort (Roma, AM), he would have 1 more CL than he does right now. That's it.

This trophy isn't some cakewalk. Juve have lost 5 CL finals in a row. Bayern (the model of efficiency) have won this competition 2 times, and possibly 3 in the last 20 years.

Expecting that many wins is harsh, but Barca have only made the SFs twice since 12-13.

In those QF defeats Leo has mostly been average-terrible on an individual level. Was not a case of him playing well and the team letting him down.

Atletico 13-14
Atletico 15-16
Juventus 16-17
Roma 17-18
Bayern 19-20

He has ZERO goals in those 9 matches. So bad I had to use Wikipedia to confirm it was not my memory deceiving me.