Were you around to see Brazil in 70 and 82, the Netherlands and Ajax in the 70s, Real Madrid of the 50s-60s, Hungary in the 50s, River Plate of the 40s, or Austria of the 30s?
And that's just counting technical offensive powerhouses, which are most commonly called "stylish"
were you? at least some of them? just asking for curiosity.
from what i've seen, downloading full games, i've seen some of them. mostly the wordl cups and other major tournaments. i have to say that the brazilian 82 were really beautiful. you could just watch them and you know that every single one of them were enjoying playing football. what i loved was the slow tempo of the game. it was like you are playing at the park, just enjoyng the game, dribble, playing onetwos. there weren't no robust and aggressive play that you see often these days.
60's brazil were fun to watch just for garrincha himself. this guy was pure genius and one of the best dribbleres i've seen. the way he fainted his body to fool players and them skip past them was magical. something that i want to see players do more in these days, but everybody wants to do those stupid tricks which leads them nowhere.
also what deserves a mention was french in the 80's
the midfield they had,
the magic square, or
the little brazil with tigana as pivot, giresse, genghini/luiz fernandez and platini on the top. they were really amazing. kinda reminds me of today's barcelonas midfield - busi, xaviniesta and messi.
but they didn't win the stupid world cup in 82. they deserved to be at least in the final, because of that dirty tackle from west germanys goalkeeper harald schumacher (that famous tackle where he broke the french strikers nose after 1v1 and didn't even get a foul) but 2 years later, at their home soil they were absolutely beautiful and platini was on fire there. they beat 2-0 spain in the final and crowded european champions.
but coming back to the stylish. try be stylish 50 or even more years ago when fields were covered with mud, ball bounced wherever it wanted and if it was raining, the leather ball weight like i don't know how many kilos. makes me just wonder how nonsense is to compare different players and different eras. every great team and player leave their own legacy.