2014 - 2015 Football Thread - Page 785
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GizmoPT
Portugal3040 Posts
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sneirac
Germany3464 Posts
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Eliezar
United States481 Posts
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Rebs
Pakistan10726 Posts
On June 17 2015 08:15 Eliezar wrote: on the GOAT: its silly to say that the best player of the easiest era ever (most unbalanced leagues) is the best player just because he is the current best player. Ok thanks, now we can discuss which era was the easiest. Lovely. | ||
evilfatsh1t
Australia8657 Posts
On June 17 2015 08:15 Eliezar wrote: on the GOAT: its silly to say that the best player of the easiest era ever (most unbalanced leagues) is the best player just because he is the current best player. unbalanced leagues has nothing to do with it lol. messi could play in any european league and he would still be the best player of his generation. also, as already brought up, leagues being unbalanced doesnt hide the fact that the players now are definitely much better than previous years. but yeah, this discussion has been going on for too long with no conclusion. | ||
Eliezar
United States481 Posts
And even Messi's European competition records aren't light years better than the best players in prior generations. As much as we hear about the scoring of the top scorers in the Champions League it is mostly because of the total number of games played (and the great group stage with sufficient minnows). Gerd Muller scored 1 goal per game in the European Cup Puskas scored .88 Di Stefano scored .84 Messi is at .79 Ronaldo is at .67 So he isn't the best goal scorer in European competition of players that played at least 35 matches (there are even more if you you count people with lower game totals like in the upper 20s. When you look at internationals for Argentina Messi isn't dominating the goal scoring records, he is better than Maradona though Batistuta .72 gpg Crespo .56 Messi .47 Maradona .37 (or Luis Artime .96 gpg in 25 games) The bloating of the goal scoring records come from playing way more games than prior generations, playing in way more lop sided games than in prior generations due to the Bosman ruling and the centralization of the game in Europe, and so forth. In Copa Lib back in the day Pele scored OVER a goal a game and added to that with 619 goals in 638 Brazilian domestic league (or tourneys as they had back then) games (.97 gpg). Compare that to Messi's 286 in 314 Top flight games .91 gpg. Pele had a better continental and domestic goal scoring record than Messi. But again...Barcelona is to Spanish top flight what the Harlem Globetrotters are to the Washington Generals. Barcelona wins 56% of their games historically to have only Real Madrid as a real competitor (59% win rate) and the third best team in Spain? 45% win rate for Valencia...yeah the third most dominate team finishes on average FIFTEEN points behind the second place team. And this trend was entrenched by Bosman and the Champions League money in a way that makes current league games trivial for the most part. (By the way, thank you Atletico for giving us a good year recently). So celebrate the great players playing today because Ronaldo and Messi are as good as I have seen having also watched Pele and Maradona...but they simply aren't statistically better than their counterparts even though they have played on better teams against worse teams and with rules that favor the attackers by a mile. If you watched Van Basten play he was amazing...but it was legal to go through his legs if you also got the ball. This allowed defenders to punish players in a way that made even the best players get kicked out of World Cups (Pele and Maradona both enjoyed this) and get kicked out of a career (poor Marco). I think its very likely that if Messi played in the days of Pele he would have had an injury like what Pele had in 62 and missed serious time or if he played in the 80s he would have been Van Bastenized. Ronaldo would probably hold up much better and in many ways he is probably an improved Pele. I do think there is one thing that is true for Messi more than it is for Ronaldo, Pele, or Maradona though. Messi plays best against outmatched teams where as Maradona made magic happen when his team seemed outclassed both with Napoli and Argentina. Does that mean Maradona is better? No, but if you put Maradona on Messi's Barceonla then he would have done much better than having to pull a Napoli team up. And...the real Ronaldo was every bit as good from around 95 to 2002. He scored almost a goal a game for Barcelona and PSV and then when he went to Italy it slowed down a bit. I'm not really sure that either Messi or Cristiano were better than he was when he was young and healthy. /shrug | ||
Greg_J
China4409 Posts
Russian supporters are trying to raise the £15million required to get rid of Fabio Capello ㅋㅋㅋ | ||
Rebs
Pakistan10726 Posts
On June 17 2015 11:15 Eliezar wrote: + Show Spoiler + Disagree. When AC Milan was the best team in the world or when Liverpool was the leagues didn't have talent bunched only at the top and only in certain leagues. They didn't play 38 seasons where 34 of those games their bench players were better than every single player on the other team. And even Messi's European competition records aren't light years better than the best players in prior generations. As much as we hear about the scoring of the top scorers in the Champions League it is mostly because of the total number of games played (and the great group stage with sufficient minnows). Gerd Muller scored 1 goal per game in the European Cup Puskas scored .88 Di Stefano scored .84 Messi is at .79 Ronaldo is at .67 So he isn't the best goal scorer in European competition of players that played at least 35 matches (there are even more if you you count people with lower game totals like in the upper 20s. When you look at internationals for Argentina Messi isn't dominating the goal scoring records, he is better than Maradona though Batistuta .72 gpg Crespo .56 Messi .47 Maradona .37 (or Luis Artime .96 gpg in 25 games) The bloating of the goal scoring records come from playing way more games than prior generations, playing in way more lop sided games than in prior generations due to the Bosman ruling and the centralization of the game in Europe, and so forth. In Copa Lib back in the day Pele scored OVER a goal a game and added to that with 619 goals in 638 Brazilian domestic league (or tourneys as they had back then) games (.97 gpg). Compare that to Messi's 286 in 314 Top flight games .91 gpg. Pele had a better continental and domestic goal scoring record than Messi. But again...Barcelona is to Spanish top flight what the Harlem Globetrotters are to the Washington Generals. Barcelona wins 56% of their games historically to have only Real Madrid as a real competitor (59% win rate) and the third best team in Spain? 45% win rate for Valencia...yeah the third most dominate team finishes on average FIFTEEN points behind the second place team. And this trend was entrenched by Bosman and the Champions League money in a way that makes current league games trivial for the most part. (By the way, thank you Atletico for giving us a good year recently). So celebrate the great players playing today because Ronaldo and Messi are as good as I have seen having also watched Pele and Maradona...but they simply aren't statistically better than their counterparts even though they have played on better teams against worse teams and with rules that favor the attackers by a mile. If you watched Van Basten play he was amazing...but it was legal to go through his legs if you also got the ball. This allowed defenders to punish players in a way that made even the best players get kicked out of World Cups (Pele and Maradona both enjoyed this) and get kicked out of a career (poor Marco). I think its very likely that if Messi played in the days of Pele he would have had an injury like what Pele had in 62 and missed serious time or if he played in the 80s he would have been Van Bastenized. Ronaldo would probably hold up much better and in many ways he is probably an improved Pele. I do think there is one thing that is true for Messi more than it is for Ronaldo, Pele, or Maradona though. Messi plays best against outmatched teams where as Maradona made magic happen when his team seemed outclassed both with Napoli and Argentina. Does that mean Maradona is better? No, but if you put Maradona on Messi's Barceonla then he would have done much better than having to pull a Napoli team up. And...the real Ronaldo was every bit as good from around 95 to 2002. He scored almost a goal a game for Barcelona and PSV and then when he went to Italy it slowed down a bit. I'm not really sure that either Messi or Cristiano were better than he was when he was young and healthy. /shrug Aight so I guess this is happening. For starters. The talent argument. This is categorically false. There was a clear gulf between teams back then just as there is now. The Bosman ruling also made it so that talent could flow freely to lower level teams aswell. Not just the top teams. So whether your pool was small like before or as large as it is now. The centralization of talent was a thing before and it is now. Liverpool had the pick of the British player. United later on again a good example. You will note the same thing in Milan (and they also got the best Europeans in the dutch). The difference now is that teams at the top can have rosters that allow them to compete in more tournaments .The TV money thats exploded mostly goes toward paying inflated wages and stupid transfer fees, not better quality rosters sitting on benches. Top players dont sit on benches. Not in Barca not in Madrid. That just goes down to the evolution of the sport. You cant deny someone greatness because the game has advanced. Now the stats. Im not even going to address that because its a silly comparison to compare scoring rates because its a facile argument that doesnt mean much. You basically just compared scoring rate to nominal scoring, and then unilaterally surmized that therefore scoring rates are better than nominal numbers Ok whatever. Dont really care about that. We dont appreciate these guys because of the stats. That is the kicker in the discussion. Not the core argument. Otherwise your Zidane's etc wouldnt even be in the discussion. What the European Cup was compared to what it is now is not even close. Lets take the 70's for example. Bayern Munch and Ajax were absolute powerhouses along with the Milans and Juve's competing with them. Look at this year for example and this is the first one I randomely picked up. I can guarantee you a trend of strong teams pummeling weaker teams from the continent to the quarter and semi stage and then it gets a little competitive. Pele and Liba was even more of a joke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972–73_European_Cup Now if you have seen Pele and Maradonna you have seen them either get hacked down (happened alot yes) but you also saw them go past defenders that looked like they belonged on green street hooligans rather than a football pitch. They couldnt run for shit and defense organization was a joke. You could be a beer guzzling party man like George Best and walk in the next day pop some pills and an egg nogg and run circles around teams all day. There is pleenntttyy of footage to support this. The Italians and German being obvious exceptions and hence their massive success in the 70s, 80's and 90's. The vast majority of the defenders back then had the agility of a turtle on dope which obviously by the mid to late 90's had started shifting. Again you cannot fault Messi for the way the game is played now. This argument keeps popping over and over again and actually has been addressed before (ofcourse you didnt read it because you jumped into this a few weeks late). If defenders are less thuggish, they are also more athletic, better organized and have higher IQ's than ever before. How on earth is a better game, a more sporting game, played in a better spirit, an indictment against greatness is frankly baffling to me. Maradonna and his magic. Yes his Argentina team was not the best. But he basically won 3 games with a team that played well enough to scrape through the sort of tournament even Greece have won. More than well enough to lift a trophy in a time when individual brilliance was much easier to express. He also as people conveniently tend to forget. handled the ball to score a certain goal. Not that I care, but its interesting to note how this fact is conveniently forgotten just to discredit the current generation of great players. He did win with Napoli aswell. Once. Messi can carry that level of a team to a league title aswell. Maradonna was also part of a star-studded Barcelona team and flopped miserably. Another fact that is conveniently forgotten. As for Pele and his World Cups. Half the world cups he was the one benefiting from playing in a team so stacked the comparative strength of Barcelona to the rest of the world is a joke compared to his team. The only one that wasnt stacked was the 58 squad and that basically was their breakout. Garrincha, Zagallo. Vava all could beat 2 guys on a dime. Again just youtube them its like the are playing against kids. Very big kids who either hack them down or end up looking like morons. So you see there are arguments to discredit both sets of greats. But the fact is it boils down to a very simple thing for me. I genuinely believe the game is harder now. The competition is insane. If you think Spain is such a lopsided environment you probably dont watch the league. Or please explain how Spain has dominated the lower tier of European competition so heavily (and please dont tell me other teams dont care. They do, except maybe the English, but even they do just not as much). You clearly dont feel that way and thats fine. There is no end to this. So the things you are saying arent new, they have been repeated by people over and over again in this very thread, all of them. Everyones kinda bored with it. Except maybe me it seems, but Im on a plane and I bought the wifi so might aswell indulge. Or dont take it from me. Take it from people who know better + Show Spoiler + edit: /shrug | ||
evilfatsh1t
Australia8657 Posts
On June 17 2015 11:15 Eliezar wrote: + Show Spoiler + Disagree. When AC Milan was the best team in the world or when Liverpool was the leagues didn't have talent bunched only at the top and only in certain leagues. They didn't play 38 seasons where 34 of those games their bench players were better than every single player on the other team. And even Messi's European competition records aren't light years better than the best players in prior generations. As much as we hear about the scoring of the top scorers in the Champions League it is mostly because of the total number of games played (and the great group stage with sufficient minnows). Gerd Muller scored 1 goal per game in the European Cup Puskas scored .88 Di Stefano scored .84 Messi is at .79 Ronaldo is at .67 So he isn't the best goal scorer in European competition of players that played at least 35 matches (there are even more if you you count people with lower game totals like in the upper 20s. When you look at internationals for Argentina Messi isn't dominating the goal scoring records, he is better than Maradona though Batistuta .72 gpg Crespo .56 Messi .47 Maradona .37 (or Luis Artime .96 gpg in 25 games) The bloating of the goal scoring records come from playing way more games than prior generations, playing in way more lop sided games than in prior generations due to the Bosman ruling and the centralization of the game in Europe, and so forth. In Copa Lib back in the day Pele scored OVER a goal a game and added to that with 619 goals in 638 Brazilian domestic league (or tourneys as they had back then) games (.97 gpg). Compare that to Messi's 286 in 314 Top flight games .91 gpg. Pele had a better continental and domestic goal scoring record than Messi. But again...Barcelona is to Spanish top flight what the Harlem Globetrotters are to the Washington Generals. Barcelona wins 56% of their games historically to have only Real Madrid as a real competitor (59% win rate) and the third best team in Spain? 45% win rate for Valencia...yeah the third most dominate team finishes on average FIFTEEN points behind the second place team. And this trend was entrenched by Bosman and the Champions League money in a way that makes current league games trivial for the most part. (By the way, thank you Atletico for giving us a good year recently). So celebrate the great players playing today because Ronaldo and Messi are as good as I have seen having also watched Pele and Maradona...but they simply aren't statistically better than their counterparts even though they have played on better teams against worse teams and with rules that favor the attackers by a mile. If you watched Van Basten play he was amazing...but it was legal to go through his legs if you also got the ball. This allowed defenders to punish players in a way that made even the best players get kicked out of World Cups (Pele and Maradona both enjoyed this) and get kicked out of a career (poor Marco). I think its very likely that if Messi played in the days of Pele he would have had an injury like what Pele had in 62 and missed serious time or if he played in the 80s he would have been Van Bastenized. Ronaldo would probably hold up much better and in many ways he is probably an improved Pele. I do think there is one thing that is true for Messi more than it is for Ronaldo, Pele, or Maradona though. Messi plays best against outmatched teams where as Maradona made magic happen when his team seemed outclassed both with Napoli and Argentina. Does that mean Maradona is better? No, but if you put Maradona on Messi's Barceonla then he would have done much better than having to pull a Napoli team up. And...the real Ronaldo was every bit as good from around 95 to 2002. He scored almost a goal a game for Barcelona and PSV and then when he went to Italy it slowed down a bit. I'm not really sure that either Messi or Cristiano were better than he was when he was young and healthy. /shrug no one is arguing that messi is the best because the statistics say so. we say hes the best because he pulls shit out of his ass so frequently and successfully against better opponents that the best players of the past wouldnt even dream of being able to do. this has been covered before in this thread already, but opponents now are better than before. teams are more tactically sound and players individually are more talented. this doesnt just apply to attackers, but defenders and goalkeepers as well. you look at maradona or zidanes games and sure they pull off some crazy shit too, but what catches your eye more now is not the fact that they pulled off these moves, but the fact that their opponents just werent defending properly by todays standards. yet messi still does what maradona and zidane etc were famous for doing against opponents who are not only better tactically and technically, but are often also specifically trained to try and shut down messi. you could argue that messi has always had a great team behind him which gave messi the confidence to do whatever he wanted, and he may not have been able to do what he does today at a team which wasnt barca. but thats just speculation and probably something well never find out unless messi decides to go to qatar/mls for retirement or something. but what we know he can do when hes at his best is something that not even old legends could achieve and that alone is why messi should be hailed the greatest of all time | ||
Craze
United States561 Posts
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Craze
United States561 Posts
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Charlie Sheens House51488 Posts
Will update as soon as i can, just a little over 20 minutes after my post ![]() Chelsea fixtures pretty kind, game 2 we away vs Man City and then a September period which see's champions league match day 1 include games away to Everton Home to Arsenal then away to Newcastle. Everton drew short straw it seems; Game 1 Home to Watford Game 2 Away to Southampton Game 3 Home to Man City Game 4 Away to Tottenham Game 5 Home to Chelsea Could be 4 defeats in a row that if they dont start properly, but of course this is the premier league where nothing is taken for granted ![]() Fixture Lists - All Clubs All Clubs fixtures in that link, scroll down click the club hyperlink and see all fixtures. | ||
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Pandemona
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Charlie Sheens House51488 Posts
Premier League Fixtures - Matchday 1 Weekend 8th August 2015 Bournemouth v Aston Villa Arsenal v West Ham United Chelsea v Swansea City Everton v Watford Leicester City v Sunderland Manchester United v Tottenham Hotspur Newcastle United v Southampton Norwich City v Crystal Palace Stoke City v Liverpool West Bromwich Albion v Manchester City | ||
lprk
Poland2249 Posts
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Rebs
Pakistan10726 Posts
On June 17 2015 17:45 lprk wrote: I like how Liverpool play first game at Stoke after losing there 6:1 at the end of last season, and their first 7 away games are pretty harsh: Stoke, Arsenal, Man United, Everton, Tottenham, Chelsea and Man City. I feel bad but I may well put money on Rogers getting sacked within the first half of the season. | ||
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Charlie Sheens House51488 Posts
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Steveling
Greece10806 Posts
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Boucot
France15997 Posts
On June 17 2015 18:21 Pandemona wrote: Speaking of that, City put in an improved £40million package for Sterling today. SELL ! By the way, PSG is interested by a german keeper playing in Eintracht Frankfurt, Kevin Trapp. I don't know him, is he good ? | ||
imre
France9263 Posts
On June 17 2015 08:15 Eliezar wrote: on the GOAT: its silly to say that the best player of the easiest era ever (most unbalanced leagues) is the best player just because he is the current best player. the top 7 of La Liga is by quite a margin the best one. There is a reason Spain is destroying both the Europa League and the CL. Atletico, Bilbao, Malaga, Sevilla, Valencia all have excellent teams. | ||
danzii
Germany75 Posts
On June 17 2015 20:17 Boucot wrote: By the way, PSG is interested by a german keeper playing in Eintracht Frankfurt, Kevin Trapp. I don't know him, is he good ? He's pretty good. I'd say he's among the horde of skilled german keepers who could be backup keepers of the national team. Also pls keep your hands off him ![]() | ||
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