Difference between Messi and Neymar

omarish wrote:

Ganso wrote:Since when has munian been playing well again?has he won any trophies at all?91 apps 14 goals

If he keeps it up for another season i think hell start getting hyped,but for now he has done nothing of notice

Scoring late equalisers for Bilbao, or just scoring in important games for them, or overall just scoring when it matters

Not to mention the goals he sets up. and lets not forget his performances, excellent ones

and dude he just turned 19, what did messi score 30 goals at 19? at 19 messi scored 16 goals, albeit more he is young and that can improve

muniain the real next thing in football, madrid should get him

thats just the definition of a good youngster,he basically just plays well.Neymar,Hazard and Gotze get hype because they are very above average when it comes to youngsters + they are winning trophies

Muniain is as good as Nerman

Muniain is gonna get better, we will all see when he gets a call up for the Spanish NT

His finishing is poor, I'll give you that one. But his passing is better. His dribbling is maybe not as good, but he is fast and he doesn't give up. He handles pressing very well (he was the cause for the 2nd goal vs Barca, he was pressing Machete, and machete does a backpass that results a corner, just shows how much he presses)

Also, he thrives in big games. This kid likes challanges. I still rate Muniain above Neymar though, but he defiently needs to improve his finishing. It can be so weak it's embarrasing, but he is young and it can still improve.

off topic

Ganso wrote:Since when has munian been playing well again?has he won any trophies at all?91 apps 14 goals

If he keeps it up for another season i think hell start getting hyped,but for now he has done nothing of notice

Thats because Munian is does not play as a striker or forward for that matter.

Thats like saying the same thing for Ganso.

Hasn't done anything of notice? Your my milanista friend so I'll be respectful enough not to post a facepalm

Arquitecto wrote:

Ganso wrote:Since when has munian been playing well again?has he won any trophies at all?91 apps 14 goals

If he keeps it up for another season i think hell start getting hyped,but for now he has done nothing of notice

Thats because Munian is does not play as a striker or forward for that matter.

Thats like saying the same thing for Ganso.

Hasn't done anything of notice? Your my milanista friend so I'll be respectful enough not to post a facepalm

Honestly though what has he done to be rated as a top youngster?

Ganso, you don't watch Atl. Bilbao. I do.

Look at his performances in big games

Sevilla (assisted the 2nd goal, a historic win for bilbao)
Valencia (scored vs them
Barcelona (excellent performance)
PSG (dat flick dat miss )

I can give more. I love this kid, absolutely fantastic to watch

"did you even watch santos at the libertadores? we played with another system. for some reason, muricy tried to make a new system to face barcelona, one the players weren't used to .. elano himself was always a starter at the libertadores, yesterday he was benched. not to mention that his form was superb then, and now is very poor.

we also had our best marking DM injured right before the CWC. "

Funnily enough, as I almost never watch South American football because it bores the hell out of me and reminds me of Riquelme too much, I watched some games from Santos at Libertadores. It was enough to see that Santos was the winner amongst the mediocrity.

Blah, blah, blah, blah change of system, blah, blah, blah our DM was injured...
Excuses.

We had 3 injured players and our coach also changed our system. It's not our problem if your coach changes the system to stop us better, but you play piss poor.

Brasilian and South American football is over the edge.

free_cat wrote:"did you even watch santos at the libertadores? we played with another system. for some reason, muricy tried to make a new system to face barcelona, one the players weren't used to .. elano himself was always a starter at the libertadores, yesterday he was benched. not to mention that his form was superb then, and now is very poor.

we also had our best marking DM injured right before the CWC. "

Funnily enough, as I almost never watch South American football because it bores the hell out of me and reminds me of Riquelme too much, I watched some games from Santos at Libertadores. It was enough to see that Santos was the winner amongst the mediocrity.

Blah, blah, blah, blah change of system, blah, blah, blah our DM was injured...
Excuses.

We had 3 injured players and our coach also changed our system. It's not our problem if your coach changes the system to stop us better, but you play piss poor.

Brasilian and South American football is over the edge.

lol are all catalans like you? so arrogant. you should learn from the barcelona players and be more humble.

"3 players were injured".. lol, give me the money barca has, qatar foundation and everything, and i swear to you next time we meed santos will put up a better fight, with 10 players injured. you cant compare your players to yours. this is ridiculous.

you should be happy that the biggest legends of your club come from brazil and argentina. romario, ronaldinho, ronaldo, rivaldo, messi, even maradona.. without us you wouldve been half as big.

i admire barcelona, but dont give me this arrogant bs, u just confirm my idea of the arrogant euroboy

Neymar plays in the baby league, Muniain plays in a top league

Oh snap

welcome justidiot

Seppuku wrote:

windkick wrote:Biggest difference between the two is that when Messi gets hacked he trys to dribble over and keep running as fast as possible. When Nerman gets hacked he usually loses the ball or dives

Yes because Messi is known for Diving all of a sudden?

windkick wrote:

Seppuku wrote:

windkick wrote:Biggest difference between the two is that when Messi gets hacked he trys to dribble over and keep running as fast as possible. When Nerman gets hacked he usually loses the ball or dives

Yes because Messi is known for Diving all of a sudden?

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=GB#/watch?v=NjEZd7JMaaY

rsinatra wrote:

free_cat wrote:"did you even watch santos at the libertadores? we played with another system. for some reason, muricy tried to make a new system to face barcelona, one the players weren't used to .. elano himself was always a starter at the libertadores, yesterday he was benched. not to mention that his form was superb then, and now is very poor.

we also had our best marking DM injured right before the CWC. "

Funnily enough, as I almost never watch South American football because it bores the hell out of me and reminds me of Riquelme too much, I watched some games from Santos at Libertadores. It was enough to see that Santos was the winner amongst the mediocrity.

Blah, blah, blah, blah change of system, blah, blah, blah our DM was injured...
Excuses.

We had 3 injured players and our coach also changed our system. It's not our problem if your coach changes the system to stop us better, but you play piss poor.

Brasilian and South American football is over the edge.

lol are all catalans like you? so arrogant. you should learn from the barcelona players and be more humble.

you should be happy that the biggest legends of your club come from brazil and argentina. romario, ronaldinho, ronaldo, rivaldo, messi, even maradona.. without us you wouldve been half as big.

i admire barcelona, but dont give me this arrogant bs, u just confirm my idea of the arrogant euroboy

I think you are confusing. I am not being arrogant. Arrogance would be saying that we won vs. Santos because we are so good, we are the best, etc. On the contrary, I think Santos was not very good, that's all. Oh, I read your post about South American football and I mostly agree. You are saying the same thing as I am, except for the way you are saying it. We disagree about the causes though: you mention brasilian football is in trouble because you sell your players to Europe; IMO the problem is that Brasilian football doesn't produce the talent it used to produce before.

Off course I'm happy and thankfull to the great south american players that have played for us. They are in my heart, each of them (except Ronaldinho and Riquelme). However, this doesn't mean that as a fan I can give my opinion on south american football CURRENT level.

free_cat wrote:

rsinatra wrote:

free_cat wrote:"did you even watch santos at the libertadores? we played with another system. for some reason, muricy tried to make a new system to face barcelona, one the players weren't used to .. elano himself was always a starter at the libertadores, yesterday he was benched. not to mention that his form was superb then, and now is very poor.

we also had our best marking DM injured right before the CWC. "

Funnily enough, as I almost never watch South American football because it bores the hell out of me and reminds me of Riquelme too much, I watched some games from Santos at Libertadores. It was enough to see that Santos was the winner amongst the mediocrity.

Blah, blah, blah, blah change of system, blah, blah, blah our DM was injured...
Excuses.

We had 3 injured players and our coach also changed our system. It's not our problem if your coach changes the system to stop us better, but you play piss poor.

Brasilian and South American football is over the edge.

lol are all catalans like you? so arrogant. you should learn from the barcelona players and be more humble.

you should be happy that the biggest legends of your club come from brazil and argentina. romario, ronaldinho, ronaldo, rivaldo, messi, even maradona.. without us you wouldve been half as big.

i admire barcelona, but dont give me this arrogant bs, u just confirm my idea of the arrogant euroboy

I think you are confusing. I am not being arrogant. Arrogance would be saying that we won vs. Santos because we are so good, we are the best, etc. On the contrary, I think Santos was not very good, that's all. Oh, I read your post about South American football and I mostly agree. You are saying the same thing as I am, except for the way you are saying it. We disagree about the causes though: you mention brasilian football is in trouble because you sell your players to Europe; IMO the problem is that Brasilian football doesn't produce the talent it used to produce before.

Off course I'm happy and thankfull to the great south american players that have played for us. They are in my heart, each of them (except Ronaldinho and Riquelme). However, this doesn't mean that as a fan I can give my opinion on south american football CURRENT level.

Fair enough, I might've taken your comment too personal. I'm going to try to explain what I think:

1 - Santos were not very good: agreed. Neither were Arsenal, Real Madrid, Napoli, Man Utd, etc, in their defeats to Barcelona last year and this year. My point is: Does that mean English, Italian, and Spanish football are over the edge too, or is it because Barcelona are just way above everyone else? I think that our biggest fault on the final was the thought that we could actually play against Barcelona as equals, and we couldn't.

2 - How do you mean we don't produce the same talents? The Brazilian NT has some pretty good players, what we really lack is a world class CF, but with the right coach we could be back as best in no time. However, we woudn't do so by playing the same beautiful football we once did, UNLESSS we had a lot of the same players in the same clubs, as do Germany and Spain.

3- And about the South American clubs: What do you expect, when all our best players are sold to European clubs as soon as they get good? There's a limit to how many good players a club can produce a year. Imagine this: if Barcelona sold most of the players they developed, and didn't have the money to buy stars, how good do you think they'd be? They'd have to make do with whoever was left, and buy some average players that they could afford, and thus would be an average team. Even your club has a limit to how many good players they can produce in their school. Therefore, I don't think it has something to do with talent, we have the players, they're just out of our hands. What I also say, is that it's changing, with Neymar's stay, Ganso hopefully staying, Lucas, etc, older players coming back and others following their examples, you'll see Brazilian football rising (it already is the best in the Americas) again.

4 - You talk about the Libertadores as a complete mediocre competition. Okay. But how much fun and how competitive is the UCL itself on group stage? There are some pretty boring, pretty weak teams there too, and it's due to the same reason as in South America: UEFA trying to be too democratic, aka too many teams. It's the same with the WC. But in the later stages, that's when it gets exciting. But I can imagine it's still boring if you don't really know the teams and the players.

5 - Why not Ronaldinho? Didn't he help Barcelosa rise up again and win titles? Sure, he left in a bad way, but what he did is undeniable. Valdés himself said that Dinho, together with Messi, is the best players he's seen. Puyol adores him too. I can understand that Riquelme flopped, but Dinho didn't!

rsinatra wrote:

Fair enough, I might've taken your comment too personal. I'm going to try to explain what I think:

1 - Santos were not very good: agreed. Neither were Arsenal, Real Madrid, Napoli, Man Utd, etc, in their defeats to Barcelona last year and this year. My point is: Does that mean English, Italian, and Spanish football are over the edge too, or is it because Barcelona are just way above everyone else? I think that our biggest fault on the final was the thought that we could actually play against Barcelona as equals, and we couldn't.

2 - How do you mean we don't produce the same talents? The Brazilian NT has some pretty good players, what we really lack is a world class CF, but with the right coach we could be back as best in no time. However, we woudn't do so by playing the same beautiful football we once did, UNLESSS we had a lot of the same players in the same clubs, as do Germany and Spain.

3- And about the South American clubs: What do you expect, when all our best players are sold to European clubs as soon as they get good? There's a limit to how many good players a club can produce a year. Imagine this: if Barcelona sold most of the players they developed, and didn't have the money to buy stars, how good do you think they'd be? They'd have to make do with whoever was left, and buy some average players that they could afford, and thus would be an average team. Even your club has a limit to how many good players they can produce in their school. Therefore, I don't think it has something to do with talent, we have the players, they're just out of our hands. What I also say, is that it's changing, with Neymar's stay, Ganso hopefully staying, Lucas, etc, older players coming back and others following their examples, you'll see Brazilian football rising (it already is the best in the Americas) again.

4 - You talk about the Libertadores as a complete mediocre competition. Okay. But how much fun and how competitive is the UCL itself on group stage? There are some pretty boring, pretty weak teams there too, and it's due to the same reason as in South America: UEFA trying to be too democratic, aka too many teams. It's the same with the WC. But in the later stages, that's when it gets exciting. But I can imagine it's still boring if you don't really know the teams and the players.

5 - Why not Ronaldinho? Didn't he help Barcelosa rise up again and win titles? Sure, he left in a bad way, but what he did is undeniable. Valdés himself said that Dinho, together with Messi, is the best players he's seen. Puyol adores him too. I can understand that Riquelme flopped, but Dinho didn't!

1- Those teams weren't great vs. Barça, but they put up a fight and some of them beat us (Inter, Madrid, Arsenal). They did much better than Santos. Barça is better than most European Clubs, but they are not as far as Santos showed to be.

2- Brasil is a good squad, but nowhere the level you had from 1990s to 2005. A better CF won't change that. For some reasons Brasil is producing less talent than before, or simply, all other countries have picked up on Brasil.

3- South American teams always sold their stars to Europe asap. But before, Brasil NT was much better than now.

4- I agree with you.

5- Can't admire someone with such a terrible work ethic as Ronaldinho. Could have been the best player ever, but decided to retire as a professional footballer and become and alcoholic, damaging my Club with his decision in the process.

"2- Brasil is a good squad, but nowhere the level you had from 1990s to 2005. A better CF won't change that. For some reasons Brasil is producing less talent than before, or simply, all other countries have picked up on Brasil."

or maybe our attacking players arent in europe?other than hulk,our best strikers and Am are still in brazil and are u21,this isnt 2002 anymore where our players would leave for any offer....

free_cat wrote:

rsinatra wrote:

Fair enough, I might've taken your comment too personal. I'm going to try to explain what I think:

1 - Santos were not very good: agreed. Neither were Arsenal, Real Madrid, Napoli, Man Utd, etc, in their defeats to Barcelona last year and this year. My point is: Does that mean English, Italian, and Spanish football are over the edge too, or is it because Barcelona are just way above everyone else? I think that our biggest fault on the final was the thought that we could actually play against Barcelona as equals, and we couldn't.

2 - How do you mean we don't produce the same talents? The Brazilian NT has some pretty good players, what we really lack is a world class CF, but with the right coach we could be back as best in no time. However, we woudn't do so by playing the same beautiful football we once did, UNLESSS we had a lot of the same players in the same clubs, as do Germany and Spain.

3- And about the South American clubs: What do you expect, when all our best players are sold to European clubs as soon as they get good? There's a limit to how many good players a club can produce a year. Imagine this: if Barcelona sold most of the players they developed, and didn't have the money to buy stars, how good do you think they'd be? They'd have to make do with whoever was left, and buy some average players that they could afford, and thus would be an average team. Even your club has a limit to how many good players they can produce in their school. Therefore, I don't think it has something to do with talent, we have the players, they're just out of our hands. What I also say, is that it's changing, with Neymar's stay, Ganso hopefully staying, Lucas, etc, older players coming back and others following their examples, you'll see Brazilian football rising (it already is the best in the Americas) again.

4 - You talk about the Libertadores as a complete mediocre competition. Okay. But how much fun and how competitive is the UCL itself on group stage? There are some pretty boring, pretty weak teams there too, and it's due to the same reason as in South America: UEFA trying to be too democratic, aka too many teams. It's the same with the WC. But in the later stages, that's when it gets exciting. But I can imagine it's still boring if you don't really know the teams and the players.

5 - Why not Ronaldinho? Didn't he help Barcelosa rise up again and win titles? Sure, he left in a bad way, but what he did is undeniable. Valdés himself said that Dinho, together with Messi, is the best players he's seen. Puyol adores him too. I can understand that Riquelme flopped, but Dinho didn't!

1- Those teams weren't great vs. Barça, but they put up a fight and some of them beat us (Inter, Madrid, Arsenal). They did much better than Santos. Barça is better than most European Clubs, but they are not as far as Santos showed to be.

2- Brasil is a good squad, but nowhere the level you had from 1990s to 2005. A better CF won't change that. For some reasons Brasil is producing less talent than before, or simply, all other countries have picked up on Brasil.

3- South American teams always sold their stars to Europe asap. But before, Brasil NT was much better than now.

4- I agree with you.

5- Can't admire someone with such a terrible work ethic as Ronaldinho. Could have been the best player ever, but decided to retire as a professional footballer and become and alcoholic, damaging my Club with his decision in the process.

The only reason for that is that is because they played us more than once hence they had more chances to beat us. How many tries did it take arsenal to finally beat ut(and a a legal goal disallowed). And if we just take a single game like this one was how about the 5-0 against real madrid in which they performed much worse or the CL final against united in which imo they were just as bad as santos...

harhar11 wrote:

free_cat wrote:

rsinatra wrote:

Fair enough, I might've taken your comment too personal. I'm going to try to explain what I think:

1 - Santos were not very good: agreed. Neither were Arsenal, Real Madrid, Napoli, Man Utd, etc, in their defeats to Barcelona last year and this year. My point is: Does that mean English, Italian, and Spanish football are over the edge too, or is it because Barcelona are just way above everyone else? I think that our biggest fault on the final was the thought that we could actually play against Barcelona as equals, and we couldn't.

2 - How do you mean we don't produce the same talents? The Brazilian NT has some pretty good players, what we really lack is a world class CF, but with the right coach we could be back as best in no time. However, we woudn't do so by playing the same beautiful football we once did, UNLESSS we had a lot of the same players in the same clubs, as do Germany and Spain.

3- And about the South American clubs: What do you expect, when all our best players are sold to European clubs as soon as they get good? There's a limit to how many good players a club can produce a year. Imagine this: if Barcelona sold most of the players they developed, and didn't have the money to buy stars, how good do you think they'd be? They'd have to make do with whoever was left, and buy some average players that they could afford, and thus would be an average team. Even your club has a limit to how many good players they can produce in their school. Therefore, I don't think it has something to do with talent, we have the players, they're just out of our hands. What I also say, is that it's changing, with Neymar's stay, Ganso hopefully staying, Lucas, etc, older players coming back and others following their examples, you'll see Brazilian football rising (it already is the best in the Americas) again.

4 - You talk about the Libertadores as a complete mediocre competition. Okay. But how much fun and how competitive is the UCL itself on group stage? There are some pretty boring, pretty weak teams there too, and it's due to the same reason as in South America: UEFA trying to be too democratic, aka too many teams. It's the same with the WC. But in the later stages, that's when it gets exciting. But I can imagine it's still boring if you don't really know the teams and the players.

5 - Why not Ronaldinho? Didn't he help Barcelosa rise up again and win titles? Sure, he left in a bad way, but what he did is undeniable. Valdés himself said that Dinho, together with Messi, is the best players he's seen. Puyol adores him too. I can understand that Riquelme flopped, but Dinho didn't!

1- Those teams weren't great vs. Barça, but they put up a fight and some of them beat us (Inter, Madrid, Arsenal). They did much better than Santos. Barça is better than most European Clubs, but they are not as far as Santos showed to be.

2- Brasil is a good squad, but nowhere the level you had from 1990s to 2005. A better CF won't change that. For some reasons Brasil is producing less talent than before, or simply, all other countries have picked up on Brasil.

3- South American teams always sold their stars to Europe asap. But before, Brasil NT was much better than now.

4- I agree with you.

5- Can't admire someone with such a terrible work ethic as Ronaldinho. Could have been the best player ever, but decided to retire as a professional footballer and become and alcoholic, damaging my Club with his decision in the process.

The only reason for that is that is because they played us more than once hence they had more chances to beat us. How many tries did it take arsenal to finally beat ut(and a a legal goal disallowed). And if we just take a single game like this one was how about the 5-0 against real madrid in which they performed much worse or the CL final against united in which imo they were just as bad as santos...

This. Santos did no worse than any big teams. These are the biggest wins against the big boys of Europe.

Madrid 5-0
Arsenal 4-1
Bayern 4-0
United 3-1
Inter 2-0
Milan 3-2
Chelsea 1-1

So santos losing 4 nil isnt that bad IMO.

It's not 4 nil it's the fact if Barca were even abit efficient they would end that game 10 nil

omarish wrote:It's not 4 nil it's the fact if Barca were even abit efficient they would end that game 10 nil

Coulda woulda shoulda. Santos had more chances than Madrid in the manita game. Out of all these tens real played the worst against barca. Madrid created no acne whatsoever.

jibers wrote:

omarish wrote:It's not 4 nil it's the fact if Barca were even abit efficient they would end that game 10 nil

Coulda woulda shoulda. Santos had more chances than Madrid in the manita game. Out of all these tens real played the worst against barca. Madrid created no acne whatsoever.

true story

Yeah and Barca had less chances in 5-0

Can go both ways

Fact remains Barca could have hit double digits vs Santos. It's not comparable to other big teams, becouse like I said, this could have gotten way much uglier.

omarish wrote:Yeah and Barca had less chances in 5-0

Can go both ways

Fact remains Barca could have hit double digits vs Santos. It's not comparable to other big teams, becouse like I said, this could have gotten way much uglier.

But they didn't. It all comes down to score line. Real lost by a bigger margin and created no goal scoring chances whatsoever.

free_cat wrote:

rsinatra wrote:

Fair enough, I might've taken your comment too personal. I'm going to try to explain what I think:

1 - Santos were not very good: agreed. Neither were Arsenal, Real Madrid, Napoli, Man Utd, etc, in their defeats to Barcelona last year and this year. My point is: Does that mean English, Italian, and Spanish football are over the edge too, or is it because Barcelona are just way above everyone else? I think that our biggest fault on the final was the thought that we could actually play against Barcelona as equals, and we couldn't.

2 - How do you mean we don't produce the same talents? The Brazilian NT has some pretty good players, what we really lack is a world class CF, but with the right coach we could be back as best in no time. However, we woudn't do so by playing the same beautiful football we once did, UNLESSS we had a lot of the same players in the same clubs, as do Germany and Spain.

3- And about the South American clubs: What do you expect, when all our best players are sold to European clubs as soon as they get good? There's a limit to how many good players a club can produce a year. Imagine this: if Barcelona sold most of the players they developed, and didn't have the money to buy stars, how good do you think they'd be? They'd have to make do with whoever was left, and buy some average players that they could afford, and thus would be an average team. Even your club has a limit to how many good players they can produce in their school. Therefore, I don't think it has something to do with talent, we have the players, they're just out of our hands. What I also say, is that it's changing, with Neymar's stay, Ganso hopefully staying, Lucas, etc, older players coming back and others following their examples, you'll see Brazilian football rising (it already is the best in the Americas) again.

4 - You talk about the Libertadores as a complete mediocre competition. Okay. But how much fun and how competitive is the UCL itself on group stage? There are some pretty boring, pretty weak teams there too, and it's due to the same reason as in South America: UEFA trying to be too democratic, aka too many teams. It's the same with the WC. But in the later stages, that's when it gets exciting. But I can imagine it's still boring if you don't really know the teams and the players.

5 - Why not Ronaldinho? Didn't he help Barcelosa rise up again and win titles? Sure, he left in a bad way, but what he did is undeniable. Valdés himself said that Dinho, together with Messi, is the best players he's seen. Puyol adores him too. I can understand that Riquelme flopped, but Dinho didn't!

1- Those teams weren't great vs. Barça, but they put up a fight and some of them beat us (Inter, Madrid, Arsenal). They did much better than Santos. Barça is better than most European Clubs, but they are not as far as Santos showed to be.

2- Brasil is a good squad, but nowhere the level you had from 1990s to 2005. A better CF won't change that. For some reasons Brasil is producing less talent than before, or simply, all other countries have picked up on Brasil.

3- South American teams always sold their stars to Europe asap. But before, Brasil NT was much better than now.

4- I agree with you.

5- Can't admire someone with such a terrible work ethic as Ronaldinho. Could have been the best player ever, but decided to retire as a professional footballer and become and alcoholic, damaging my Club with his decision in the process.

1 - You are right, Santos didn't put as much of a fight as of the other teams I mentioned have occasionally done. But I think harhar11 kind of made a good reply to this already: those teams are more accustomed to playing against the likes of Barça, have had more chances to do so, and therefore have much more experience. Read well: experience, not necessarily quality. Santos' players have been romanticizing that Final ever since they won the Libertadores, hell perhaps ever since they joined Santos or became football players (that's how important it is in South America), yet they had never encountered that sort of force before. One thing is to be Athletic Bilbao or Villareal, Palermo, Napoli, whatever, and deal with these superpower every few months, gather experience, knowledge, and work on ways to resists their power; another is to never have dealt with it before, only watched it on TV, and only try to imagine how good they can be. To a lesser extent, it's like trying to imagine how hot the Sun's surface is at 5,500° C, when the hottest you've ever experience is about 35° C. Anyway, my point is that Santos could've been just as strong if they had had more practice against that kind of team. That said, I know that that's just how it is, nothing you or I can do about it. Perhaps when more and more players start to stay in Brazil and our league is stronger, they'll have experience enough to be able to continuously challenge teams like Barça.

2 - That's the thing though isn't it? I've read a thousand article, or seen a lot of videos of older journalists and experts that claim that Brazil from the 1990's and early 2000's played bad and were nowhere near the "real" Brazil of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Generations change, things come and go. After '86, Brazil made an awful display at the 1990 WC with, for the first time ever, a pretty much non-Brazilian way of playing. Many thought we were over, yet in the next 3 WCs we reach all 3 finals and won two of them. We'll be back.

3 - Nope, South American teams have not always done so. That is very misinformed of you. Obviously, there always have been South American players going over to Europe, Argentines, Uruguayans, and even a few Brazilian, but they were not the best we had to offer (with Di Stéfano's isolated exception), so much that some of them ended up playing for other NTs. Our 1970 WC squad was entirely made up by Brazilian club players. Our incredible '82 squad only had Falcão who played for Roma (as far as I can remember), and he wasnt' even as good as Zico from Flamengo and Sócrates from Corinthians. Zico's Flamengo in 1981 was the best team in the world, Zico the best player, when they beat then UCL winner Liverpool 3-0 with as much ease as Barcelona beat Santos. The real exodus only start in the 80's, and Maradona is a great example of that exodus starting. It was only in the 90's that our NTs started to become more and more formed by European club players, and thus play more and more European-like football.

4 -

5 - I know what you mean, Ronaldinho has a terrible attitude, and I don't even care about him anymore, ever since he made that move to Flamengo instead of moving back to his boyhood club Grêmio, where he actually had to prove himself to the country. But what he did with and for Barcelona still was amazing.