Can we all quit comparing Messi to Maradona?

A famous U.S. political candidate in a debate said this to an opposing candidate who some people compared to John F. Kennedy. The opponent was a senator and so was the guy who said this in a famous debate. He said:

"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

And, Messi is no Maradona.

If anything I have much more respect for Messi after this WC . had they won it wouldn't make that much difference for me. Messi is not Maradona yeah but IMO he's on par with him. A shame he lost but Germans were better. Higuain and Palacio failed big time. Messi sacrified himself again like in 2010 for the sake of his team.

Never understood the comparisons, but this WC just cemented for me that Messi will never be in the pantheon of Maradona.

Messi this WC was weird.

On one hand, he was crucial to Argentina's advancement to the final, coming up big at clutch moments like a major player should.

On the other hand, he certainly didn't pass the eye test by playing anywhere near what we've seen from him before.

Personally I have always thought the idea that Messi can only be "great" if he wins the WC is unsound. In a team sport, an individual can only do so much, and frankly Messi's sub-par performances still made the difference again and again in this tournament. You can say he played below his best, which he definitely did, but you can't say he wasn't a major, critical player for his team.

I am a longtime Germany fan, so I'm not sad Argentina lost, but from a different perspective it is a little sad; this is "supposed" to be his moment.

But then again anyone old enough remember more than this Cup know that WCs almost never play out like they are "supposed" to. There is always a mixture of inexplicable upsets (Spain, Italy) alongside inevitable favorites (all four semifinalists). Every tournament or final, international or club level, features legitimately great players who don't show up for that particular match or that particular month. Remember Ronaldinho & Brazil, 2006? Top of the world at that moment. He and his team got brushed aside by 34-year-old Zidane. It happens.

History records the great players ... most of them anyway. And history will record Messi.

Personally I'll let other people worry & quibble over rankings.

Motogp69 wrote:Never understood the comparisons, but this WC just cemented for me that Messi will never be in the pantheon of Maradona.

You're right, he's better.

Messi was better already some years ago. But now he has the only individual accolade Maradona had on him, the World Cup Golden Ball. The other comparable accolades:

Onze d'Or 1978~

4 Messi
2 Maradona

World Soccer Player 1982~

3 Messi
1 Maradona

I never understood the comparisons. Even if argentina won i'd still not put messi on the same level as diego. You cannot use individual awards to compare players from different eras;

first and foremost, some awards were newly created, with new rules e.g. diego never won balon d'or cos south american players could not win it.

secondly we are in a global age where journalists and pundits get to watch or at least have the privilege of monitoring almost every game around the globe and can make reasonable judgments.

In diego's time, it wasn't as easy for an english journalist to monitor football happenings in latin America or even Italy for that matter, Journalists would usually support their own candidate or representative of their country...hence when people say maradona was the best, a brazilian journalist would say zico, a french, platini, a german rummenigha (botched the spelling).

But the main reason i wouldn't put messi (who by his own right is a great player and will no doubt go down in history as an all time great), is because of the supporting cast;

Yes, messi's teammates failed him in this mundial (although he wasn't so special in the latter stages), but, his teammates were all stars and top players at various top clubs in europe....it was up to him to bring out that extra fire in them....Diego for most of his career brought out the extra fire in footballers who were not even all that....

the team he led to the final at italia 90 was out of shape and terrible, the worst team to ever make a final; at club level, the only teammate worth talking about from an offensive standpoint at napoli was careca, and even he could be inconsistent....put diego on any of messi's teams (club and country) and i reckon they'll be amazing (as long as diego could stay off the dope, though the fact he played how he played whilst on coc, imagine what he'd have done if clean);

put messi in maradona's barcelona, napoli or argentine sides I doubt they'll do much...(messi n schuster might not be a bad combo tho)

I don't believe in this greatest of all time nonsense. Different rules, different eras. What's for certain is that Messi is the best of this generation and Diego was the best of his.

However, I do believe that modern players have it tougher than players from the past did.

@titosantill.

By that logic Messi is much more scrutinized than Maradona was. Managers can study him a lot more and find a way to stop him. They can also copy what Bayern, mourinho and others did successfully.

Casciavit wrote:
However, I do believe that modern players have it tougher than players from the past did.

A sweeping generalisation. Somehow people have the impression that because german footballers in the 70s had on average a few seconds more time on the ball, it says something about maradona. (@barrilettecosmico)

This was an interesting quote from arrigo saachi

"With Maradona you had to mark him with the whole team, ie the defensive organization. It was the only way to stop him"

Which goes against the idea he was playing against one marker and an ocean of space, or that how much space the average player in the 80s had has anything to do with maradona.

An interesting quote from ian rush about playing in serie a "And the training that they were doing there then is the training they do now in England - so it was at least 20 years ahead of the time"

Goes against the idea they were amateurs.

specifically with maradona he played in a very defensive league where the teams usually gave up attacking to block any space in their defence, and you can see the result of that in the fact that right across the board world class attackers had worse stats then than a lot of shite players in the top European leagues now.

Besides that aside from the tactical side of the game, there are other factors that make playing football harder in terms of executing it on a technical level, ie im not talking about impacting the game, but actually being able to comfortably perform actions. Terrible uneven pitches and permitted violence are two such things, of which there is a world of difference between now and then. Maradona also did not have a dominant attacking team with a philosophy and technical level that helped him out and supported his game. I think he had the worst of a lot of different worlds overall.

On talent level they are the same. What puts Maradona ahead imo is his mentality like someone said above. Maradona was basically 'Ronaldo/Suarez meets Messi'

Mentality? Ronaldo? Wat? You mean the sulky, whiny guy who averages 3 tantrums per game and goes out on the pitch to present a new stupid 12 year olds haircut every week? Pls don't compare that Justin Bieber footballer to Maradona's leadership.

Benin makes an interesting point, managers can and do have the ability to watch tapes and scrutinize players better than before, that may (or may not) be a reason for the high rate of hirings and firings in the managerial position today...u can't be afforded all this luxury and start having "david moyes" type moments with your squad.....but, in terms of league football, coaches had "spies" to monitor players within their leagues, especially if proximity was relatively close; talks of people from madrid scouting ariggo sachi's milan team was quite popular

@casciavit, yeah its difficult to pick out one greatest of all time (if there is ever such a thing), the diego-messi comparisons will however continue, and whilst i'm against such, i understand why, as they both have a lot of similarities....

as far as tougher, i'm not sure about that...there's a lot of money in the sport today, access to better coaching, training regiments, health and information, better equipment- the technology that goes into production of kits, footy boots/cleats, the ball, pitch (lol quality of grass, like certain teams/ a certain player; i won't mention names, complain about when they lose) has certainly helped the modern footballer

even the rules; goikoetxea didn't even get carded for his foul on maradona that took him out for months, schumaker didn't for that assault on batistan, a lot of players got away with murder back in the day....nowadays players have to apologize in press conferences for making rash challenges during games.

Poor man's Götze imho.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

Motogp69 wrote:Never understood the comparisons, but this WC just cemented for me that Messi will never be in the pantheon of Maradona.

You're right, he's better.

A better person, but not a better footballer.

Share of votes:

World Soccer Player 1982~ (Top 10)

Maradona

1983 4 6%
1985 3 7%
1986 1 35%
1987 2 13%
1988 6 2%
1989 4 7%
1990 3 6%

1 times won, average share of votes 35%
2 times in Top 2, average share of votes 24%
7 times in Top 10, average share of votes 11%

Messi

2007 2 18%
2008 2 15%
2009 1 43%
2010 2 24%
2011 1 60%
2012 1 47%
2013 2 14%

3 times won, average share of votes 50%
7 times in Top 2, average share of votes 32%
7 times in Top 10, average share of votes 32%

Messi is the most dominant player of all time.

wow since when did public opinion ever decide anything meaningful

I don't think anyone can deny that if you stick Messi in Maras era, exactly the same Messi, he would dominate as much and probably more.

Football, like most things, evolves. Players are certainly better these days and getting better and better. It is a logical progression based on tactical, physical and technical advances through coaching and advancements in health.

So yes, Messi is in my opinion a better player than Maradonna was. However the comparison clearly must factor in generational relativism. Which becomes an extremely difficult comparison to objectively accomplish.. and now I just realised why I try to avoid the "RB is better than yours" section.

If Maradona played for the FOTM club Barcelona in the age of Twitter and Youtube, he'd rake up those numbers as well.

The myth of Maradonapoli, that Maradona single handely carried them to Scudetto. The fact is that Barcelona is even more of Messi.

1. Maradona wasn't even considered the best player of Napoli in their first Scudetto by many. Gazzetta dello Sport gave Ferrara and Bagni the better ratings than Maradona, La Rebubblica Ferrara, Renica, and Romano. I would like to some publication to give better ratings somebody else than Messi for 08-14.

2. The fact is that Napoli was the biggest spending team in the Europe at the time, kind of like ManC of today and guess what? Lets look their respective team results:

ManC before spending spree league position
15 - 14 - 9 - 10, after 5 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 1
Napoli before spending spree and Maradona league position
3 - 4 - 9 - 11, after 8 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 2

The similarity on those 7 last seasons is uncanny.

3. Lastly I give you statistical comparison:

Direct contribution and their effect on team results for Maradona, Messi and the 4 R's.



Messi carried Barcelona 2 seasons (11-12, 12-13) like Maradona did once in Napoli (1990).

VivaStPauli wrote:If Maradona played for the FOTM club Barcelona in the age of Twitter and Youtube, he'd rake up those numbers as well.

Really, all I see twitter and youtube full of Messi hate?

All the same: everyone's talking about Messi.

http://mla-s2-p.mlstatic.com/revista-tal-cual-tapa-maradona-fracaso-argentina-mundial-82-4017-MLA125146777_4578-F.jpg

The story of a golden boy that ended up being a failure

Peccadillo wrote:wow since when did public opinion ever decide anything meaningful

I don't think anyone can deny that if you stick Messi in Maras era, exactly the same Messi, he would dominate as much and probably more.

Football, like most things, evolves. Players are certainly better these days and getting better and better. It is a logical progression based on tactical, physical and technical advances through coaching and advancements in health.

So yes, Messi is in my opinion a better player than Maradonna was. However the comparison clearly must factor in generational relativism. Which becomes an extremely difficult comparison to objectively accomplish.. and now I just realised why I try to avoid the "RB is better than yours" section.

I hate it when people use sweeping generalisations in this argument. I can't be bothered repeating a lot of what I already wrote, so just read what I already wrote in my last post, and please tell me if you think messi would dominate more in the scenarios I described than what he actually has in the last several years. The idea that he would is a nonsensical daydream

lol is that the Argentinian version of the "Stern"?!? That's CRAZY

And jiopsi those newspapers did not claim those players to be better than maradona that season, they assigned an average score from all their match ratings over the season, which guess what in a really defensive league the game by game ratings favoured defenders, as they are in an environment easy to excel consistently every game. All those players rated higher were defenders or defensive oriented midfielders. Maradona was their highest rated attacker

And what about the onze d'or? Maradona won it in 87, where were his teammates?