Players getting over rated.

Drogba was class. Still is, to be fair.

Zidane was great, no doubt, but I've said this before, and the thing that gets Zidane perhaps overrated by some is that he was very elegant and easy on the eye, and he had a very nice habit of having his best games when the whole world was watching (World Cup and CL finals for instance). He actually had plenty of average games for his club and some pretty unimpressive seasons really. Del Piero was a better player when Zidane was at Juve imo. Messi and real Ronaldo are/were certainly better than Zidane for me.

Reading this, Cristriano Ronaldo is the most over rated player of all time. Better than Zidane? Give me a fecking break

Drogba better than Bergkamp? FFS

Stock brokers vs Artists! The stats generation will ruin the beautiful game.

It all boils down to what rocks your boat as a fan. I can't categorically say Messi or CR are better or worse than my own lifetime favourites, but what I do know is that I don't enjoy watching them as I have done others.

Perhaps the common denominator among my own footballing gods was their capacity to produce the unexpected, perform some kind of magic I couldn't have imagined before they pulled it off.

I think that's the reason I don't find Messi or Ronaldo quite as exhilarating; I do think they both had that ability when they were younger and still have - more so Messi - but it's become too harnessed. They've both developed an attacking style that's incredibly difficult for opponents to stop. All credit to them for it, but it's also made their game more predictable imo. All too often you know the type of run they're going to make or how they'll try to shape up for the shot, and that for me detracts from the overall viewing experience.

Maradona was such an unpredictable player that I'd get butterflies in my stomach regardless of whether he got the ball 10 yards out or 20 yards inside his own half. Be it his first touch, ball retention, dribbling or passing, magic always seemed just around the corner. Dinho resembled him most at one point, but for a comparatively short spell. In today's game, Messi probably comes closest, but a lot of the magic has been drilled out in pursuit of the end product.

With Il Fenomeno, it was partly the fact I hadn't - I don't think the world had - ever seen anything quite like him. His unique combination of power, acceleration, skill, dribbling and finishing seemed almost un-human at the time - as if he could only have come from another planet or some secret mad-scientist laboratory - but he still retained a degree of imagination and unpredictability that you never knew what to expect. Cristiano Ronaldo is obviously the closest current example, but again, he's a much more 'drilled' player. Even with similar attributes, and some of them improved in CR, but CR's football feels more mechanical. RN's football was that much more natural, and hence more enjoyable than CR's.

Zidane had possibly the best first touch I've ever seen, to the extent that it was often actually a dribble. He could get the ball under control in such a variety of ways that he'd have you guessing how he'd control it and quite often he'd still manage to pull off something you hadn't yet imagined. I can't think of any current player I could compare to him in that sense.

Laudrup was the complete opposite. With him, the unknown was what direction the ball would take when it left his feet. He made football a moving spot-the-ball competition, not only executing passes you wouldn't even have imagined, but also disguising them perfectly right up to the final split second. Dihno copied his no-look passes and a host of other players have also taken pages out of his passing book, especially in Spain, where he inspired a generation. Nowadays, I'd say Fabregas and Messi are the players most capable of surprising me with their passing.

Zidane was a fantastic player, I grew up watching him and some of the things he did left me in awe, I used to try and copy the things he did (obviously failing), he is a lot of the reason I really got into football.

But I'm sorry, Cristiano and Messi are the best of all time for me. I don't know why because certain players played in an older generation, people can pretend they are comparible with the current generation. Cristiano and Messi are on another level, playing football from another planet and we may never see players of their ilk for a very long time. Except for Januzaj who is a hybrid of Giggs, Ronaldo and Pele combined.

Good post, ioag.

I don't know why because certain players played in an older generation, people can pretend they are comparible with the current generation.
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There's no need to pretend at all. I don't think Messi & CR play football from another planet compared to past greats. They're scoring at an unworldly rate, true, but that's not all there is to football.

Even if it were, there are still important considerations to bear in mind - without even needing to argue whether changes in formations and tactics have helped them on their way:

First and foremost, football's become increasingly lopsided, much more in Spain, but also in European competitions.

Madrid and Barça have always been the dominant teams in Spain, but they'd never held such a tight stranglehold on La Liga. From 1990 to 2005, Barça-Madrid finished 1-2 in La Liga 4 times. Compare that to the past 5 years on the trot, often with >20-point gaps over the 3rd-placed team.

In Europe, it's reached a point where you can predict the 16 sides that will make the CL knockout rounds with a margin of error of perhaps 3 or 4. And yet despite all the other big spending clubs, Spain's two have also become regulars in the closing stages of the CL. Barça have played 6 semis on the trot, the longest streak EVER, while Madrid have now made 3 running.

That's an absolutely crazy and virtually unprecedented platform of dominance on which to score goals. I don't think it's a coincidence that both players post far lower figures for their national sides, which despite being part of the world's elite are in an environment where the playing field is much more level.

It's a privilege the original Ronaldo never had - yet he was already averaging almost a goal a game in his teens at a time where competition was much tighter than now.

If a fully-fit Fenomeno was around in this day and age, bearing all of the above in mind, I think it more than likely that he'd be scoring just as many if not more goals than Messi and CR.

ioag, that is a good point. It was something I touched upon on a similar discussion last week.

Messi and Ronaldo, although I think would be excellent, playing in a stronger era of Spanish football would have been easier to gauge.

Good stuff ioag. And I also appreciate the Breaking Bad reference in your username

I think Real Ronaldo is probably the best I've seen in my lifetime, although Messi is up there too. That season he had at Barca when he was still what? 20? was just unbelievable. He was scoring at the rate Messi and Ronaldo do in a team that wasn't near as dominant as theirs. I've never seen another player who, if he was 1v1 with the 'keeper, you just knew he wasn't going to miss, and half the time he got into those positions by beating players himself.

And in terms of natural talent and showboat-style improvisation, Ronaldinho was the best, before he got fat and lazy. In fact, in his PSG days he was even more fun to watch than at Barca, probably because of the easier competition and less pressure.

Zidane - world class but massively overrated.

To be honest, there are some people who call him the greatest only because he's an Arab.