Cristiano Wins

[mikkelkasper]

he's playing in juventus now

Yeah.. this just goes to show how time changes fast..how unpredictable the future is..Cristiano is a good player..on of the best goal
scoring machines the world have ever seen..on general filed play Messi takes it all..football genius..Pele and Maradona can just look on.

[Stavros]

Yeah.. this just goes to show how time changes fast..how unpredictable the future is..Cristiano is a good player..on of the best goal
scoring machines the world have ever seen..on general filed play Messi takes it all..football genius..Pele and Maradona can just look on.

Hard to take this seriously. Pele is without question the best player of the 20th century, most lovers of football would agree with that even when you plea for the best goalie, the best defender and so on -it is not just three world cup winners medals, it is the way in which he transformed football from being a national to a global sport. It is difficult on one level to compare him to Messi -an abject failure at the World Cup not once, but twice- because Pele was banned by the military government in Brazil from playing in Europe whereas Messi's reputation is based solely on his club game for which he was won more awards than Pele.

As for Ronaldo, a truly great player, consider this: Marcus Rashford at the same stage of their United careers has already scored more goals than Ronaldo. Will he continue to become an even better player than Ronaldo? He has already reached a World Cup semi-final, which Ronaldo has not. But who knows?

And Maradona? -a fantastic talent laid low by cheating.

[Laphroaig]

Hard to take this seriously. Pele is without question the best player of the 20th century, most lovers of football would agree with that even when you plea for the best goalie, the best defender and so on -it is not just three world cup winners medals, it is the way in which he transformed football from being a national to a global sport. It is difficult on one level to compare him to Messi -an abject failure at the World Cup not once, but twice- because Pele was banned by the military government in Brazil from playing in Europe whereas Messi's reputation is based solely on his club game for which he was won more awards than Pele.

As for Ronaldo, a truly great player, consider this: Marcus Rashford at the same stage of their United careers has already scored more goals than Ronaldo. Will he continue to become an even better player than Ronaldo? He has already reached a World Cup semi-final, which Ronaldo has not. But who knows?

And Maradona? -a fantastic talent laid low by cheating.

Not really a fair comparison. Rashford has always been a centre forward, Ronaldo arrived at Man Utd as a winger and later developed into the main goalscorers role. Talented though Rashford is, I can't see him getting close to the same level Ronaldo and Messi operated at for 10 years or so.

On your other point, how many of those "lovers of football" saw much, if anything, of Pele outside of the World Cups he played in? All we ever see are quite literally the highlights of his career. In comparison, practically every single game Ronaldo and Messi have played in, good or bad, has been screened, recorded and archived somewhere. Maradona's career probably lies somewhere in between those two extremes. Very difficult to make a comparison between the three era's for that and numerous other reasons including, ball, boots, pitches, rule changes, etc.

[Stavros]

Laphroaig your points are valid and I would only say that we never saw much South American club football so it is hard to judge how better or inferior it was to European club football in the 1960s and 1970s, whereas coverage for Ronaldo and Messi has been universal. If you saw Clair Balding's edition of Icons on BBC-2 the other night you will appreciate her inclusion of Pele and global football, though the case for Billie Jean King or Tanny Grey Thompson was profound (the inclusion of Muhammad Ali was a disgrace). Perhaps the best we can say is that in their own times Pele was a phenomenonal player as Ronaldo and Messi have been in theirs. I can't comment more on Rashford as the point you make is too technical for me (!). Do positions really matter these days? When was a player last described as 'Inside Right'? Total football made those terms redundant.

Maybe the most judicious way of dealing with this is a roster of the 'truly great' as Spender put it in his poem. One thinks of Pele, of Cruyff, of Bobby Moore, Eusebio, Yashin and others we could all add to the list.

Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honour.