General discussion thread

+ Romario is a CF, Eusebio is NOT. He's a SS/LF

Wow, have you converted? :lol:

Otherwise I agree with Edgar. Eusebio and Romario are quite different stylistically. Romario is quite unique striker. One of the best box strikers ever(alongside Van Basten and Muller). His work off the box is also underrated, but not as good as Eusebio of course.

Romario is one of the best players to use his low center of gravity. The way he could turn and twist opposition CB's is really unraveled.
 
The ball playing defenders lists got me thinking of some skillful on the ball defenders that i liked a lot as individual players, but were from countries or at clubs where they weren't likely to win much, players like Rune Bratseth, Bruno Pezzey etc.. and was reminded of Velimir Zajec, a Croatian libero that played for Dinamo Zagreb most of his prime and won the Yugoslav league player of the year twice. He was the NT sweeper(and captain if i remember rightly) during the late 70s and early 80s, a period when the Yugoslav team was starting to unravel a bit and usually less than the sum of the parts, so not much chance for international recognition. He was someone who really stood out for his class on the ball when i watched Yugoslavia NT games of that era, especially as the rest of their defence was quite bad at this time so he had a lot of work to go through.

Had a quick look on youtube and predictably not much there without digging through actual games highlights, but there was a very brief clip of some skills with Yugoslavia and a short highlight of the end of his career at Panathinaikos that has some very nice passes in it. Worth a quick look.



 
The ball playing defenders lists got me thinking of some skillful on the ball defenders that i liked a lot as individual players, but were from countries or at clubs where they weren't likely to win much, players like Rune Bratseth, Bruno Pezzey etc.. and was reminded of Velimir Zajec, a Croatian libero that played for Dinamo Zagreb most of his prime and won the Yugoslav league player of the year twice. He was the NT sweeper(and captain if i remember rightly) during the late 70s and early 80s, a period when the Yugoslav team was starting to unravel a bit and usually less than the sum of the parts, so not much chance for international recognition. He was someone who really stood out for his class on the ball when i watched Yugoslavia NT games of that era, especially as the rest of their defence was quite bad at this time so he had a lot of work to go through.

Had a quick look on youtube and predictably not much there without digging through actual games highlights, but there was a very brief clip of some skills with Yugoslavia and a short highlight of the end of his career at Panathinaikos that has some very nice passes in it. Worth a quick look.





Never heard of Zajec before but he looks very accomplished technically from those short clips.

Pezzey is a player that's intrigued me for a while. He's virtually never appeared in our drafts as far as I'm aware, but he seemed to be really highly-rated. Here's his write up and rankings from Kicker magazine:

Bruno PEZZEY

World class: 3 times International class: 7 times Broad circle: 5 times Considered: 2 times

A libero of great charisma, the tall Austrian always looked like a bored general on the pitch who went on about his job with a certain nonchalance and effortlessness. While his playing style may have looked arrogant, all he did was doing his job extremely well. Due to his great reading of the game and outstanding positioning, Pezzey hardly ever had to tackle, his heading was supreme as was his ball control and technique. He had a habit of chipping balls. Pezzey, who was very athletic and an intimidating physical presence died aged 39 from sudden cardiac death during an ice hockey game.

1978 played abroad [07/78]
1978 broad circle [12/78] [#8 Foreign player]
1979 Internat. Cl. [07/79] [#5 Foreign player]
1979 Internat. Cl. [12/79] [#5 Foreign player]
1980 Internat. Cl. [07/80] [#2 Foreign player]
1980 World Class [12/80] [#1 Foreign player]
1981 World Class [07/81] [#1 Foreign player]
1981 World Class [12/81] [#1 Foreign player]
1982 broad circle [07/82] [#4 Foreign player]
1982 considered_ [12/82] [Foreign Player]
1983 broad circle [07/83] [#5 Foreign player]
1983 broad circle [12/83] [#4 Foreign player]
1984 broad circle [07/84] [#4 Foreign player]
1984 Internat. Cl. [12/84] [#2 Foreign player]
1985 Internat. Cl. [07/85] [#2 Foreign player]
1985 Internat. Cl. [12/85] [#1 Foreign player]
1986 Internat. Cl. [07/86] [#3 Foreign player]
1986 not assessed [12/86]
1987 considered_ [07/87] [Foreign Player]
1987 played abroad [12/87]

I've planned on picking him a few times but the few clips I watched (from international matches I think), he was responsible for some goals conceded and I just never got around to watching any full matches to form a proper opinion of him.

Have you seen much of Aleksandre Chivadze? He looked immensely talented on the ball from the little I've seen, and I was kind of hoping to see him appear in a few of the ball-playing CB lists. Carlos Mozer another one who is possibly overlooked.
 
Too young to have followed Chivadze's career properly, but i've tried to catch up as best i could. I'd rate him as among the better European ball playing defenders of the late 70s-mid 80s, but objecgtively he falls too short on the team accomplishments side of things to get into most top 20 lists. I'd consider his failure to come back from injury quick enough as one of biggest reasons for ussr's centre-defence issues at the 86 World Cup that eventually cost them against Belgium. His injuries and Sergey Baltacha's long-term injury during the cup winners cup final left the side without a mature defensive organiser of international quality. He was a huge loss, and retired just before the 88 Euro run.
 
I've planned on picking him a few times but the few clips I watched (from international matches I think), he was responsible for some goals conceded and I just never got around to watching any full matches to form a proper opinion of him.
Same. He never convinced me but maybe he got unlucky with the footage that survived to this day.
 
I never knew that Desailly was supposed to come to United!

Considering that they still weren’t a top club, what made you decide to join Chelsea after Milan? Surely you could have gone anywhere. Wasn’t there an offer from Manchester United?
Dave Ambridge, Chelsea

In 1996, I signed a pre-contract agreement with Manchester United. I spoke to Alex Ferguson on the phone. I was free! Bosman had just happened. So I was a free transfer! I won’t go into why it didn’t happen but if I had joined them I would have won several more titles! The challenge at Chelsea was interesting, though. The club was building, looking to go places and needed big-name players. Liverpool had come in for me, too, but I needed to have a French school nearby for my children. So I opted for London for Chelsea, for family reasons and for the quality of life.

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/marcel-desailly-one-one
 
Does anyone else know why pes stats database is down for the past few days/weeks?
 
I never knew that Desailly was supposed to come to United!

Considering that they still weren’t a top club, what made you decide to join Chelsea after Milan? Surely you could have gone anywhere. Wasn’t there an offer from Manchester United?
Dave Ambridge, Chelsea

In 1996, I signed a pre-contract agreement with Manchester United. I spoke to Alex Ferguson on the phone. I was free! Bosman had just happened. So I was a free transfer! I won’t go into why it didn’t happen but if I had joined them I would have won several more titles! The challenge at Chelsea was interesting, though. The club was building, looking to go places and needed big-name players. Liverpool had come in for me, too, but I needed to have a French school nearby for my children. So I opted for London for Chelsea, for family reasons and for the quality of life.

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/marcel-desailly-one-one
Fascinating to have seen if, in 1996, he'd have gone into midfield next to Keane (as an Ince replacement) or been shifted to defence, which is where he moved to in Milan from 1997/98. Would have been some signing, might have got United over the line in Europe a year or two earlier than they eventually did.
 
I prefer the other one man. This one is not that great.

True, but a decent backup. I imagine they haven't paid their domain name on time. Well I hope that's the case so they can get it back up. As an aside I really don't know why Konami don't use these ratings for classic players in PES games - they would be much more accurate for them since their ladder system works very well to compare different players
 
Who were your heroes growing up?
Carl Lymna-Dennis, Peterborough
Diego Armando Maradona! And Bernd Schuster, strangely. The blond German – I used to like him. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson the two basketball heroes. And then there were Nantes players I looked up to when I was coming up through the ranks, legendary Canaries like Loic Amisse – ah, the calf muscles of Amisse! Maxime Bossis, too, The Giraffe! Tremendous.


Went back to the Desailly interview for one quote and noticed that. I think you two would get along @Moby
 
Who were your heroes growing up?
Carl Lymna-Dennis, Peterborough
Diego Armando Maradona! And Bernd Schuster, strangely. The blond German – I used to like him. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson the two basketball heroes. And then there were Nantes players I looked up to when I was coming up through the ranks, legendary Canaries like Loic Amisse – ah, the calf muscles of Amisse! Maxime Bossis, too, The Giraffe! Tremendous.


Went back to the Desailly interview for one quote and noticed that. I think you two would get along @Moby
:lol:

It's where it's really at if you really think about it.
 
True, but a decent backup. I imagine they haven't paid their domain name on time. Well I hope that's the case so they can get it back up. As an aside I really don't know why Konami don't use these ratings for classic players in PES games - they would be much more accurate for them since their ladder system works very well to compare different players
It's back up today
 
@harms

Are there any equivalents of the Guerin d'Oro award in other countries? I imagine it is one of the fairest representation of league performance around. It would be good though if they had a Top 10 table too. Interestingly Ronaldo didn't win in 97/98 and Totti was displaced by an ageing Baggio in an Indian summer at Brescia in 2000
 
@harms

Are there any equivalents of the Guerin d'Oro award in other countries? I imagine it is one of the fairest representation of league performance around. It would be good though if they had a Top 10 table too. Interestingly Ronaldo didn't win in 97/98 and Totti was displaced by an ageing Baggio in an Indian summer at Brescia in 2000
Bola d'Oro in Brazil. Perhaps there are others, I'm not sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bola_de_Ouro
 


I have to share this — that has to be one of the most unique piece of skill that I've ever seen :lol:

It's Néstor Gonçalves (#5) by the way, I don't think that the video title appears on the embedded video.
 
Has this always been a sub forum? I swear to god this is the first time I've ever seen this sub forum.
 
Has this always been a sub forum? I swear to god this is the first time I've ever seen this sub forum.

Nope. We were sent to our own sub-forum around a year ago as some posters were fed up with (rightly or wrongly) the number of draft game threads. Good to see new faces around though.

One of the limitations is that we get fewer new people coming through compared with being in the main football forum.
 
This is a nice Overath compilation. It's pretty new, I hadn't seen it before today. I think it is a pretty good overview of him as a player.



@Synco @Šjor Bepo You may find this of interest
 
This is a nice Overath compilation. It's pretty new, I hadn't seen it before today. I think it is a pretty good overview of him as a player.



@Synco @Šjor Bepo You may find this of interest


Good watch. Wish there was a bit off the ball stuff too. Plays a lot like the older David Silva in that compilation
 
Good watch. Wish there was a bit off the ball stuff too. Plays a lot like the older David Silva in that compilation

True, but it shows more general play than most compilations. Now I wasn't expecting the David Silva comparison, care to elaborate?
 
True, but it shows more general play than most compilations. Now I wasn't expecting the David Silva comparison, care to elaborate?

The older version in Pep's 4-3-3 who could dribble from deep, spray passes from deep and of course in the final 3rd. Being left footed helps too. I'd probably say Silva had better ball control in his dribbles which helped in close quarters, but otherwise looked similar. I'd expect Silva to slowly age into more deeper areas as well.
 
The older version in Pep's 4-3-3 who could dribble from deep, spray passes from deep and of course in the final 3rd. Being left footed helps too. I'd probably say Silva had better ball control in his dribbles which helped in close quarters, but otherwise looked similar. I'd expect Silva to slowly age into more deeper areas as well.

Fair enough. Overath seemed to have better acceleration and physicality than Silva which is why I didn't think of him. When he was dribbling he actually reminded me more of Davids.
 
Fair enough. Overath seemed to have better acceleration and physicality than Silva which is why I didn't think of him. When he was dribbling he actually reminded me more of Davids.

Yea, which is what I meant when I said Silva had more close control. Overath looked a lot more direct but had way more flair than Davids by the looks of it
 
Yea, which is what I meant when I said Silva had more close control. Overath looked a lot more direct but had way more flair than Davids by the looks of it

Clearly more flair than Davids, it was just his physicality and dribbling that reminded me of him. It's hard to compare him directly to another player, possibly accurate to say he's like Seedorf (TBF that might be a lazy comparison as he's the first physical yet flair CM I could think of)
 
I don't see much in common between Overath and Seedorf. Wolfgang is much more technically refined in his passing and dribbling while very agile where Seedorf was quite slow, powerful and was a more workmanlike technician that used the ball well in a simpler manner, but had a deadly shot if given space. Also mostly a passenger or solid replaceable cog in the machine at NT level, you would never get a tournament compilation of this class from him in a Netherlands strip despite having such a strong team to excel with.

Got to admit i've never been a big Seedorf fan though other than his long range shooting, alongside Demetrio Albertini he was the other big team midfield mainstay from that era that just didn't live up to expectations nearly enough when i watched them as a Serie A and la Liga fanatic back then. He was such an inconsistent player to get the 3 back to back big club chances he got.
 
Great compilation. I know that I'm prone to subconsciously underrate him because there's always this Netzer-Overath comparison and I prefer the former, which isn't fair to Overath at all.
 
I don't see much in common between Overath and Seedorf. Wolfgang is much more technically refined in his passing and dribbling while very agile where Seedorf was quite slow, powerful and was a more workmanlike technician that used the ball well in a simpler manner, but had a deadly shot if given space. Also mostly a passenger or solid replaceable cog in the machine at NT level, you would never get a tournament compilation of this class from him in a Netherlands strip despite having such a strong team to excel with.

Got to admit i've never been a big Seedorf fan though other than his long range shooting, alongside Demetrio Albertini he was the other big team midfield mainstay from that era that just didn't live up to expectations nearly enough when i watched them as a Serie A and la Liga fanatic back then. He was such an inconsistent player to get the 3 back to back big club chances he got.

That's probably fair. Who do you think Overath is most similar amongst the more contemporary players?
 
That's probably fair. Who do you think Overath is most similar amongst the more contemporary players?
I suggested Modric once: a pacy, hard-working, #8/#10 hybrid who distributes, dribbles, drives and plays the final ball. Also smart & tenacious in defense. Although Overath is more of a classic 60s/70s playmaker in his passing, while Modric is technically superior and more of a modern possession-era CM playmaker, imo. But if they switched eras I could see them play similar roles.
That's not a bad shout but Pogba isn't as disciplined defensively nor as tenacious in the tackle. But with respects to dribbling and passing plus general physicality that makes sense
Although it has to be said that he wasn't an imposing figure (1.75m, again Modric territory). It was his mentality and mobility that made him a physical presence, imo.