Did you actually watch the games? If you can’t tell the difference then I’m not sure football is for you!
Lionel Messi | PSG Watch
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
I'm not saying his performances were nothing outside of the goals, but when more than half of your goals come from penalties, and your fans have spent the last decade saying penalties don't really count, but then say Messi scored 7 goals in the world cup and don't bother to asterisk it, the way they have with another player, its odd.
Well I think you’re missing some extremely important context here. The player I believe you’re referring to is a pure goal scorer, so of course the nature of the goals becomes more relevant. It’s not a sensible comparison.
No the player I'm taking about has the most assists in champions league history, you must be thinking of someone else.
But when I said mbappe didn't get thr ballon d'or for his 2018 world cup I was told a difference was 4 goals to 7, but when 4 of the 7 are penalties, is it that great a difference
I assume you’re talking about Cristiano Ronaldo.
I don’t think it’s worth continuing this discussion as we obviously watch football very differently.
Yes we probably do, if you've watched his whole career and see someone who only scores goals, maybe you started watching football 5 or 6 years back
Ah okay. You’ve gone down that road. Fair enough.
Even if I were to agree with your premise which I don't, penalties either count as goals, which Messi fans have been arguing against for years or they don't in which case he got 3 goals in the world cup since another Argentinian could have easily scored the penalties.
Regardless of whether they're part of a larger all round game or from someone as one dimensional as inzaghi, they either count or they don't, and Messi fans have spent a decade arguing they don't
I’m not a fan of any player. I support United, but that’s about it.
The fact you're nitpicking over things in my post show that you know you were incorrect to say there's a difference between Messi padding his goals with penalties and anyone else doing it. The other aspects of his game can be viewed independently from that, but to claim his 7 goals are better than mbappe's 4 at the previous tournament maybe isn't that accurate. If you want to argue his all round performances were better, that's a different argument
I don’t remember every arguing about goal tallies? The whole premise of my comments was the opposite of that.
@jm99 I’ll leave it there. I’ve got to say, the people that seem to argue in Ronaldo’s favour when comparing him to Messi just seem so hung up on stats, it makes football discussions so tedious. I assume you believe Ronaldo is a better player than Messi but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
My first post you commented on was about people who've had the cheek to spend a decade saying penalties don't count then talking about messi's goals total without the caveat that Argentina were awarded a record number of penalties, and that they'd be quick to point it out with Ronaldo, if he'd scored 7 goals.
Regardless of the rest of the performance, the impact of penalties on their total goals would not be viewed as the same by these people
I believe ronaldo's CL knockout record shows him consistently performing at the very highest level, though Messi was a bit better in league football. But I think being so consistently a big game player in the CL matters a bit more than that
The amusing thing is that Messi actually beats Ronaldo on goalscoring stats and ratios as well apart from the very obvious gulf in actual performances. But I do enjoy Ronaldo fans and their struggles now that their man has been irrelevant for a while.
That being said, for the period in consideration, I do believe Benzema should have won the award as I've always disliked awards based on an entire year of performances being judged on the basis of who wins the CL/Euros/WC. Messi was very good last season (despite his low numbers) but he hasn't been a patch on Benzema. If we take the current season, and of course the WC is then included, Messi has ofcourse been the BPITW. But given this award considers August 2021 to end of 2022, Messi should not be winning even though he was unreal in the WC.
The champions league argument is another one that I find strange, and the comparison to league form, with the assumption that certain games carry more weight or pressure. Messi has just starred on the biggest stage of all.
Ronaldo might be a huge big game player but the fact and assumption that Messi doesn't do it on the big stage is a bit hilarious and even more so on a United forum given how utterly he's destroyed us in two different CL finals.
Basically you've just made a list of excuses for them. The point is that you are trying to posit that the level is way lower than the CL. The facts don't bear that out. Let's add assists. Ronaldo has 0 goals and 0 assists in the KO rounds of the World Cup. That takes away the whole 'well he wasn't a prolific goalscorer at some world cups.' Let's not restrict it to KO games, let's add all the WC games, therefore including a lot more of the 'weaker' sides that you referenced. Ronaldo has scored 8 WC goals in 22 games. Before Messi went on his crazy run in 2022, he'd scored 6 goals in 19 games. 20 games across 4 or 5 World Cups is not a small sample size. I'm sorry but it's not. Let's expand it out to the whole international career. Both Messi and Ronaldo have significantly lower goal ratios at international level than club level. If the standard is so poor, why is that the case? The simple Occam's razor answer is that it is not way easier at international level than it is at club level, for many reasons.
Well I ran the numbers and Ronaldo is at 0.6 goals per game at senior international level and 0.74 goals per game at club level. A difference to be sure, but given it comes in a team you don't train with most of the year and an appalingly negative manager for the vast majority of it, you would expect it to be a bit lower than playing under world class managers with a team you train with all the time.
Messi's is a bigger difference, 0.8 to 0.56 but again its not like its double the goal ratio or anything, and he has played a slightly different role for most of his Argentina career than he did for the majority of his club level, but again its playing under managers that wouldn't get a job at a bottom half Premier league club, and training with a team a couple of times a year as opposed to daily you'd be surprised if this wasn't the case.
International football has various factors that add to the difficulty, that doesn't make the standard better, you're playing under managers that typically wouldn't get a commensurate job at club level, you're playing with players you train with for a couple weeks before you go to a tournament and a few times a year.
We could have a level of football, where players get kicked in the shins before they come out or wear ankle weights and I'm sure a lot of players might struggle to adjust to that. But it's artifical handicaps, rather than an indication of the standard of football.
Like when they have to play in Bolivia, at that altitude the game is far more difficult, but you'd struggle to say Bolivian football is of a higher standard because of it
Messi was the big game player at the start of his career and I remember it was actually something Ronaldo was criticised for while he was here, flat track bully and the like. But as their careers went on this shifted quite a bit, it's why Ronaldo has something like 40+ goals from the quarter finals onwards and Messi has less than 20, the next highest player I don't think even gets to double digits, maybe benzema does now after last season
It's not just those two.
Benzema
Lewandowski
Suarez
Mbappe
Aguero
And many others. Basically every prolific scorer in the 21st century, including Messi and Ronaldo, has a lower GTG ratio at international level. And whatever the reason, it means that if you dominate an international tournament, there is no logical reason that it should be considered of less worth than a good CL tournament. Especially as the pressure is so much greater, the entire world is watching, and if you screw it up, you don't get to just try again next year.
Well it's of a lower standard, that doesn't mean it can't be harder to score. Like I said Bolivian football isn't anywhere near the standard of top European leagues, but players would struggle massively to go and play at that altitude. Playing in teams that are far more disjointed in terms of attack, because they don't train together and have worse managers is the same.
Would you say that the Bolivian team smashing Argentina or Brazil when they go there, means that should be regarded as just as valuable as any other game.
Playing in teams that train irregularly, under managers that wouldn't get a job at club level presents challenges. That doesn't make it of the same standard.
And you're misrepresenting what I've said, you're saying it shouldn't be considered worth less than a good CL, which I'd argue but fair enough, but you're suggesting that messi's world cup is worth way more than benzema's league and CL performances, which I would massively disagree with. If you want to consider it different but equal to the champions league that's one thing, but suggesting that 7 games, hold more weight than the league and the CL combined is for the birds.
The idea that Ronaldo's a better big game player than Messi is one of the stupidest things parroted by his fans lately.
Who let this crybaby lose? Surely this nonsense can be done in that other thread. Best thing about the World Cup was that it stopped the Messi Ronaldo nonsense but seemingly not for all.
I wasn't trying to make it Messi vs Ronaldo, I was talking Messi vs benzema this year in light of the recent award, and what brought Ronaldo into it is that somehow scoring over half your goals as penalties isn't considered a negative for Messi, when his fans have considered it as such for over a decade. But it's not about a rivalry between these two, it's how some people have suddenly changed their position on whether penalties are stat padding or not, now that it's their guy who's doing it.
I think if Messi had a bad tournament, the penalties would be held against him more. But he was mostly brilliant throughout the whole tournament. A lot of people hold the opinion that sometimes all Ronaldo did in the game was score a penalty, but other than the Saudi game, he was excellent v Croatia, Netherlands and in the final.
I'm not debating that, but I've not a seen a single Messi fan even acknowledge that half his goals were penalties, one of them earlier said that one of the reasons mbappe 2018 wasn't as good as Messi 2022, is that Messi scored 7, while mbappe scored 4, completely ignoring that 4 of messi's were penalties.
Thats not talking about their wider performances, that's directly comparing their goal records, and as soon as its Messi, suddenly penalties are worth the same as regular goals
It probably has to do with Messi actually being the tournaments best player rather than anything else.
Benzema was great but the WC always swings it. Should be nothing surprising about that. If Messi at this WC, all things remaining the same, Mbappe would have beaten Benzema to it.
Also why do you lot care so much about something called “TheBest”?
This is what happens when you spend too much time involved in fan wars. Factually many of his goals did come from pens at the world but he was brilliant regardless and his achievements at the WC given his age were astonishing. Mbappe in 2018 was good but not that good.
Right but there's clearly some bias, if you've spent ten years using non-penalty goals as the way to judge someone, then when it comes to Messi WC 2022, just stating 7 goals scored with no caveats whatsoever.
I've been clear a few times I think the WC gets way too much weighting, I don't think modric was better than either messi or Ronaldo in 2018, and Messi wasn't the 5th best player then, what benzema did in the CL against city, Chelsea, Liverpool and psg is far more impressive than 7 games against Saudi Arabia, Poland, Mexico, Australia, Netherlands, Croatia and then one actually world class team in France.
And that's not having a go at the 2022 world cup, in almost every wc most champions won't have a particualry tough run, most groups feature a heavyweight and 3, what would be described in boxing as tomato cans, there to take a beating.
What benzema did in the CL was one of the toughest runs, PSG with neymar, Messi and mbappe up front, champions Chelsea, widely considered the strongest team in the world city, and Liverpool who were basically neck and neck with city.
I can understand at a push saying those two tournaments are of equal value, but to say that the WC is worth more than the CL performances plus how much better benzema was in his league than Messi was in France, is ludicrous to me
Look I can’t be bothered with this. It’s ardeous and I’m not sure why it means so much to you. Complaining about the WC meaning more is a losing cause - it is what it is. It’s how the world and the awarding committees think. They’re not equal and that’s just a fact.
If you want fans of a player to use your preferred language or caveats it’s not going to happen either
You can wage these wars but it’s a losing battle
I'm not waging any war, I'm commenting in a thread in an online football forum
It doesn't mean so much to me, I even said it's not outrageous for Messi to win, I guess if you're including the second half of 2022 and his club form, it's still not overall as good as benzema but it's not a scandalous decision, but there were people moaning about real Madrid fans saying that benzema should have won it, as if that would have been ridiculous.
But again, it's strange you're equating posting in an online forum, to something meaning so much to someone
I'm not waging any war, I'm commenting in a thread in an online football forum
It doesn't mean so much to me, I even said it's not outrageous for Messi to win, I guess if you're including the second half of 2022 and his club form, it's still not overall as good as benzema but it's not a scandalous decision, but there were people moaning about real Madrid fans saying that benzema should have won it, as if that would have been ridiculous.
But again, it's strange you're equating posting in an online forum, to something meaning so much to someone
Presumably, if you’re taking the time to post about it on an online forum then you kinda do care about it somewhat, no?
Well yes obviously, I care about it to the level of effort that posting in an online forum requires. If there weren't online forums I wouldn't prowl the streets looking for someone to argue with about it, or stand outside a football stadium with a megaphone trying to get my point across.
So saying "why do you care so much about this" is only accurate if "so much" means going to the effort of typing some words on a screen while watching TV
well yes, you clearly care enough to engage random people on the internet about it, so you do care “so much” in that regard. I didn’t suggest you’d take to the streets fighting peeps, but you do have 37 posts in this thread, mate!
This thread that's been going for two years also and posts that take less than a minute to type out, I'd say 37 minutes worth of effort over almost 2 years isn't all that much
sure, but you clearly do care about the topic, that’s clear to see.
You've made 3 posts now about me caring about the topic in the space of an hour and a half. Pro rata that's more than 37 posts in a day, compared to my 37 posts in almost 2 years.
So apparently you care about whether I care about this topic, about 500x more than I care about this topic
Yes because I literally meant you were waging a war. Jaysus this is a train wreckI'm not waging any war, I'm commenting in a thread in an online football forum
You have more than double the amount of posts in this thread than I do. The question might be why do you care so much about this?