I think Enrique will be a match made in heaven with him with regards to fitness levels.
He isn't a physical player like Ronaldo or Drogba, so players like him need to take extra care of their bodies.
Messi at the World Cup - No Ronaldo comparisons!
- Thread starter amolbhatia50k
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
He isn't a physical player like Ronaldo or Drogba, so players like him need to take extra care of their bodies.
Good to hear, it would be a shame for him to continue in this vain of just looking completely recked on the pitch.
He'll be back and I'm sure he'll be superb.
For Argentina - he will never be embraced in the way Maradona was and there are many reasons for that which go beyond ability.
The sad thing for Messi is he's no spring chicken and (especially in South America) this was potentially his big chance to win his people over.
He didn't perform badly in fact he did OK but he has the biggest boots of all to fill.
Deserved best player award winner.
If I had a penny for everytime someone said that about a player from 30-40 years ago, i'd be a very rich man indeed.
Speculating on how good Maradona would have been in the modern era is a bit pointless, almost as bad as those who say the current generation of players wouldn't have been able to hack if back in the 70s/80s.
the Napoli team has Careca to score the goals for them and the 86 team has Valdano who is a great striker. This Argentina team in this World Cup has Higuain and Aguero who couldn't hit a barn door. Aguero was probably not completely fit and that makes the omission of Carlos Tevez even more bizarre. Imagine if Messi has Tevez instead of Higuain in the team.
That's why Ronaldo Nazario is still the best player I've witnessed.. Messi is too system specific.. I know he acomplished far more at club level, but Ronaldo would play in very unorganized/mediocre sides and look good, like 90s Inter and Barca and the 98 Brazilian side which was one of the worst coached teams ever and still look godly.
Golden ball not deserved IMO - he carried Argentina but, in the quarters, semis and final was barely the influential player he should have been for the player of his quality. I think he knows it too - that it was just given to him.
Only as pointless as all other footy spaculation.
I also reckon you'd have less than twenty quid.
Ability-wise there isn't much difference between them. But delivery in the world biggest stage always count for something if judging the best player of all time. Messi may not be regarded as highly as in Maradona and Pele in the historical ranking but up to this moment I'd say he is a very close 3rd, which is not a shame at all.
In other words, should Messi have won it for Argentina last night, he would go straight up to Maradona and Pele's tier, and might even be arguably 'better' as his longevity, like Ronaldo, is far superior than anyone else in the history of the game.
Yes its just one match but that's usually defines the difference between the all time world greatest. Di Stefano and Cruyff could have even ranked higher should they have won it too.
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Oh, come on! He was not injured, and he ran the least miles of all players. What's your point? A mental burn-out? May be, but not nothing physical.
It's "best player of the tournament," not "the player who was most important to their team." If it were the latter, I think Neymar would actually be a leading candidate, and there would still be about five players ahead of Messi.
Yet, he's not even close to Beckenbauer, Cruyff, or Zidane, if you count the really big stages. National titles don't count here.
Not a good final for him. Couldn't influence the game when it mattered and was hardly up to his high standards sadly. He hasn't looked that great for a little while now (compared to his usual standards). Feels like he got the golden ball more on reputation than actual performance as there were players that performed better than him.
A very long while now, frankly. So long that I have to wonder if it's really about that injury he had. There's some talk of chronic illness.
Very nicely put for: The golden ball for him was a joke.
I tend to agree. He wasn't himself since 2012.
Indeed, it is just one match, but if you fail in that most important match so terribly, you don't belong to the top -- what number actually? Not even into the top 10, IMO. No matter of your individual skills you can show only in a perfect team that is entirely designed only around you.
Such a joke he gets the Golden Ball, like a concelation prize. Was invisible almost throughout the play off.
Muller or Neuer deserved it more. Guess Blatter doesn't give a shit since he wony be re-elected anyway.
Muller or Neuer deserved it more. Guess Blatter doesn't give a shit since he wony be re-elected anyway.
still not better than prime 'O Fenomeno'
Quite.
I think Mascherano was their best player. He had some great moments but, if he wasn't Messi, his performances would not have drawn much attention.
Cruyff never won a World Cup.
What a farce of an award. Most undeserving winner ever. 
Even if he played very well (which he didn't) I find it hard to accept he deserved the award. He's the best player in the world and up there with the best but on this tournament alone he doesn't deserve the golden ball.
Of all the players, Di Maria? I can't agree. Argentinas best player and arguably the world cups best player was Javier Mascherano. But defensive midfielders don't win golden balls.
Neuer wasn't even the best keeper at the tournament.
It does sicken me slightly he gets the golden ball, if he shat in the middle of the floor there would be people tripping over themselves to tell the world its a masterpiece. He's a great player but I hate the constant praise of a player when he does very little. Yes if its a great pass then praise it, if its an average pass don't tell us its sublime.
Madness. If you count everything, like you should, he shits all over Zidane. It's not even remotely close between the two of them.
And Zidane was a player I loved watching and one I used to consider the best player I'd seen.
I'm not privy to his private life, when I watch him play I see a tired player, why did he run so little? He has done a fair amount of hard running the last four/five years at club level, which is maybe why he is suffering from exhaustion.
The football was different back then compared to now.
Madness. If you count everything, like you should, he shits all over Zidane. It's not even remotely close between the two of them.
And Zidane was a player I loved watching and one I used to consider the best player I'd seen.
Yet, the amount of influence that Zidane exerted on his team > the influence Messi has exerted on his team. And even with all his goals, Messi < Zidane. Personal bias.
Was not that long ago.
It changed with the emergence of Messi and Ronaldo, though. The amount of goals they score these days, it's easy to say they are heads above any other player.
While they certainly are better than their contemporaries, the numbers are padded significantly by the increasing gap between the top two and the rest of La Liga. There has always been that gap, but it has been getting so stupid in the last decade. Previous season aside, the other clubs haven't even been relevant in La Liga, and Madrid and Barcelona are vacuuming up every available star player in the world to the point where it's just silly, buying the two biggest names every season. Their squads are so much better than their domestic competition that the numbers don't reflect the distance between Messi/Ronaldo and the rest of the world's top players. They're better, but they're not as vastly superior as their goal tallies would suggest.
He did but there were a good few more deserving than both.And Neuer still deserved it more than Messi
Agree completely with the second part.
If you looked at him and just based your opinion on this tournament, you would be asking yourself what the fuss is about.
He certainly wasn't deserving of being named best player of the tournament, not by a long way.
He certainly wasn't deserving of being named best player of the tournament, not by a long way.
Totally undeserved. He had a good world cup but no way was he better than some of the other players in this tournament. James, Muller, Robben, Mascherano and a couple of goalkeepers had better world cups and that is off the top of my head. As someone said, this feels like a consolation prize, but a World Cup Golden Ball should not be a consolation prize. 50 years from now people will look at the Golden Ball list and think that he was the best player of this tournament and the brilliance of guys like James will be a mere sidenote.
How do you quantify he was the biggest reason though?
It's all subjective, like I've mentioned. It's impossible to quantify. If I were pushed I'd say Messi and then Pep were the most important parts, followed by Xaviesta.
It wasn't long enough back to be a very different time.
Messi's "influence" over his Barcelona team was much greater than Zidane's over the galacticos, not to mention the huge gap in performance levels and consistency.
Along the same lines, Zidane influenced his national team more.
But I think both their respective "influences" correlate more to the quality of teams they were playing in, and I think this influence thing is overrated.
Great players do influence, but they don't wave magic wands that make a team sport an individual one.
People are way too harsh on him. He wouldn't have been my pick for the Golden Ball, but it's not as huge an injustice as people call it, if any at all.