Nordic Ghost Yeti | Haaland at City

BalanceUnAutreJoint

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Let's be real here. The thing that will keep Messi's name alive 50 years from now is the number of goals he scored and the trophies he won. Which is why winning the WC was such a big deal even though he had established himself as one of the greatest ever long ago. Everything else is anecdotal and wears off with time. Nobody apart from a tiny bunch of nerds is gonna be sat checking Fbref records of what his "expected non penalty goal involvement per 90 mins" or anything was. You care about aesthetic side of the game only when you are watching them day in day out, not when it's someone who you've only heard about from your grandpa.
But your grandpa cares about the aesthetic side. And the player he is going to tell you about is the one who felt impressive to watch.
From the pre 90s era my father never told me about Gerd Muller or Van Basten. It was "Maradona Maradona Maradona"
 

Moby

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Nothing wrong with being a nerd. But if I'm a massive one, what are you, considering you're at 48k posts? That makes for 11 posts a day over a period of 12 years. Considering how likeable you are, you probably sent more posts than WhatsApp messages since you've signed up on here. Obviously not nerdy at all to spend so much time on a football forum. I'm sure the ladies can't get enough of you when they see your RedCafe account.

Explains why you're so tribal, though. Everybody would need something to identify with in your situation I guess :)
With the AI chatbots getting integrated with every app these days I'd love to have one here which could take every single post you make, invert every single sentence and post it on my behalf. I'd be proud of that as my posting history.
 

Maluco

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If Haaland scores 100 goals in a season no one will give a shit about who can dribble better or whatever. He is a genetic freak and should look to create history like no one has done before and change the game forever. For the next 50 years whenever someone starts scoring loads of goals people should say "yeah he's good but he's never getting close to Erling Haaland". Erase the notion of a hat trick from the game because once he's done you'd need to score a minimum of 5 in a match to call it an achievement. Become the Usain Bolt of football.
Big Poppa Braut!?
 

Moby

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CR7 didn't win the world cup but it doesn't stop him to be considered as one of the all time great consider his achievements, records, trophies and personal honors he won in the industry. However world cup is still very important and that's why it means so much to Messi.
Yeah for now it has importance but it's not guaranteed it will in future. If you go back to pre war times there were European tournaments like Mitropa cups etc which were a really proud achievement. No one knows they ever existed now. Even the older European Cup gets overshadowed by the modern CL and similar for English top tier and PL. Whether it's just marketing or there's any substance behind considering them superior is irrelevant because these achievements will keep getting updated in terms of formats, composition etc. The importance of any tournament also depends a lot on how many iterations there have been and it will generally dilute with each iteration. At the time Pele won three World cups, there had been a total of 9 World cups in the history of the sport, and three of them were before the world war. So one player having won a third of the entire competition history or half of the modern history was pretty mental. Now it's gone on for far more, records and teams keep getting added. Having won three is still a great record but the likes of Diego with one win are pretty fragile.
 

Zehner

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With the AI chatbots getting integrated with every app these days I'd love to have one here which could take every single post you make, invert every single sentence and post it on my behalf. I'd be proud of that as my posting history.
I wouldn't vice versa to be honest. The idea of a powerful AI trained with your bottomless ignorance is pretty frightening :nervous:
 

Gentleman Jim

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A few observations about him.

He's not the complete package in his game and may never be but a few years of working with Pep will enable him to be as good as he is capable of being.

His size and physique is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in muscling opponents out of the way enabling him to score more often but on the down side it leaves him vulnerable to injury and possibly a shortened career. In mitigation City's medics and data scientists will manage his game time to try to offset this.

He's a high character player. Loved by his teammates and club execs. He doesn't want to be the big cheese in the dressing room and influence how the club is run unlike some of the people he's being compared to. That counts for something in making a successful team as well as a harvester of individual records.
 

Gehrman

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Let's be real here. The thing that will keep Messi's name alive 50 years from now is the number of goals he scored and the trophies he won. Which is why winning the WC was such a big deal even though he had established himself as one of the greatest ever long ago. Everything else is anecdotal and wears off with time. Nobody apart from a tiny bunch of nerds is gonna be sat checking Fbref records of what his "expected non penalty goal involvement per 90 mins" or anything was. You care about aesthetic side of the game only when you are watching them day in day out, not when it's someone who you've only heard about from your grandpa.
Apart from the hours and hours of footage of Messi on youtube and other platforms just dribbling players for fun. Of course the goals is a major part of his legacy but its his whole package that makes you want to watch him. With Haaland, he is a freak poacher but i dont feel need to watch very often apart from the odd very good goal.
 

FrankFoot

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Yeah, and he probably won't win the WC but if he goes crazy in other tournaments and puts up record breaking stats in top leagues all this talk of all round play is gonna be irrelevant.
This is wrong.

There is even a chance Mbappe, Kvaratskhelia, Pedri, and Musiala win a Balloon D'Or before Haaland does, especially if City doesn't win anything other than an eventual FA Cup.

If Haaland goal records end with zero relevant trophies for City, not many people will care how many tap-ins he scored. Precisely because players like him need to back up his goal records with trophies.
 
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ThierryHenry14

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This is wrong.

There is even a chance Mbappe, Kvaratskhelia, Pedri, and Musiala win a Balloon D'Or before Haaland does, especially if City doesn't win anything other than an eventual FA Cup.

If Haaland goal records end with zero relevant trophies for City, not many people will care how many tap-ins he scored. Precisely because players like him need to back up his goal records with trophies.
Playing for City under Pep can only increase Haaland's chance of winning trophies and Ballon D'Or.


PlayerOddsProbability
Lionel Messi1.2083.3%
Erling Haaland6.016.7%
Kylian Mbappe12.08.3%
Karim Benzema19.05.3%

https://www.football365.com/news/ballon-dor-2023-favourite-messi-mbappe-haaland
 

Tom Cato

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This is wrong.

There is even a chance Mbappe, Kvaratskhelia, Pedri, and Musiala win a Balloon D'Or before Haaland does, especially if City doesn't win anything other than an eventual FA Cup.

If Haaland goal records end with zero relevant trophies for City, not many people will care how many tap-ins he scored. Precisely because players like him need to back up his goal records with trophies.
This Haaland is a tap-in merchant will never not be pointless thing to say. As Im sure 900 people have pointed out: If it was so easy, everyone would do it.

But, pertaining to the Ballon Dor, its not really a requirement for "a lot of people" to care, as long as the sport journalists, coaches and national team captains pay attention. I would agree that the team would need to at least make a final though.
 

Andrade

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But your grandpa cares about the aesthetic side. And the player he is going to tell you about is the one who felt impressive to watch.
From the pre 90s era my father never told me about Gerd Muller or Van Basten. It was "Maradona Maradona Maradona"
Van Basten was plenty impressive to watch and I'm sure a lot of people told their kids about him. Muller is perhaps less easy on the eye.
 

Andrade

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This is wrong.

There is even a chance Mbappe, Kvaratskhelia, Pedri, and Musiala win a Balloon D'Or before Haaland does, especially if City doesn't win anything other than an eventual FA Cup.

If Haaland goal records end with zero relevant trophies for City, not many people will care how many tap-ins he scored. Precisely because players like him need to back up his goal records with trophies.
We're entering an exciting new era of Ballon D'Ors now where it will likely not be boringly dominated by two players and there are a number of candidates for the prize. I think Haaland is way ahead of most of the players you've named in the Ballon D'Or pecking order though. His profile is just much higher than all of them apart from Mbappe.
 

ThierryHenry14

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We're entering an exciting new era of Ballon D'Ors now where it will likely not be boringly dominated by two players and there are a number of candidates for the prize. I think Haaland is way ahead of most of the players you've named in the Ballon D'Or pecking order though. His profile is just much higher than all of them apart from Mbappe.
Unless Mbappe win the CL with PSG, or European Champion/World cup with France, his chance winning the Ballon D'Or is minimal playing in Ligue 1.
 

giorno

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He could score 200 goals in a season that the appreciation or lack thereof for the type of player he is will never change for me. I will never let that affect how highly I'd rate him but I would always go for other players ahead of him if a choice is to be made. As far as I'm concerned, football is more than just numbers, the aesthetics of it are also important, the creativity etc etc... That's why I never truly rated Ronaldo above Messi (even if in particular seasons, he clearly outshone him) overall. One player is just simply more enjoyable to watch than another
I mean i get that it's hyperbole and you're just trying to make a point but if he does score 200 goals in a season he's the best ever and that's that :lol:

Of course he won't though, that's impossible. I mean even assuming, say 80 games in a season, that's an average of 2.5 goals per game. His teams are winning literally every game :lol:
 

kouroux

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I mean i get that it's hyperbole and you're just trying to make a point but if he does score 200 goals in a season he's the best ever and that's that :lol:

Of course he won't though, that's impossible. I mean even assuming, say 80 games in a season, that's an average of 2.5 goals per game. His teams are winning literally every game :lol:
He could be the best ever and I still wouldn't love watching him as a player.
 

Cantona_7_

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@Brwned Meazza won 2 world cups. Just saying...
1934 world cup was boicotted by England, Scotland, Uruguay and Argentina sent a b-team after Italy took and registered their 3 best players as italians and used them on their team instead, also famous for Mussolini buying the refs (many of the refs were banned for refing in their home nations after the world cup because they were so obviously biased for Italy)

Yea Italy got their win but prob not one to brag about, exept the new ww formation Pozzo came up with (he played 2-3-2-3 while most teams still played 2-3-5, no wonder strikers scored so many goals pre ww2)

38 WC they won fair, but again many teams did not play because of the situation in Europe
 

Brwned

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@Brwned Meazza won 2 world cups. Just saying...
Oh yeah, one as the unofficial best player and one as captain as I remember it. There’s plenty of reason for his legendary status. Scored loads of goals too. It’s just that he isn’t remembered because of the goals he scored, and it doesn’t really seem like the players that stand the test of time are the ones who set goal scoring records. Sometimes they overlapped and often they didn’t. It just seems like a big stretch to suggest it’s what really counts, at the end of the day.
 

giorno

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Oh yeah, one as the unofficial best player and one as captain as I remember it. There’s plenty of reason for his legendary status. Scored loads of goals too. It’s just that he isn’t remembered because of the goals he scored, and it doesn’t really seem like the players that stand the test of time are the ones who set goal scoring records. Sometimes they overlapped and often they didn’t. It just seems like a big stretch to suggest it’s what really counts, at the end of the day.
Eeeeh. Think about it. Pelé, Messi, Cruyff, Di Stefano, Cristiano, Van Basten, Eusebio, Zico, Platini, Puskas....most of the consesus top 10-20 greatesy players all time were incredible goalscorers. Maradona was a great goalscorer too everywhere but at Napoli, where he still put generally very good to great numbers anyways in domestic competition
 

Gehrman

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Eeeeh. Think about it. Pelé, Messi, Cruyff, Di Stefano, Cristiano, Van Basten, Eusebio, Zico, Platini, Puskas....most of the consesus top 10-20 greatesy players all time were incredible goalscorers. Maradona was a great goalscorer too everywhere but at Napoli, where he still put generally very good to great numbers anyways in domestic competition
Maradonna scored a decent amount for Napoli as an attacking midfielder in the side that wasnt a superteam in the worlds toughest league.
 

Samid

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We dropped 5 points because this wanker wasn’t there to finish all the crazy chances ffs.

The irony is that he’ll probably pick up 6 points for using his phone while driving when he should’ve been collecting those points on the pitch instead.
 

Brwned

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Eeeeh. Think about it. Pelé, Messi, Cruyff, Di Stefano, Cristiano, Van Basten, Eusebio, Zico, Platini, Puskas....most of the consesus top 10-20 greatesy players all time were incredible goalscorers. Maradona was a great goalscorer too everywhere but at Napoli, where he still put generally very good to great numbers anyways in domestic competition
Sure. Being a great goalscorer is a highly valued trait. It just isn’t the only thing that stands the test of time. Anyone talking about those bunch if players would tend to throw Beckenbauer in there too. I would. No big deal.
 

Rob

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Just read that he's established a company in tax haven Luxembourg with daddy Alf as CEO. Because of course he has.
 

HookedOnAPhelan

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Just read that he's established a company in tax haven Luxembourg with daddy Alf as CEO. Because of course he has.
Of course. The apple doesn't fall far from the cnut.


Also using his phone while driving... I hope they give him the chair
 

Tom Cato

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Just read that he's established a company in tax haven Luxembourg with daddy Alf as CEO. Because of course he has.
An investment company for international investment. He still pays taxes on salaries made in the UK.

The sponsor money will unquestionably go to that entity though.
 

Moby

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Sure. Being a great goalscorer is a highly valued trait. It just isn’t the only thing that stands the test of time. Anyone talking about those bunch if players would tend to throw Beckenbauer in there too. I would. No big deal.
Do you think guys like Di Stefano or Cruyff even come up in the discussion when talking about the greatest ever player in a popular vote, let alone dudes like Beckenbauer? It was pretty much Pele and Maradona for years before Cristiano and Messi came along and that's literally it.

Here's an actual poll by a sports network.

 

Brwned

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Do you think guys like Di Stefano or Cruyff even come up in the discussion when talking about the greatest ever player in a popular vote, let alone dudes like Beckenbauer? It was pretty much Pele and Maradona for years before Cristiano and Messi came along and that's literally it.

Here's an actual poll by a sports network.

The definition gets narrower every time I post. I’ll just leave it here.
 

Gehrman

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Do you think guys like Di Stefano or Cruyff even come up in the discussion when talking about the greatest ever player in a popular vote, let alone dudes like Beckenbauer? It was pretty much Pele and Maradona for years before Cristiano and Messi came along and that's literally it.

Here's an actual poll by a sports network.

Romario and Gerd Muller would be streets ahead of Maradonna if it was all about goals.

Anyway before when voting is done by sports journalists it was mostly always

1. Pelé
2. Maradonna
3. Cryuff
4. Di Stefano
5. Beckenbauer
 

Gehrman

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Evidence?
I can remember someone posting all this in another thread where another poster claimed that Cryuff was never nr. 3 but all the polls from back then showed he was. Not sure im able dig it all up unless u can remember which thread it was in.

Fifas player of the century has 2 editions. 1st one reflects what you say more apart from Maradona being nr. 1 whilst the Fifa readers and Jury top 5 was

1. Pele
2. Di Stefano
3. Maradona
4. Beckenbaur
5. Cryuff
 
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FrankFoot

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Do you think guys like Di Stefano or Cruyff even come up in the discussion when talking about the greatest ever player in a popular vote, let alone dudes like Beckenbauer? It was pretty much Pele and Maradona for years before Cristiano and Messi came along and that's literally it.

Here's an actual poll by a sports network.

Who cares about these polls, seriously

These polls most likely reflect recency bias of what people saw in their lifetime, and not many 50 years old who watched Maradona use Twitter.

You can create a poll, asking who's the best musician/band ever, with the options: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Justin Bieber, and Ed Sheeran...and there is no doubt either Justin or Ed win the poll, considering the huge amount of people under 30 that use Twitter.

It's not that deep.
 

Gehrman

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Who cares about these polls, seriously

These polls most likely reflect recency bias of what people saw in their lifetime, and not many 50 years old who watched Maradona use Twitter.

You can create a poll, asking who's the best musician/band ever, with the options: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Justin Bieber, and Ed Sheeran...and there is no doubt either Justin or Ed win the poll, considering the huge amount of people under 30 that use Twitter.

It's not that deep.
Its a bit like Beckham. A lot people who didnt know much about football thought he was the best in the world because he was the most famous.