I don't know what you're on about, I never claimed Henry, Eto'o and van Nistelroy were similar. Actually, I named Eto'o and Henry as they were similar to Mbappe and van Nistelroy because he was similar to Haaland in terms of contribution outside of goals.
But not the best player in the world. Welcome to the conversation.
That’s just not true, Cristiano’s most successful part of his career was playing as or like a striker and when he played as a winger he was more like Mbappé is now. Van Basten, Gerd Muller, Eusebio, Puskas, Romario would make most people’s top 10 or 20 as well as Cristiano, a top 20 would include as many strikers as playmakers for most people. Strikers have always be valued, for over a hundred years at this point.
Maybe they do not play for a team that produce as much goal chances as City(in terms of number and quality)? Maybe they do not have the freakish physicality to bully defenders and the same positional instinct to put themselves in better position to score(especially in Son's case)?
Because scoring goals is hard, and nobody has delivered the output with the same consistency as those two players. Really, we are not talking about 2 or 3 seasons, but one full decade and then some. It's unheard of.
So what is the measure, goals scored + goal assists?
Cristiano was much more than a pure goal scorer in his prime. He was one of the best dribblers on the planet. Eusebio and Puskas were also much more than goal scorers. Eusebio. And from those you mentioned, I doubt van Basten, Müller and Romario would be in many top 10 rankings. Pelé, Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo, Cristiano, Beckenbauer and Cruyff are pretty much set and then there are still Di Stefano, Zidane, Platini, Zico, Garrincha, Ronaldinho and Best.
I don't think you can generalize this. Sometimes the second to last play might be the most important, sometimes it is the last touch.
Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but scoring goals isn’t the most difficult key stats, the most difficult seemed to be getting assists.
I'd take Iniesta over Mbappe or Haaland any day. And their ceiling is actually even higher than Iniesta. Musiala is already at 42 scorers in the Bundesliga in roughly 4500 minutes of football. Iniesta never had such output and wasn't even a starter when he was Musiala's age.
The tightest space often is the box, and Haaland plays excellently there, albeit very physical. I can accept someone rather watches more elegant players like the ones you mentioned, but it is a stretch to say they are so much better than Haaland.
This response actually sums up what I mean quite well. What has elegance to do with this? Maybe you didn't mean it that way but you make it sound as if Haaland builds the house with hard, honest, efficient work and the playmakers then puts some pretty paint on the walls. Easy to the eye but meaningless in the bigger picture.
Oh I definitely didn't want to say that elegant play is meaningless - it can be quite effective, and your examples (as your stats prove) excellently combine an elegant style of play with getting meaningful numbers. All I am saying was that Haaland might use physical power to move past a defender where someone else would use some highly technical trickery - in the end both achieve the same.
Ronaldo was one of the ‘best dribblers on the planet’ but Mbappé isn’t? As I said, third top dribbler in the last World Cup, double as many successful dribbles as Pedri per game. He even had more key passes per game than Pedri. Last year’s Champions League again more dribbles than Pedri. Last 3 Champions Leagues he was top 10 in the dribbling stats, reaching a high of second behind Messi in 2021/22.
I know it is a bit controversial but I think ultimately, the best players will naturally end up being played in the areas between the lines. Maybe you've read the Maradona quote on fullbacks usually being the worst players on the pitch since they're "playing in areas where football isn't played". I think by extension, this underlines that you want to play your best player in the area in which he can influence the game the most and conclusively that certain positions will never be occupied by the best players. And ideally, that's an area in which he is on the ball a lot but also in close proximation to the goal.
Modric and Zidane did though without scoring much compared to say Platini or Lampard. Win the ballon d'or that is.
It can be interpreted in many different ways. It is possible that football has developed in a way that strikers need to create their own chances.
You would put Iniesta on a well-functioning attacking team. But if you need an extra ten to twenty goals in a season while having a not-so-great midfielder, any manager would prefer a competent goal scorer.
You need to see their competitors and the context, though. Zidane won the Ballon d'Or in 1998 after winning the World Cup and scoring two goals in the final. His nearest competitors are Davor Suker, who scored 10 goals in the league, and Ronaldo (14). Modric single-handedly led Croatia to the 2019 World Cup final, scoring two goals in normal time and in penalty shootouts. I'm not saying goalscoring is the only metric to judge a player's stature, but visible contributions such as goals while winning important trophies are quite good indicators of a player's level.
Sure, if every striker are R9s and Messis, they create their own chances. Too bad in reality there are only one of R9 and one of Messi, so no, others still create chances for the strikers.
Well part of that reason is that assists were not properly recorded for most of football history. Some players may well have got more than 500 assists many years ago, we just wouldn’t know.
Maybe, but if we look at modern football record, the player with the highest assist is messi with 390 (maybe its 400 now). Compare it to the number of players in the modern era who scored more than 400, it is obvious assists are harder to get than goals
Lampard never won a Balloon D'Or.
What are you talking about, there a bunch of strikers that create their own chances too, R9 and Messi aren't the only ones historically
It's sort of obvious I think.
Give the Noob a thumbs up, he/she is right
Ya i know that, of course there are supremely talented ones other than r9 and messi historically, just few and far in between. Not gonna name or even remember all of them
Yes you are right, hence it means assists are harder to get than goals because an assist cannot exist without a goal but a goal can exist without an assist based on your above explanation
Are you being serious? The responsibility to create chances is distributed to all players on the right, left, and center, near or far from the final third, while scoring goals is mainly a forward's job in the penalty box.
Hence getting an assist is more competitive since u have many other competitors to get that 1 assist (right left center near far), so ya seriously its a harder stats to rake up.
Yeah, but what's your point, though? A player doesn't "compete" with their teammates by boosting his assist numbers. Kevin De Bruyne is Man City's top goal provider because Pep allows him to play closer to the box instead of Gundogan's position. Liverpool has so many assists from their full back because Klopp wants his team to play that way.
Mongo - 3 goals in his last 5 Prem games. Awoniyi - 7 in the last 5 (at least a goal in each game). Yes, I know it will probably be different by the end of the season but then Awoniyi doesn’t get the service Haaland does.Watch him score 67 goals in the next 10 matches after this post.
Didn't he only have about 8 successful passes tonight? Did the same against Arsenal as well.
Tbh that’s what he does. Similar stats against Burnley but scored 2 and unlucky not to get a hat trick. He doesn’t do passes. Just shots.
The most boring world class footballer.
Cristiano was a good dribbler in his prime just not "one of the best".
Messi, Ronaldinho, Robben, Ribery, Hazard, Neymar, Iniesta were better than him, maybe Kaká and Pato if we're being generous. And those players' peaks were distributed quite evenly over Cristiano's "dribbling prime" so that they were not all ahead of him. So I still think he was one of the best dribblers on the planet. Probably consistently top 5 or even 3 from 2006 to 2012 or so.
