Scoring goals is important in football though, its how you win games. Some might say it i the most important aspect of outscoring your opponent
Nordic Ghost Yeti | Haaland at City
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Straight out of Michael Owens mouth that.
No offense but you clearly haven't. And how would you? I'm in my early thirties and when R9 was at his best, I was 7 or 8 years old. Even if you were 3 or 4 years older than me, there's no way you could have properly assessed what happened there.
Here's a R9 video with highlights only from the 97/98 season. 30 minutes of him dribbling and passing and creating chances by himself, at times receiving the ball with 4-5 team mates ahead of him on the pitch - in the Serie A of the 90s.
If we rank strikers based on their overall contribution, I'd go with
R9 >> Henry > Mbappe > Benzema > Lewandowski >>> Haaland.
R9 was an absolute freak, completely unplayable.
All players have games in which they disappear.
The major difference between someone like Messi vs Cristiano/Haaland is that Messi without scoring has a much higher likelihood of being the best player on the pitch even if his team loses.
You counted assist only as play making which is wrong itself. You don't account for switch play. Key passes or passes deeper down the pitch that break the line between few other passes away until a chance/goal appear. You think Ronaldo operated solely in final third when you said he has one track of mind to get the goal as fast as possible? In reality, Ronaldo was very much involved in the ball carrying and play making middle hard of the pitch too.
Zidane, Pirlo, Modric had less career assist than Henry. Look at Carrick assist stats.
https://www.transfermarkt.com/michael-carrick/leistungsdaten/spieler/3878
Perhaps Carrick is just a glorified defensive midfielder by assist count?!
Which is a pretty simplistic view of football if you ask me. Goals make up such a small part of playing football. The obsession with goals always reminds me a bit of kindergarden days during which you thought the player who scored the most was the best.
Play 11 Haaland's and you win nothing. Play 11 Modric's and you still compete for the UCL.
It´s always been like that. The guy who scores the goal gets the glory, but not the players who do their jobs to dominate the game and make the chances happen. 11 Nordic goal Yeti´s vs 11 Modrics would be interesting though. However Haalands freak records are just hard not to be very impressed about which sucks since he plays for City.
I am a couple years older and can I really watch a 30 min video? I didn't argue that he could dribble and create chances for himself. I don't see him as a play maker forward. His assist rate is comparable to Fowler and Cole. He has never had a 30:20 season like Yorke or Henry for example or even Suarez.
Some on the cafe put Mbappe above Henry by the way
EDIT: And yes here in England we had access to Gazetta football Italia and watched live games all through my school years, every morning before football practice and then Sunday afternoon when I came back from playing matches myself.
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That is still not true. His ability to open play into players in advantage is about Figo's level. His vision, weight of pass, range of passing severely underrated. Highlight often went with the fancy dribbling, skill stuff, but Ronaldo did the simple stuff consistently well in middle third too. It's not only one touch passing, or dribbling.
Different era
crazy conversation taking place before my eyes. Goals, quite simply are the main part of football. It is the objective to win the game. Its in the rule book. You simply cannot beat the game without putting the ball into the opposition net. same as basketball. Thats why the scorers get paid the most. You can play terrible, knick a goal because you have a prolific forward and stumble into a 2nd place league finish like Ole Gunnar did as manager. Goals are football
Haaland is an awesome goalscorer, the best around at present. R9 was different class though, a creator of chaos, powerful, unpredictable and so direct and he would have the opposition on edge as at any moment he was capable of opening up a defense single handedly and the ball would be in the back of the net.
An era where real Madrid won the champions league twice in three years before they signed him? For a player of his quality, one league title and no champions leagues is a very poor return at club level. Obviously he'd have won more without injuries but are you trying to suggest that Madrid wouldn't have won the league if haaland was in place of Ronaldo?
I dont see him having a great range of passing nor stand out passing compared to his teammates. Carrick had superb passing range. Zidane, Pirlo, Modrid you can run the attack through them. Highlights show just highlights but not the game by game so you will forget the terrible games when he kept losing possession, and his passing was weakYou counted assist only as play making which is wrong itself. You don't account for switch play. Key passes or passes deeper down the pitch that break the line between few other passes away until a chance/goal appear. You think Ronaldo operated solely in final third when you said he has one track of mind to get the goal as fast as possible? In reality, Ronaldo was very much involved in the ball carrying and play making middle hard of the pitch too.
Zidane, Pirlo, Modric had less career assist than Henry. Look at Carrick assist stats.
https://www.transfermarkt.com/michael-carrick/leistungsdaten/spieler/3878
Perhaps Carrick is just a glorified defensive midfielder by assist count?!
Don't quite get what you mean here
Modric in goal? Instant relegation
No shit sherlock, doesn't negate that there is a difference between an Henry (can create goals for himself and others) and an Inzaghi relies on excellent service
Let's put it this way, R9 definitely had the highest density of good and outrageous plays.
And assists are also a terrible metric for that.
In each football match, there are roughly 60 minutes of football. Even in a highscoring match, maybe 1 minute of that is dedicated to the scoring of goals. The rest of a football match are other actions. So how are goals the main part of football?
There's also a huge difference between a goal and a goal record. A game is won by goals, yes, but a "goal scored" is only the last touch before the ball passed the line. It says nothing about who made the most important plays in the sequence that lead to the ball passing the line. And it says nothing about all the plays that lead to this goal being important - defending, ball retention, build up, etc. You don't care about the 1:5 or 2:5, do you? And it also tells you nothing about the great plays by players that didn't lead to goals because somebody else fecked up. Football is such a beautiful sport and you reduce it to something that superficial.
And a) scorers don't automatically get paid the most and b) payment doesn't correlate 1 to 1 how important or difficult to replace a player is or how much better he makes the team, even if the decision makers could quantify his impact. In fact, the payment is more down to what people like you and me think is the most important and the more people think like you (goals = best), the more they get paid because people want to watch them play.
Of course it is. I think he was just talking about the whole picture about how a key midfielder can change the team or in Liverpool's case, they could score goals but couldnt keep a clean sheet and was transformed for a while with the addition of VVD and Allison. Id agree its wrong to say goals are small part of football, it is however part of the bigger picture in the first place. Anyway im not one of those who seriously says "all he does is score goals". And even then thats what you want from a striker.
Are you saying Ronaldo didn't? Or are you being obtuse to ignore the very obvious point being made. If someone is saying Halaand would have had the same impact as Ronaldo in the same team, you have to be aware of the differences.
No opponent can score with 0% possession
Yep. He underperformed at club level but nobody is ready for this conversation. He has 1 European top league to his name and zero champions leagues
. That's bloody awful. This is over 10 seasons when he wasn't out for long periods due to injury. His record is ass. Haaland could definetly eclipse that if he played back then.I don't talk about highlight as a view to assess player. I am actually complaining highlight makers who failed to capture the simpler, efficient in other part of the game.
You ignored the Carrick question?
By assist count, Gerrard>> Lampard>>> Scholes> Carrick. Xabi Alonso assist stats depressing too. Perhaps, playmaking means much more than assist count? Agree?
Ronaldo pre injury run his team attack on his own. Almost all the play goes through him, even if middle third or first third when defending set piece.
Please point out the terrible games. Your claim implied a player hindering the team and should be subbed. Ronaldo in his peak only the World Cup final came into mind. Else you need to try to prove it. I didn't have chance to watch all his games live back in the days, but if I tried I can get the games from fellow Ronaldo fanboy and proof check with your claim.
I just accepted the fact that there are different kind of striker out there, and Haaland is just not a playmaking forward like Messi, or Henry. He is also not a striker who can create something out of nothing like the two just being mentioned and also like Suarez. Haaland needs service, and he is currently playing in team that can create lots of chances for him.
See, in those days, you didn't just count up the volume of trophies and count up the volume of goals and then decide who was the best based off of that. Even when he went to Madrid (when he was a greatly reduced player), the superclub disparity was not what it is now. If Ronaldo played today he'd have the same number of league titles as all the top players have now.
He played with Zidane, Figo, Redondo, Guti, Beckham, Makelele, Raul, Hierra, Roberto Carlos etc. Not a bad supporting cast.
Which is the point that was being made... if you agree why comment and act like you don't? Next time follow the conversation
To those who criticize Haaland: Why is that Antony, Sancho and a bunch of others deserves a season before they are judged, but not Haaland? Don't you think Haaland will settle in and learn the team more and more and show more qualities the next season? Especially in term of creating.
Thats was after injury and after scoring 35 in 36 games for PSV and then 47 in 49 games at Barca as a teenager
I don't get why people always feel the need to say x player today could have done what y player did back in 1995, just stop it, the game today is different.
I know
No, no sir, your pay does typically equate to your importance/irreplaceability, how much better you make the team. The pay is determined by the club hierarchy (manager, owner, directors) and it is THEY whom value scoring in nearly all sports. Who are the highest paid players in football? then try basketball? Notice a pattern here? Draymond Green for all his defence and playmaking, just lost out on a max contract for a kid (Poole) because Poole is a scorer. Get me 30ppg or average 30-35 goals per season and you will
a)command the highest transfer fees
b) get paid the most
"Scoring is sweet nectar for the sport. Scoring is emotion. Scoring is victory. Scoring is life." Plato
And R9s wasn't?
Yes but in that era there were other good teams. It wasn't as weighted towards Madrid and Barca. Also, that was just a part of his career when he wasn't the player he had previously been. Even when he was at his best it was harder to win league titles than it is for the elites now.
Another one ignoring the obvious
No, this isn't correct. His vaunted partnership with Romario in 1997 ( The Ro-Ro show) displayed his full array of abilities on, off, around the ball for himself, for his partner and playing anyone else into positions to score. It was heralded not only for the brilliance of the football but also the imagination - Ronaldo proved he could be anything needed for a strike partner in that competition and it was at this stage in his career that he was evolving into both a supplier and scorer, which was further exemplified at Inter before his knees blew out.
There are countless through-balls played in and through in a myriad of ways by Ronaldo in that vid. There's also crosses, him passing from deep (high and low) and a general display of his awareness of spatials and what to do with them outside of dribbling.
Ronaldo was actually becoming more unpredictable before the injury; it can be fairly argued that we didn't even get to see his peak.
Compilations at Inter will be even more extensive because he was doing a lot more to help the team there: wide, deep, through attacking midfield as well as being the killer forward. He was very expansive before the tragedy struck.
Kaka, Figo and Zidane used to command pretty insane transfer fee´s and wages. These days strikers are in short supply so perhaps they are paid more than they were in the earlier. And of course Haaland seems to be a generational talent when it comes to scoring. Im as such not disagreeing with you just pointing out that several transfer records were broken for midfielders and wingers in an era.
Well the narrative is obvious to say Haaland can not be a top striker that can be mentioned along with the all time great striker like R9, Messi, or may be Henry because he can't dribble and create something out of nothing for himself, or play making for other players. Van Basten if i remember correctly wasn't that good on those front either.
He didn't.
A team is also about the balance. Shoehorning Beckham into CM role to get all the attackers into the XI, and sold Makelele who glued things together; that's more group of individuals than a team. It's no coincidence that Ronaldo, Zidane, Figo stopped winning anything after Makelele, Hierro sold. Real Madrid only won again when it's time to bin the Galaticos 1 project.
Injury or not we probably can't see his peak anyway due to his life style.
I mean you're the one saying that Ronaldo's quality can purely be measured in goals scored... Which is nonsense.
The Ronaldo and Messi era and what that comparison turned into has really ruined people analyzing players in the past. Just because he didn't score 50 goals every season doesn't mean he wasn't a better player. There's more to football than goal total and especially 20 years ago, there wasn't a stat obsession where teams focused on maximizing 1 player scoring all the goals.
His Barca were a super team though. Albert Ferrer, Pep, Figo (future ballon d'or winnger), Stoichkov (Balon d'or 3rd place), Laurent Blanc, Luis Enrique, Rafa Nadal's uncle, Prosinecki (scorer of a Rabona corner), De La Pena, Couto, Giovanni