freethedevil wrote:Lebron also won plenty, none of this changes that messi has failed to
a. win any interntional titles
b. failed to win as many ucl's as his own in era rival.
As far as winning is concerned, relative to his atg compeition, messi is closer to a malone than a lebron.
Well yes Lebron has a case for GOAT in large part because he has won a lot.
The bolded doesn't really register considering Messi is one of the most successful players of all time, even counting all his big game chokes and Karl is far far from that in basketball. You're talking about 4 vs 5 UCLs here. And his in era rival happens to also be one of the greatest players to ever live who just had a phenomenal 5 year run of his own. Where is the knock on Messi here?
And again, it doesn't matter, because 4 years of winless play elevated him from goat candidate to consensus goat.
I mean..............this is just blatantly false. Football doesn't have just one trophy, so not winning the champions league does not make you winless. If that were the case there would be a **** ton of GOAT candidates. Like I said, Messi continues to stack up La Liga and Copa del Rey trophies, and continues to put up mind boggling stats, so calling him winless makes no sense. You're trying to make a case that consistent failure does nothing to hurt a GOAT case when your chosen case study disproves that just by existing.
Even as his own direct rival three peated, mathched him in the soccer equivalent of mvp's, and won multiple international titles. Messi's peak is not on par with pele's statistically, and he has no goat case as a winner. Messi is missing many things from his goat case, and it doesn't matter.
I think you're missing the context of Messi and Ronaldo's "rivalry" the way you're talking about it. If you were following football in real time over their careers, the above would seem misleading even though technically true. Up until about 2014, Messi was seen as by far the superior player, to the extent that bringing up a comparison between the two would get you laughed out of the room, if not browbeaten into apologizing for such blasphemy. Every accomplishment listed here is Ronaldo simply "catching up" to Messi, which should tell you the gargantuan lead he had over Ronaldo before this 5 year run. Yes on resume basis, they're much much closer than they were before, and a lot of people are willing to entertain Ronaldo as a GOAT candidate now, but Messi made his case half a decade ago, mostly by eviscerating Ronaldo's teams himself while winning pretty much everything there was to win and eating the best defenders and GKs in the world alive (well except for Chelsea's, but that's another story
). Messi could've retired in 2015 and his case for GOAT would be as strong as ever.
I mean, looking back it's kind of hilarious how much better Messi was, especially considering the football gods continued to pit them against each other in pretty much all possible settings, and we all saw who was better when they shared the pitch (again, numerous times) . It really is not close. I urge you to look at their trophy count
even now, and pay attention to what was happening from 2009 to 2014. Check out their head to heads. It was staggering how far behind Messi Ronaldo was. Kudos to him for catching up and making a case for possibly surpassing him, but this picture you're painting of Messi being outperformed by his rival is pretty tainted.
Also no, Messi is missing just one thing (which can be reasonably argued away anyway), and yes it does matter as evidenced by people still putting Maradona and Pele ahead of him.
I'd like to see which stats exactly you're talking about with regards to Pele, not because it matters that much, but because Messi (with Ronaldo to his credit) has put together a beyond GOAT worthy statistical profile that I can't imagine anyone but Pele beating.