Henry is the best player I've seen in a real life football match not just on tv. Absolutely incredible goalscorer! Just the player Arsenal could do with now, shame for them Arsene won't put his hand in his pocket.
The hardest challenge is against the most skilful teams in Europe, so how would playing against ****e prove that he's the greatest player of all time? Unless you're insinuating that we should see how he holds up against brute-ish players who play awful football, but I don't think that should make any mark on the ultimate decision of whether he's the best footballer of all time. We're trading Shola for Messi. We tried to resist, but Barca offered all they could for Shola and his 47 goals in 232 appearances.
That's always been there, and probably still is. As far back as 1954, West Germany incredibly beat the great Hungarian side 3-1 - and then eight of them went down with jaundice in the next four days! The reason FIFA never do anything about it is no one has ever figured out just how big the resulting can of worms would be.
Not to be picky but I think the score was 3-2 and Puskas had a goal disallowed right at the end. I'm sure you're right about FIFA closing their eyes to situations-it might be that if they started poking about in the business of others then retaliation would begin to expose the the extent of the FIFA corruption.
There can be no doubt that Messi is a wonderful player and probably the best in the world at present but I feel he needs to produce the goods over a longer period of time. Perhaps in 5 or so years he may just make it. Meanwhile, as an old timer can I put forward 4 players that I was lucky enough to see a few times and feel that they would all perform to the highest level in todays footbal. They are Tom Finney, John Charles, Bobby Charlton and George Best, who I still think is the best all round footballer that has ever graced a foorball field, and didn't dive all over the place like the modern players do.
During his playing career, Pele always said that George Best was the best player in the world. It's only after he retired that he claimed it for himself. Maradone couldn't stand the man. He wrote in his book "When I see Pele, I see a great player and want to shake his hand. When he sees me, he sees a competitor, and I've no time for that." I often wondered what the press would have said if Pele had worn a N. Ireland shirt and Bestie had played in a yellow one. I agree about Finney and Charles too.
I think that he's the best player in the world at the moment, but I think that we'll have to leave it to hindsight to see whether he will be the best player that ever was. Messi to Sunderland for 2012!
