You must be the first to have mentioned him. I would endorse that. What a fantastic team that Real Madrid side was....and he was the conductor of the orchestra.
I would consider him but I have seen virtually nothing of him. Same with Puskas, Kopa, Kocsis, Matthews... most players pre-60s there is very little to work on.
True. This is where you have to rely upon other people's judgement who did see them. Believe it or not, some of these old timers (bollocks, did I say that) who did see them, and reported their observations in the press at the time, were good judges of talent. The list you mention....great players, believe me. edit: pity TV was not too advanced in that era
Maradona rates Messi as best. Which complicates the whole argument further. Let's be honest, the argument always go down to opinion. There will never be an agreement.
In terms of complete players I'd put Di Stefano top of the list. He would drop into a holding position, just in front of the defence and then he could pick the ball up, ping it about like Scholes or drive forward like Zidane, and despite playing in this role he scored about 400 goals in 560/70 games and I'd guess he accumulated more assists than goals. I can't think of another player as accomplished in so many aspects of the game.
Pele, Eusebio, Charlton and others said Di Stefano was the most complete player of all-time. His own modesty doesn't really mean anything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyTfcoMPDXg About 1:30 Actually he doesn't say most complete does he, he just says if he could be anyone it'd be him, just Eusebio that says most complete.
Very contradictory to virtually every quote he puts towards Edwards then. "Duncan Edwards is the one person who, even today, I really felt inferior to." "I wasn't fit to tie his shoe laces." There are other quotes.
[video=youtube;KZnUr8lcqjo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZnUr8lcqjo[/video] I watched this Messi video after watching one of the Best videos on the previous page. Never saw Best live, but all of the traits that were on the Best video are on the Messi video.
Voted Player of the Year - 2013....get in there ! [video]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2319760/Real-Madrid-legend-Alfredo-Di-Stefano-set-marry-woman-50-years-younger-him.html[/video]
So much has changed in the game these days I'm not sure a comparison can be made. During my fanatical period with football when I lived, breathed and played the game the ball was leather and felt like a medicine ball when wet. The laces made a dent on your head when heading the thing and as for the boots the studs could easily come out and expose the nails in a tackle and having lumps kicked out of you was the norm, George Best grew up and played in a similar enviroment and prospered, as did many of the greats in those days. Fast forward to todays football enviroment of Lionel Messi et al where you can hardly breathe next to a player for fear of a free kick and a yellow card. Where footballers are injured in the warm up and are substituted before the start of a game says it all for me, George Best was kicked off the park in many a game although I only saw 3 of those games, and still played a blinder. Our own Jock Davidson had a broken leg and recovered and Man City goalkeeper the late Bert Trautman played in a cup final with a broken neck. Todays injuries are given some very odd sounding names that I can't even pronounce you hardly hear off a pulled muscle or damaged cartlidge. Messi or Best? George everytime as I tire of watching Messi fall over to many times just because someone has the audacity to tackle him.
You make some excellent points there ref. With the technological advances made in equipment, improvement in nourishment and the protection players get these days I wonder how good some of todays "stars" would appear if magically transported back into playing in a game from the 50's & 60's. My suspicion is that many of them wouldn't make the grade.
Was thinking about this last night, Messi is clearly up there in terms of greatest goal-getter but not as the greatest player., nowhere near. Some salient comments about players back in the day getting hacked to bits and still performing, you wonder how the likes of Messi and Ronaldo would get on versus old-school defenders and refs, not very well I suspect.
Obviously I never saw him play in person But from numerous clips and all that George best was an absolute genius, he was just magical, definitely one of the best of all time
I try not to personally pick players as 'the greatest' from before my time as I didn't really 'experience' them, so to speak. For me personally, nobody will ever top Zidane. McShane is close though...
