Pele played in a sub par league with the other Brazilian players who won the World Cup three times between 1958 & 1970 so how did they manage to play to such a standard ?Messi isn't miles better than Maradonna either.
I'm soo bored of all the snap judgments about players based on 5-6 international games. Happens every tournament. It's all subjective anyway. For me Messi is basically a 5'7 playmaker/no.10 who will no doubt finish his career with well over 600 club goals. (At the highest level) He is Insaine.
I think it's just a case of people thinking things from the past are better, the same as they do with music, films, cars... I'm sure in 40 years people will be claiming the current superstar is nowhere near Messi's level Nobody ever mentions Maradona's lack of European cups as a reason why he can't be the best ever..
With music and films some of that may be true as a lot of it is stylistic choice etc, but with sports I think the opposite perception would be closer to the truth. The way the game is played today accounts for all the little loopholes that were taken advantage of in the past, and were close shut. So to be so distinguished individually in the present is IMO more impressive. Unless the sport is stagnant in competitive terms, the difficulty levels just keep going up.
There are lots of 'great' footballers from the past who would not have the anaerobic or physical capacity to play the game at today's pace.
You could also argue that modern footballers couldn't cope with the more physical and aggressive nature of football years ago. Would a modern player be allowed to be literally kicked out of the World Cup like Pele was in 1966 ?
Even after being hurt he could do this. [video=youtube;erQdTUdeABI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erQdTUdeABI[/video]
That just comes down to mentality though. Pele was a tough little bastard but so is Messi. (On the other hand guys like Robben might struggle.) Alexis Sanchez is a great example of that kind of player. He doesn't seem fazed by aggression at all despite being smaller in stature. Players are faster, quicker, stronger and bigger than ever before so from a conditioning perspective yes they could.
I don't understand why people get wound up Durham,him and his cohort are reading from a script and the sole purpose is to get people to spend money texting or phoning his show.
