Hiku said:
DakonBlackblade said:
Pelé preceads all those you cited fyi (there is some overlaping but they were begining when Pelé was on his way out basicaly), only Di Stefano is from the same time as he was. Fact of the mater is Pelé would make excursions with Santos trought Europe (teams played much less on those days so there was time for that) and Santos basicaly never lost. They played every team of importance in Europe at least once and beat them all. South American football in general was much stronger back them because European teams weren't these multi millionaire enterprises that are slowly killing football by injecting infintie money into it and just buying every good player in the planet even from other smaler European teams and turning eveything into a contest between 5-6 teams that have all the ebst players in the world playing for them.
To put things in perspective the 3 of the top 5 best players in the world today are Neymar, Messi and Suarez, those 3 would all play on South America on Pelé's time. And so would Di Maria, Douglas Costas, Lavesi, Navas, Bravo, Mascerano, Jamez Rodrigues, Cuadrado, Arturo Vidal, Thiago Silva, Aguero, Marcelo etc.
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I know, but I don't think there are any other notable players to mention around that time. When Santos played other European teams, those were friendly matches, iirc. I wouldn't even bet on Barcelona to beat Manchester United in a friendly pre-season match today. But if they play in the CL, my money is on Barca, easy.
I'm skeptical about South America being stronger than Europe even back then based on every other notable player I've heard of going to Europe. Though I know that South American football has always been great, and European teams weren't as strong as they are today because money wasn't as big of a factor then as it is today, so it may be true. But European countries like Italy, England and Spain have always had a very strong football culture as well.
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You can be skeptical all you want. It doesn't change the fact that it was. Just take a look at the Libertadores back then, the South American teams used to play with substitutes, because the greatest players used to play in national leagues. They didn't care a bit about international championships that how weak they were. Juventus(a 3rd division team from São Paulo at that time) had a match in the 60's against it's Italian cousin and it won 4-0. This is how ridiculously stronger the South American teams were back then, specially the Brazilian ones.
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@topic
Pelé was 17 when he won his first world cup, and if you say that's not impressive, it's okay. Now try thinking that he played with 40ºc fever at least 3 matches, only entered in 2nd halves of the games(all of them) and was the top scorer of the tournament. At 17. Pelé was an overkill player at his days. Today maybe he would just be a great striker, but back then, he was totally overkill. That's why he won a freakin' crown in Mexico 1970. That's why he still is recognized as the King of Football, and the best player ever to this day. He played 4 WC, won 3. Not just that, but in 1970, he played as a midfielder.
I'm 37, I've seen a lot of Maradona playing and Messi in my opinion is better than Maradona. They have the same style, but Messi is faster and more accurate. Messi is magic and IMHO he doesn't need to won any major tournament to be compared to the greatests. My TOP 5 would definitely have Messi in it. Messi is just amazing and I can't stress that enough. CR7 is amazing too, but in the matter of "Ronaldo", there was only one worth mentioning and he scored a hat-trick against MU at the Old Trafford and carried a national team on his back in 1998, although there are a lot of controversy about that WC final.
