The best player in your lifetime.

[Colin C No.3]

I’ve been fortunate enough, mostly through TV & that medium to have witnessed in my lifetime thus far, some performances, games, moments of breathtaking ‘displays’ that have left me in awe from the age of 11 in 1966 through to today.

I couldn’t begin to list them all, needless to say they stretch from George Best (one live game seen in the 60’s against Nottingham Forest v Man Utd & one game in the early 70’s at Wembley England v N. Ireland) through to watching Pele & the all conquering Brazilian team of the 1970 World Cup on TV.

There will be many who will say you ‘cannot judge players from different era’s & come up a reasonable answer to the op’, I understand & respect that.

However. Rack your brains & be it a keeper, defender, midfielder or striker put your case forward.

I give you Lionel Messi.

He came to Barcelona aged 14. He stuck at it in a foreign continent let alone country with only his father as family support once his mother & siblings had returned to Argentina.

He has played with & against some of the greatest players of the ‘modern era’.

He is a player who appears to ‘see the whole of the pitch in 3D’ at any given moment.

He scores & creates goals.

He is, in my opinion, a 5’4” giant.

The best footballer I have ever laid eyes on.

[Draytonian III]

On Tv - Lionel Messi
Live -Robert Lewandowski

[Canadian Rover]

TV - Messi
LIVE - Pirlo

[Padge_DRFC]

Prime Ronaldinho is the best

[Scooter]

TV - Maradona
Live - Copps

[mushRTID]

Messi both live and TV.

[bobbymax]

George Best TV and live, not even a contest. Messi wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the 60s and 70s. Bestie was hard as nails as well as a genius with the ball.

[tommy toes]

George Best TV and live, not even a contest. Messi wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the 60s and 70s. Bestie was hard as nails as well as a genius with the ball.

Totally agree, the number of leg breaking tackles he managed to ride was something to behold.
Best was the best.

[Draytonian III]

I’ve only ever seen snippets of George Best, but I totally agree, I was judging it on viewing a full match

[selby]

  Best had everything Messi has and more, for instance he could head a ball more convincingly and tackle hard himself.
  Its all subjective Puskas, DiStafano, great players in great teams, Cruyff the one I would go for in probably with along with the Tottenham side the two best teams along with Ajax, because they were innovative, did new things, had great players through out the team and Tottenham in Cliff Jones a player who could play alongside any great, Ajax with Neeskins and many more great players, Germany with Muller and Overmars a machine.
  Of them all I have seen the Dutch would be the most suited to play in the different eras, the Hungarians in 1954 the team the furthest in front of all the rest at the time, but never won the world cup. Germany the teams to win world cups with not that good a sides but organisation, Brasil and France the two most helped along by questionable officialdom.

[goalkick]

Agree with Puskas and Distefano..showing my age. They were class.

[Bollinger]

Slightly off topic but… Alan Warboys tells a story about George Best when AW was at Fulham with Best and Bobby Moore.

He expected to see the occasional mercurial things from Best but thought there might a bit of baggage that came with it. By all accounts he ended up being massively impressed by Best’s work ethic in training and on the pitch. After a morning of training when players would shower, eat and go home Best, apparently, would go back out on the training field and practice alone hitting free kicks around barriers, trying to land balls onto the crossbars and generally practice all his dead ball skills.

[Colemans Left Hook]

 https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1492546-lionel-messi-and-hgh-the-truth-about-the-best-footballer-in-the-world


"cheats do prosper"

[wilts rover]

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1492546-lionel-messi-and-hgh-the-truth-about-the-best-footballer-in-the-world


"cheats do prosper"

Where does it say that in the article?

What it does say is this:

Messi is listed at 5'7" by FCB, which is exactly average for an Argentinian male. At the time Messi was diagnosed, he was only 4'2"! Messi is now normal and average in the physical sense, but certainly not normal when it comes to talent!

Second, Messi did not use HGH as a performance enhancer. Messi was using a prescribed treatment, monitored by physicians, in order to overcome a medical condition. The result is that he's a normal human being today, fourteen years after the treatments were made possible.

For a 'normal person' such as Armstrong - using HGH gave him an advantage over other competitors who weren't doing that.

For someone with a medical condition - such as Messi - HGH allowed him to compete at an equal level with people who had a natural advantage over him.

Very, very disingenous there CLH.

[donnievic]

Tv maradonna/messi
Live gazza

[phil old leake]

After George Best.  Rodney Marsh.  Highly underrated in my opinion     And for pure occasional genius Frank Worthington

[drfchound]

After George Best.  Rodney Marsh.  Highly underrated in my opinion     And for pure occasional genius Frank Worthington

When I was 18 I played against Frank Worthington.
He was an absolute genius on the pitch.

[glosterred]

George Best and Stan Bowles, think how good they would have been if they hadn’t been so pissed when they played


COYR

[ravenrover]

Whilst Best was the best I saw live, I'm going off piste on this one, Bobby Moore if ever a player made things look so simple his timing his positional sense his all round ability as a top class defender.

[DaveDRFC]

Cristiano Ronaldo. Shame he's tarnished his legacy by acting like such a bellend the last few months.

[Branton Rover]

“If it hadn’t been for the war I could’ve been another Tommy Lawton.”

“Who’s Tommy Lawton?”

“Only the greatest centre forward ever to draw breath”.

[BillyStubbsTears]

George Best TV and live, not even a contest. Messi wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the 60s and 70s. Bestie was hard as nails as well as a genius with the ball.

The 1960s defenders wouldn't have got within 10 yards of Messi. Seriously.

[drfchound]

It’s impossible to compare the two eras really.

[NickDRFC]

George Best TV and live, not even a contest. Messi wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the 60s and 70s. Bestie was hard as nails as well as a genius with the ball.

The 1960s defenders wouldn't have got within 10 yards of Messi. Seriously.

It’s impossible to compare the two eras really.

I agree with BST that in absolute terms, the players now are so far advanced given the pace the game is played at and the superb conditioning of the players. But it’s also impossible to compare as Pele, Maradona etc didn’t have the same access to nutritionists, fitness coaches, sports scientists etc. Think you’ve just got to look at how they performed in their respective eras and leave it at that.

[tyke1962]

In my opinion if you are talking about the full package , great player and human being then Pele stands alone .

Three world cup winners medals , the first as a 17 year old , one club man at his beloved Santos other than at the very end of his career when he had a spell at New York Cosmos .

Fantastic ambassador for the game .

A true sportsman in every sense of the word .

[BillyStubbsTears]

George Best TV and live, not even a contest. Messi wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the 60s and 70s. Bestie was hard as nails as well as a genius with the ball.

The 1960s defenders wouldn't have got within 10 yards of Messi. Seriously.

It’s impossible to compare the two eras really.

I agree with BST that in absolute terms, the players now are so far advanced given the pace the game is played at and the superb conditioning of the players. But it’s also impossible to compare as Pele, Maradona etc didn’t have the same access to nutritionists, fitness coaches, sports scientists etc. Think you’ve just got to look at how they performed in their respective eras and leave it at that.

I think you can do both.

The best absolute players of all time are playing today. The game is unrecognisable from what it was like just 10-15 years ago. We should embrace that and accept how much absolutely better Messi and Mbappe are than even Maradona and Pele.

But yes, it's also fair to compare players against the standards of their day. In which case, for me it is impossible to separate Pele, Maradona and Messi.

[selby]

  Didi, said that if he new how Pele was going to turn out he would never have passed to him Tyke.
     Garincha  was probably more important to Brazil the world cups in Sweden than Pele and he didn't play when they won in Chile being injured.
     Like Messi he could do no wrong with the media, unlike Best, Cruyff for me was the complete footballer, and Holland the most gifted all round side of them all, and at club level at the same time when there were class teams in a number of countries including Celtic and Leeds and the Yugoslavian and Italian sides and Eastern European club sides really national sides, and Ajax overcame the lot for three years and moving on to Spain he did it with Barcelona and established a legacy as a manager the way to play.
  That Dutch side would easily compete today given the same conditions.

[Nudga]

Original Ronaldo on TV, gazza live.

[Draytonian III]

I read something years ago that most Brazilians from years ago rated Garrincha more than Pele.

[BillyStubbsTears]

  Didi, said that if he new how Pele was going to turn out he would never have passed to him Tyke.
     Garincha  was probably more important to Brazil the world cups in Sweden than Pele and he didn't play when they won in Chile being injured.
     Like Messi he could do no wrong with the media, unlike Best, Cruyff for me was the complete footballer, and Holland the most gifted all round side of them all, and at club level at the same time when there were class teams in a number of countries including Celtic and Leeds and the Yugoslavian and Italian sides and Eastern European club sides really national sides, and Ajax overcame the lot for three years and moving on to Spain he did it with Barcelona and established a legacy as a manager the way to play.
  That Dutch side would easily compete today given the same conditions.

I loved the Dutch side of the 70s, but if you teleported that side, with those standards, into the 2020s, they would not compete at L2 level.