Maradona though - took an average Napoli to the Champion's League winners - and took an average Argentina to world cup winners.
He did, and I don't want to put myself in the false position of decrying Maradona's ability. But in my scale of values, time lines count — a lot. Maradona's apogee is on a really short time line, by comparison. Messi won his first La Liga title in 2005. The following year he won his first CL title.
Seventeen years later he's just won the World Cup. There's a good chance he'll be champion in his domestic league, yet again (although no-one would argue it's one of the stronger ones in Europe, granted) and, who knows, he may yet win another CL title.
Maradona won one title with Boca Juniors before departing. His tenure at Barcelona started well and ended two years later in something close to disgrace. The really astonishing time was at Napoli, where he effectively transformed a very obscure team into title winners. But his apogee scarcely lasted beyond ’89, at best. Again, he left in disgrace. We're really looking at six years of greatness, being generous. His case seems to me to be comparable to Best. Best was the most extraordinary player that I've seen live, but you're really looking at brilliance that could transform the outcome of matches from about ’65 to ’69. Beyond that, Best was in pretty sharp decline, although he remained able to do things that virtually no other footballer could, on very rare occasions.
Men evolve as
athletes over years. What their body will allow them to do changes, becomes more constricted. Messi has delivered in Spain, more recently France, and Europe, over and over and over, year after year, for seventeen years. The
only stage on which he's failed to deliver, till now, was that of a competition that takes place once every four years, and that I'm not inclined to attach undue importance to, despite the razzamataz around it. I greatly admire athletes who are in it for the long haul. It takes discipline as well as the talent — and that is one of the ingredients of greatness, too. Messi didn't need to drink himself under the table, nor take cocaine. He has realised that he has an extraordinary gift, and he has nurtured it. I take my hat off to him for that as much as anything.
For similar reasons, I put Pelé up there. He won his first World Cup in 1958. He won his third in 1970. That had never been done before and I am utterly confident that we will not see it again. It's like Laver doing the calendar grand slam
twice, but
with seven years between the two! It's more difficult to evaluate Pelé domestically, because basically he only played at a serious level in one country: Brazil. But the Brazilian league was not a Mickey Mouse league in those years, far from it. It produced many brilliant players. He scored some thousand goals, and sorry, I'm not going to quibble about whether they were in friendlies or not. A thousand goals is just ridiculous, in professional football.
More important, though, even than goals, or trophies: both players produced hundreds of brilliant performances.
It's horses for courses, though, and we'll agree to differ. If I love the sport of football so much, it's because I've seen Maradona, Messi, Pelé, Cruyff invent the game in front of my eyes.
Incidentally, the greatest athlete of them all is one most will never have heard of: Edwin Moses. I like to remind people about him. Ed Moses ran the 400 hurdles at the very highest level, at all the top athletics meets, and
was unbeaten for fully ten years (122 races). That is just sick! Oh, you can throw in a couple of Olympic golds along the way, just for good measure…
