Just no. Leaving aside team achievement (which would complicate the reasoning, as how can you judge a player as Johann Cruijff, which is not only one of the greatest in football history but also a legend when you look at Ajax history?), if we consider just the individual skill, it's very hard to pretend that Messi is better than Maradona or Pelè. Heck, I would say that Garrincha was more skilled than Messi: Garricha is considered to be the 2nd best brasilian player after Pelè, and in the top 10 of all the world ever. If you consider that a series of birth defects left him with a deformed spine and a left leg that was six centimeters shorter than his right one, that's a crazy achievement.
That's all fair, but I'm talking about absolute skill. Firstly, players of today are better than they were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. It could be argued that Pele was better for his time, but if you put prime Pele in soccer today, he would be fairly mediocre. The game has grown, training is better, skills build upon skills. Somebody will eventually come along to dethrone Messi.
Just looking at the athletic stats is kinda mind boggling. Fast soccer players of today run 40kph. The whole game is faster now, if you look at old TV footage of games that becomes very visible. Despite them being great in their time in their time (in Germany people like Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller still hold some records I believe) I am fairly confident that the greatest players from the 70s would stand no big chance against the good ones from now. Even the materials have changed, a football from now feels very differently to a football from then.
Interesting points. However, this is mere theory, because we have no idea of the skill level guys as Pelè or Beckenbauer could have achieved if trained with today's techniques and standard. They could just be "good" players, or they could be even better than what we know of them. Yeah, if you take Mark Spitz and Jonny Weissmuller, of course Spitz swims faster than Weissmuller. But by this reasoning, ALL today's champions are better than Champions of the past… so Mike Trout is obviously stronger than Babe Ruth.
I agree with you that today's champions are better than those of the past. That is the reality of sport. It progresses and evolves; each subsequent generation learns from those that came before. If we look at a player's greatness in terms of how dominant they were during their time, then things even out quite a bit and Messi is no longer a forgone conclusion. However, that is a very difficult measure to make. The game itself has changed quite a bit. I would argue that it is far harder to be an offensive superstar today than it was in previous years because the defensive aspect of soccer has really evolved. You saw a lot more blow outs in decades past. For instance, the Hungarians in the 1954 World Cup scored 27 goals in just 5 games. That style of play will really boost the stats of offensive players. Today, even a relatively minor team like Iceland is very sound defensively speaking.
Some last minute heroics. I am happy that the Swiss won, but I do think that Serbia deserved the penalty kick.
Me too. I think the referee didn't give it to them because the Serbian player also kinda dragged one of the Swiss guys around and because he leaned on them trying to get his head to the ball. But those two were basically wrestling with him, 2v1. So yeah... I probably would have done it differently.
Sweden is always tough to play against because they have a very compact defense. Against South Korea Germany has UK okay better than that though. And even if they win I think there is even a constellation in which a win isn't necessary. So this might be the first really bad world cup for Germany since... don't know... the 90s I guess. Edit: might actually be the worst since the 50s if they don't advance.....
Senegal vs. Japan was a nice game. Now watching Poland vs. Colombia Maybe Lewandowski can show what he is able to this time, but so far it looks like he is always in two man coverage.