Football: Sarri state of affairs

[A Horse Named Stranger]

No, he isn't Xabi Alonso by any stretch of the imagination. However criticisms of Xhaka often go over the top. Xhaka is a good player in his own right, who can work fine with the right players around him. He isn't a world class player, but he clearly isn't the shit player people make him out to be either. And yes, he makes moronic challenges and collects a lot of cards.

But that's essentially the story of Arsenal during the last years of Wenger's reign, players who are good individually, but who simply don't seem to fit together. Well, and the lack of a ballwinning workhorse in midfield.

 

Since he was mentioned. Fun fact, Germans didn't rate Hamann that high (mildly put). Slow midfielder without any creative upside. It didn't help him, that the German teams he played in were among the worst ones in the FAs history.

[BigFatCoward]

Does anybody think salah or modric are better than Messi?

[Spockydog]

10 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Does anybody think salah or modric are better than Messi?

Salah and Modric?

[Disturber of Peace]

43 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Does anybody think salah or modric are better than Messi?

I guess you ask that because of the Ballon d'or shortlist so i will repeat something i said here this Saturday:

Two days ago was the first time i seriously thought that we have a good chance of seeing a new Ballon d'or winner after 10ish years.

Modric winning the best WC player award was not a surprise but him winning the best UEFA player of the year was for me since i thought both Salah and Ronaldo may have deserved that one more if it is supposed to be focused just on the Champions League.

I dont know exactly how many of the voters overlap, how a possible UEFA-FIFA conflict factors in, how the Real Madrid lobbying for voting in these sort of awards affects things and what will be the reaction of the voters to the petty reaction of Ronaldo, his manager and Juventus to Ronaldo not winning the UEFA award.

Overall, it would be nice to see Modric win it.

 

Personally, i think Messi is a genius of football and based on purely individual play he should have been winning it even more than he did. Stick him in Croatia's midfield and he will do what Modric does but better. And i say that as a Croatian.

[baxus]

47 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Does anybody think salah or modric are better than Messi?

If we are talking "over the course of their careers" then hell, no! But if we're talking last season only I think that there's a case for Salah and Modric to be ranked above Messi. That's not saying that they're definitely better but they shouldn't be dismissed just like that.

[Philokles]

Modric has had the most successful year of any player in world football and deserves it on that basis. If it went solely on who is the best player, then Messi would easily win and this would be his eleventh straight balon d’or. I am quite suprised that Ronaldo made the final three over Messi. His impact at key moments in big games is what has defined his last few seasons, but since the Juventus Champions League quarter final he has been anonymous in both legs of the semis, the final and the World Cup match vs Uruguay.

[Mexal]

4 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

No, he isn't Xabi Alonso by any stretch of the imagination. However criticisms of Xhaka often go over the top. Xhaka is a good player in his own right, who can work fine with the right players around him. He isn't a world class player, but he clearly isn't the shit player people make him out to be either. And yes, he makes moronic challenges and collects a lot of cards.

But that's essentially the story of Arsenal during the last years of Wenger's reign, players who are good individually, but who simply don't seem to fit together. Well, and the lack of a ballwinning workhorse in midfield.

 

Since he was mentioned. Fun fact, Germans didn't rate Hamann that high (mildly put). Slow midfielder without any creative upside. It didn't help him, that the German teams he played in were among the worst ones in the FAs history.

Torreria is a ball winning workhorse. Just need him to play.

[Winterfell is Burning]

6 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Does anybody think salah or modric are better than Messi?

No, but the award isn't best player ever, but best player of the year. Just like, say, Gary Oldman winning Best Actor this year doesn't mean Hollywood thinks he's the best actor of all time, Modric or Salah winning this year doesn't mean they're better players than Messi.

[BigFatCoward]

I get that it's an award fot this year, so again, does anybody seriously think salah or modric have been better this year?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Salah's played the season of his life. So he was on a Messiesque level. You can make a case for him to be on the shortlist. Both him and Messi had pretty forgettable World Cups of their own. And I assume that Salah gets the benefit, that Liverpool is not Barcelona, and thus he is not surrounded by the same talent Messi is.

Modric has also played a pretty good season, which was topped of by his WC performance, which probably pushed him past Messi.

[Jordan La Cabra]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

I get that it's an award fot this year, so again, does anybody seriously think salah or modric have been better this year?

It's always going to be difficult to narrow down the 'best' players in the world over the course of a year to just three and for everyone to agree, especially in a World Cup year. One could easily say that Mbappe, Griezmann or Varane deserved to be in the mix ahead of Salah. Varane is the player I would consider to have had most successful year of any player in world football, having been a key player in Real Madrid winning the Champions League and France winning the World Cup. 

The thing that may go against Messi is that he had an 'ordinary' year by his standards, which are a lot higher than those of any other player. We look at Salah's goal-scoring exploits as a wonder season, but Messi only scored one goal fewer, having played two few games than Salah, but Messi's exploits have hardly been spoken about because they are what we come to expect from him.

Also, notice that the three people chosen were three players that had successful seasons in either the Champions League or World Cup. Obviously Salah didn't win the World Cup or the Champions League, but his club performed well and exceeded expectations by getting to the final of the Champions League. Salah's Egypt didn't perform well at the World Cup, but he lead them to the tournament, which was an achievement in itself, considering they hadn't been to one since 1990.

Ronaldo won the Champions League with Real Madrid. He may not have had the best game in the final, but he still scored 15 goals in 13 appearances in it. Plus, he has a World Cup hat-trick against Spain to add to his list of achievements.

Modric won the Champions League, and, like Salah's Liverpool in the Champions League, Croatia got to the final of the World Cup - and he was named player of the tournament. Neither of Messi's teams performed well in the Champions League or the World Cup, yet both went into the two tournaments with high expectations. 

 

[ljkeane]

Modric had a very, very good season last year and there's no way it was better than Messi's.

We tend to gloss over it because he always does it but Messi scored 40 league and Champions League goals and had 14 assists, that's a phenomenal season. If you're going to go with a player with less easily quantifiable results to his play like Modric his team or, at least, his area of the team needs to be absolutely dominant to rate as better than that. Real Madrid finished 26 points behind Barcelona, he played a big part in Europe but they were outplayed in midfield by Bayern and Spurs, Croatia did really well in the World Cup but they were in the easy side of the draw and lost the final.

[Consigliere]

Messi should have been ahead of Modric. I don't think Modric was clearly the standout midfielder last season - was he really that much better than the likes of De Bruyne, D. Silva or Pjanic?  While he had a very good season, Messi was still better (45 goals + 18 assists in all competitions + creating the most chances in La Liga) but as we all know, team achievements plays a big part in these individual awards, especially CL wins and the WC is a huge factor this time around as well. Real Madrid winning the CL and Croatia reaching the WC final is going to be given more weight than Barca winning the double.

[Dolorous Gabe]

3 hours ago, Jordan La Cabra said:

Neither of Messi's teams performed well in the Champions League or the World Cup, yet both went into the two tournaments with high expectations. 

Nobody with any sense expected Argentina to do particularly well with such a poor midfield and goalkeeper, an average-at-best defence and a problematic squad mentality. It is arguable that they performed even worse than my already low expectations though.

[Spockydog]

18 minutes ago, Dolorous Gabe said:

Nobody with any sense expected Argentina to do particularly well with such a poor midfield and goalkeeper, an average-at-best defence and a problematic squad mentality. It is arguable that they performed even worse than my already low expectations though.

Another reason why Messi will never be considered as good as Maradona, who carried the Argies, almost single-handedly, to the WC in '78.

Also, fwiw, I don't think anyone seriously expected Croatia to do anything at the WC, until they saw how brilliantly Modric was playing.

[Jordan La Cabra]

19 minutes ago, Dolorous Gabe said:

Nobody with any sense expected Argentina to do particularly well with such a poor midfield and goalkeeper, an average-at-best defence and a problematic squad mentality. It is arguable that they performed even worse than my already low expectations though.

Despite all that, Argentina is still Argentina and Messi is still Messi, so there will always be high expectations when Argentina play in a competition and Messi is part of the squad. 

[ljkeane]

41 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Also, fwiw, I don't think anyone seriously expected Croatia to do anything at the WC, until they saw how brilliantly Modric was playing.

I'd expect most people thought they'd either lose to France in the first round of the knockouts or Spain in the quarterfinals. If you'd asked beforehand if they could win against Argentina in the group stage and then beat Denmark and Russia on penalties and England in extra time I'd think most people wouldn't have been overly surprised.

[Iskaral Pust]

The Ballon D’Or is a marketing exercise for FIFA and voted for by the coach and captain of each national team in FIFA with a significant bias to the most widely recognized players (lowest common denominators in global awareness) and the reflected glamour of major competition winners.  On that basis, Salah definitely earned his spot on the shortlist by becoming a breakout star across the Arab world previously under-represented in FIFA galacticos, and by offering some novelty in a stale duopoly.  Modric brings even more reflected glamour this year and also offers novelty, but not a large new interest base.

The voting system means that you’ll always have a combination of votes for friends/acquaintances and votes that are no better informed than any armchair fan (how many of these voters have ever seen Messi play live?).  A poll of 11 year olds who casually watch soccer could probably predict the Ballon D’Or poll pretty well.

If you want a serious discussion of who is the best player in a given season, in a team sport with varying levels of teammates and opposition, from thousands of top players, across dozens of games each season for each player, with so many unquantifiable contributions outside of goals scored, then there is no reasonable format for that to occur (but the most likely answer is still Messi).

 

[Iskaral Pust]

Lallana injured already on England duty.  That sounds familiar. 

[Dolorous Gabe]

2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Another reason why Messi will never be considered as good as Maradona, who carried the Argies, almost single-handedly, to the WC in '78.

Also, fwiw, I don't think anyone seriously expected Croatia to do anything at the WC, until they saw how brilliantly Modric was playing.

'86? You simply can't win the world cup nowadays without a solid base. No one player can carry a team on their own in that way. Defending has evolved too well.

The winning of a world cup isn't a valid reason to say one player was better than a different player many years later.

Personally, I believe Messi could have done what Maradona did in '86. Whereas, I am not convinced that Maradona could do what Messi has done at Barcelona in this day and age.

 

As to Croatia, as classy a side as they are they had probably only one truly great performance, against Argentina which is perhaps ironic in this discussion. They had to endure two penalty shootouts against average-at-best sides and getting outplayed in one half by England of all teams. Modric is a wonderful player but some are going way OTT about him. I thought he was outplayed by Eriksen in the Denmark game and I also think he has the inconsistency of all the other contenders to thank for winning the player of the tournament. And while nobody really expects Croatia to reach the final, they are usually talked about as dark horses.