The call him "greatest soccer player of all time", but then the talk about Messi, not Maradona. Lol

Messi's captured the hearts of the casual World Cup fan unlike anyone else. I don't know a whole lot about soccer -- more or less all I know is that the World Cup happens every few years, is played by national teams, and Messi makes impossible plays. What I do know is all because of Messi, whose wholesome relatability and exceptional ability brings casual viewers like me; I generally avoid sports because the players are hard to relate to or have personal flaws, but I love Messi's strong family roots. I would propose that merely for being a truly exceptional face of the sport he's the GOAT.

Maybe Maradona was that way in his day -- I'm barely aware that he was a good player of yesteryear -- but his drug problems (and the fact that his heyday was so long ago) make him much less relatable or exciting to investigate as a inspiration.

> I'm barely aware that he was a good player of yesteryear

As an English football fan, that cheered me up (it still hurts). I suspect no English football fan could accept Maradona as the greatest.

Do you know about Pelé?

When I was a kid, it seems everyone (even non fans) knew Pelé was the greatest.

Lol, yeah. That game in 1986 must have hurt. One of the most beautiful goals of all time (which Messi has replicated twice), then that awful hand-of-g-d goal (which Messi, sadly, has also replicated twice).

> then that awful hand-of-g-d goal

everyone celebrates this goal. No fan has ever given him shit about it

I care, what can I say. I want clean fútbol.

Soccer is played by gloriously messy human beings. A bit of schmutz now and then is not so terrible a thing.

That adds to Messi's greatness, since he's not "gloriously messy".

I would say that Messi is gloriously messy.

At the very least we can say he is gloriously Messi.

It was opposite order. Hand goal, then dribble.

The second goal should also never have stood. Clear foul on Glenn Hoddle.

36 years on and still seething x)

The Hand of God is a clear foul, but the Goal of the Century is clean as a whistle. Funnily, these two goals alone — both so different — are pretty much the summary of Diego Maradona

I like that take.

I am not interested in sports but when I was in my teens, no other name was associated with any sport as was the name of Pele with football. As you said, it seemed no one was interested in football but everyone knew Pele was the god of his game.

Have you watch this? “Diego Maradona Goal of the Century | Argentina v England | 1986 FIFA World Cup” [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/Da_CDPRG2j0

I was too young to remember the game but I still remember the cultural impact of that goal in England as a kid. The fact we still talk about Maradona surely places him as one of the greats!

I'm not sure it makes sense to compare greats of different generations. In athletics we can clearly see the improvement from generation to generation so if you plucked them out at their heights Messi is probably a better player than Maradona and Maradona a better player than Pelé, but had they all played at the same time who knows?

Answers to "who is the GOAT" that won't upset hardcore soccer fans are the exactly the following set: {Maradona, Pele, Cruyff}.

Nah, Messi was already part of that set for many years, and today he added the only thing missing in his career. Messi is the sole GOAT.

Messi or Pelé, then the other, and only then maybe Maradona.

Only if you have very short memory x) he is part of the greats, but he is not the GOAT of the sport.

Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima

Health issues cutting his career short ensured he won't be in consideration for most people. That said, he truly was phenomenal. Absolutely one of the most amazing to ever play the game.

He would've been the GOAT had he stayed healthy. Consistency and longevity is very important in this debate.

Depends on the definition of GOAT. When he was at his peak, he played the best football ever played.

By the way, both Maradona and Messi when previously asked, have answered something along the lines that that he was the greatest.

Nah. I am C. Ronaldo fan. For many he was an inspiration as well. CR7 was unlucky this WC, due to his manager's poor decisions with the Morocco game.

He’s blown his legacy with his childish behaviour for club and country over the last year or so.

assists?

> wholesome relatability

Nice one. I think this post will go over most peoples' heads but I had a good laugh.

>Messi's captured the hearts of the casual World Cup fan unlike anyone else. I don't know a whole lot about soccer

How on earth do you reconcile these two sentences lol x)

Messi is a better player than Maradona, and also a better person. His humility makes him a lot more likable, what can I say. IMO.

Weirdly I think Maradona's chaotic life off the pitch (and I suppose no shortage of controversy on it) sort of adds to his appeal :)

People do like to watch flawed people win, it gives them hope about their own lives.

People like to watch people win that give them the illusion that it could be them.

Hence Einstein was a dummy with poor grades at math (he was not) or failed his exams (he did not).

Messi is actually a jerk. He purposely wanted to sink Lewandowski Ballon D'or nomination (which was well deserved) by voting for a nobody.

Source?

Maybe the bar for "good person" is set too low, if convicted tax frauds are considered good people.

Makes me like him even more.

How he avoided jail time for the massive taxeviction fraud certainly makes him more likeable. Certain gods must be above the law.

I loved to see Maradona play. Messi is just a good player who finally got his WC win.

Have you actually seen Messi play?

If you compare Messi's record with Maradona's, there's not much to compare. The latter could have been the best of all time, but he sabotaged his own career.

Wow. That's an incredible read.

More background: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/30/1139976898/messi-economics

When I was a kid, I always heard some Uncle claim that "rich people" bribe the doctors to give growth hormone to their children. That's why supposedly all the "rich people" children were tall (being well fed probably helps here)

Is that real that the rich, VC types give growth hormone to their children?

Growth hormone called food

Or just eat average American non-organic food varieties.

You will certainly grow.. along the horizontal and forward axes.

I’m not rich by American standards but we were offered growth hormone for our son since he is trending to 5 1/2 feet.

Did it help?

I haven't heard of physical growth hormones per se, but it's definitely true of the psychological equivalent that is Adderall and related methamphetamine prescriptions for ADHD or "ADHD." It does wonders for getting kids to sit down and study, but at who-knows-what cost.

Good quality dairy is associated with high insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels in blood, which in turn leads to rapid cell growth. This explains why e.g. Dutch people went from being the shortest to the tallest in Europe.

Any source’s? Can I get this now as an adult?

Yes, but IGF-1 as an adult won't promote the kind of growth you want. It's actually something you want to keep low as it's pro-inflammatory.

I always thought that was more of a conspiracy that milk helps you to grow. My mum always tried to get me with that but I always didn't give a damn because I thought it's not true anyway.

I'm not up to date on the science, but my dad was old - born in '43 - and worked as a teacher, so he could see several generations grow up. He was tall for his generation, but by the time I was a teenager, he was tiny even compared to his teenage students. I was a head taller than him even before he started "old man shrinking".

He always pointed at food, that the generations after him had access to better stuff and more milk. The shortest member of my family is my niece who is totally anti-milk, but that's just anecdata.

So it might be some other macro-factor influencing growth, with milk being the most glaringly visible item on the table. But it does kind of make an intuitive sense, and the dutch are freakishly tall while they have some of the best dairy products in the world

Not only freakishly tall, their average grew 20 cm in less than a century!

Apparently, aside from better food, natural selection also had an effect [1].

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.201...

There's correlation in longitudinal studies, I recall. Not sure how robust the findings are though.

I suspect it's more about not being deficient in nutrients that milk (and especially the reinforced variety sold in many countries) happen to be rich in.

Meaningless anecdata, but as a child and teenager I absolutely loved milk (I was drinking 1 liter of it a day in my teen years). I grew to be 190 cm (around 6 ft 3 inches), whereas both of my parents are around 1 foot shorter.

I loved milk but it didn't counteract Italian genes, I'm 5 foot 6 which is fortunately normal in my country (Uruguay) but would be short-ish in the USA.

anecdotally, a lot of families around me seem to give these shots to kids in S. Korea and it doesn't seem like the vast majority of them "need" it. kind of crazy to me, but just an extension of how much looks are valued culturally here.

He's only like 5'7" now so it's not like they made him a giant. Giving growth hormones to kids with deficiency is, I think, standard medical practice now. I know a boy who got HGH and ended up like 5'6". It was done to prevent dwarfism and promote healthy development.

It wouldn't be an advantage to make him a giant - arguably it would be a negative due to his style. However, HGH allows substantially faster recover, and basically any athlete would take it if possible. Messi was able to do so legally unlike most footballers due to his condition.