As Kasparov said about comparing players like Kobe to Jordan or Carlson to himself, it is difficult because they later players had the benefit of being able to study them earlier ones.

I don't know how to call this blend of virginiality and pioneering. Being both breaking barriers when there's a lot of barriers to break in a way.

Low-hanging fruit is the somewhat derogatory term.

yet no one else picked it... to me it's often derogatory to the environment.

let's poor one out for kobe here since his obituary was flagged off hn at the time.

Sure you can. Absolute quality of soccer players may have changed, but relative performance probably have not. That's what makes Pelé impressive: how good he was relative to his peers. No soccer player nowadays reach that same level.