Yes and it’s deserved. Pele the blonde archer Eusebio played against farmers while Ronaldo and Messi play against can dijk, Ramos etc

Messi is the best player ever, Guardiola is the best coach ever, Xavi is the best midfielder ever, Neuer is the best goalkeeper ever. By pure coincidence they all peaked around the early 2010s.

This greatest of all time GOAT debate is exhausting.

Michael Jordan said it best. “To call someone the GOAT is disrespectful to players that played the game across all the different eras, before and after”.

In the same interview when asked if Michael was the greatest, his reply was “No”

I think It depends on where you are in the world

Here in Brazil for example most people are biased towards players from the past

The level of competition has become much higher, so praising the ones that still stand out, isn’t strange to me.

I think this happens in all sports, many players that played a long time ago may have been great but there aren’t many people around to have watched them. I wouldn’t say it’s recency bias as much as it’s “I saw this guy play”.

Unless you have been alive and following football since it’s inception, or found video footage of every great player in history and watched it all, it is absolutely foolish to claim who you think is the greatest players of all time. You just don’t have the knowledge or the experience of watching those players play, nor the challenges they faced compared to modern players. It’s not recency bias, its bias to what you’ve actually seen vs what you haven’t. You can only truly pick the best player of your lifetime or more specifically, since you started watching football.

Yes. You cannot compare greats from different generations. You don’t know how anyone in pst generations would have developed today and vice versa.

There are no GOATS imho just generational greats.

There is definitely recency bias and it happens across all sports. I would say it should be expected because, even if those sports remained the same (which they don’t), the people who were alive to see those sportspeople die off. As they die. Less people get to hear how great those sports people were.

Also, people have different definitions of what an all-time great is. I define it as how great they were in relation to their peers (as I think it’s fairer), however some people define it transporting people from older eras into the current era.

I always had a problem with the latter definition as it biases towards contemporary players by failing to give older generation players the benefit of modern medicine and coaching techniques and also fails to take into account what would happen if current players were transported back in time.

My favourite example is Messi. He is arguably the greatest footballer of all time, but transport him back to the 1960’s as a 12 year old and it’s possible he doesn’t even make it as a professional footballer, yet alone one of the best ever.

Also regarding older era players smoking and drinking. It obviously wasn’t everyone and many current players also drink (Buffon and Veratti smoke too) so I don’t think that alone is a reason to dismiss older era players.

Well, i dont know if you remember Boosman’s case, where europeans leagues became what they are today, by having the advantage that every player for the EU counts as “local” and with most teams having a maximum of foregin players, that made an open doors to create teams that in the past would be dream teams. Also tactics evolved, sinse Sacchi’s milan in 88, tatics plays a bigger role in the game, that is the main reason messi could not single handedly win the world cup like maradona did (of course he had a great team, but you understood wht i wanted to say). Also add the advancements in preparation and modern players are almost superhuman compared to the ones before the 90s.

Of course i think if you take a young pele, maradona, cruyff, etc. to the modern times, prepare them with modern methods ant tactics, they would shure stand out the same way they did on thier glory years, but you get the point

Is Elon Musk a greater innovator than Da Vinci? No. Is he a more well-known figure in modern times? Yes. Could Musk have accomplished comparable feats 200 years ago? Maybe, maybe not. All these opinions are subjective and highly dependent on the frame of reference. There may come a time when a wonderkid equally as impressive as Messi finds himself on a team that shoots his career to moon and collects as many accolades if not more. Is it virtually possible? Yes. Think about what would happen if Messi/Barcelona did not have Ronaldo/Madrid in the same era. The competition would be a sum of lesser parts. Michael Jordan has arguably the greatest individual career of all sports in the time span with Bulls. However, he cannot claim that he is the greatest winner when there is the example of Bill Russell. Federer’s career was long thought to be untouchable, but Nadal and Djokovic in a relatively short time span individually eclipsed his total Grand Slam wins. If Maradona and Pele were still the greatest ever after 40-60 years from the time they had played, I would say that something is very wrong with football. Some talents transcend eras, as in Garrincha, Pele and Maradona, and people should just appreciate them for what they are, rather than getting into all these meaningless comparisons.

The reverse is way more common. You see people confidently placing players like Yashin and Di Stefano in their All-Time XI despite having never watched them play.

Not that they’re necessarily wrong, but they just go with “Oh, they’re older so they must be better”.

There is recency bias and there is also nostalgia bias.

The greatest from the past would still be among the best from today,is also true that even tho old players might be just as good at football itself as the top players from today, it is also true that there have been some very significant improvements, specially in therms of physicality. So, for example, if Man City from today was playing against Brazil from 1970, I would probably bet on Man City beacuse of the higher level of physical strenght nowdays, and if City actually won, it would not mean the City players are better at football then 70’ Brazil. Give the good old players all today’s tech and they would catch up in no time. Also, if you could put any good player from today in the past, they would not necessarily be as good, specially if he is a player that is better at following today’s tatics than He is at playing football itself. So, old players are Just at good at FOOTBALL, and as I said, the best from that time would still most likely be among the best from today, even tho the game itself might be at a higher level overall.

If we are talking about what they can do in a game the best players now are better. They have better diets, drink less, have more coaches around them explaining tactics, and can analyse mistakes using video replays. Plus increased ability and presence of physio therapists.

That isn’t to say if you were to give Pele the same resources and understanding he couldn’t have been even better than he was or better than top players now. Maradona on the other hand I think would still go for the partying and drugs.

For me personally I understand how great these guys were. But being born in 1990 means I didn’t get to see them play the way I get to see modern players play every week twice a week every season. All I have to go off of for Pele, Eusebio etc are stats and YouTube clips. So if I compile a top 10/20/100 list of players I’m lying to myself if I put these guys at the top because I’ve never seen them and can’t compare if you know what I mean 🤷🏻‍♂️