Yesterday I was talking to someone about their all-time top 10 players in history, and they put Gyorgy Sarosi as the 7th best player in history amongst the ranks of Franz Beckenbauer, Cristiano Ronaldo, Diego Maradona, and Johan Cruijff (players they had around 8th to 4th). And it's an interesting topic to discuss players that played before footage was around (yes, we have minor clips of them, but nothing like full matches), so is there an argument to be made for pre-foo footage/pre-war players being put next to some of the best playmakers, defenders, and goal scorers, or should we leave them out of the entire conversation?
My thoughts on historical players and their abilities is that surely there must have been great players that are worthy of all time rankings. From a statistical point of view, we can look at every decade of football as a separate unity within which there is a distribution of talent that adheres to Gaussian distribution. Imagine having 100 players and assigning them with a rating of talent from 1 to 100 by a random talent generator. The higher the rating, the less likely is to be assigned to anyone. For example 100 might have a chance of being assigned maybe once in 50 years so probably it wont happen. Regardless of unlikelyhood of perfect 100, each decade will produce few players that are of an extremely high rating of talent meaning that there certainly were players who were dominant forces of their time rated 95, 96.. When it comes to the greatest of all time list, that is all that matters. How well you compete with your peers. Caveat here is that football today is much better than it used to be, so good players today are better than the best players pre-war in absolute sense, but they werent greater. So when it comes to the goat lists, pre-war players shouldnt be surprising, but rather a norm. Each decade of football should more or less be evenly represented in such lists. Every era has its own Suarez, Henry, Romario, etc. When it comes to the very top of the list (Pele, Messi) then the same statistical rules dont actually apply as touched upon with 100 rating example, because those players likely appear once in 50 years or more. It is likely to have many decades of generating random ratings based on Gaussian distribution without occurence of such talent. In summary, it makes sense to assume there are great players in every generation including pre-war times. When it comes to the goat lists, what matters is how dominant player was in his time and dominance is a natural part of every sport including pre-war football. But when it comes to the best of the best, player like Pele and Messi are so unlikely to occur (we dont know how much unlikely) that it cant be assumed that pre-war period had as good player. Which players those might be, i personally dont know.
I agree with Sexy Beast, each era has had great players, but the dominant, Goat level ones are few and should not fit the pre-war players, none of them seem as dominant as a Messi or Pelé. But I consider that the change in the offside rule in 1924 completely changed the sport. Furthermore, professionalism (which in England happened at the end of the 19th century, but in other countries came later, in Italy and Spain in the 20s, Brazil and Argentina in the 30s) changed the sport too. I consider the players of the 30s (Meazza, Sárosi, Stanley Matthews, Sindelar, Moreno, Leonidas) to be the first generation already fully or almost completely trained in this model of professionalism and new rules. Some are older than others, because professionalism arrived later in some countries.
I agree with your main point. Dominance within the era is an important factor for "greatest of all time" lists, but I have some reservations: On modern players being more technical: The evolution of football can affect players' dominance. For example, modern players have access to better training and equipment conditions, which can help them reach higher levels of performance. It is also worth noting that subjectivity can affect "greatest of all time" lists. For example, some fans may place more importance on numbers and statistics, while others may place more importance on the player's cultural impact. I personally evaluate the level of influence that a certain player had in winning a title and how relevant that title was in his time.
This is a great way to look at it. The players of old (Leonidas, Hector Scarone, Meazza, and Sindelar) were legendary, but the level of Pele and Messi cannot be matched, and pre-war players aren't at that level. The most dominant by World Cup standards was Giuseppe Meazza, but there was also Matthias Sindelar with his Austrian Wunderteam and Gyorgy Sarosi with his brilliant Hungarian 1x World Cup Finalist Squad. The most dominant of them (in my eyes) was Gyorgy Sarosi, as Meazza's World Cups were controversial and Sindelar was more of a team player and never individually dominated in his day, as well as never making a World Cup final or winning an Olympics with his Austrian team. How he would fair up against someone like Cristiano Ronaldo in the all-time rankings would be hard to figure out, as I cannot pinpoint a single brilliant dribbling performance unless we look at newspaper articles or another source for statistics.
Messi's level literally were matched by Cristiano Ronaldo. We've been following this rivalry for a decade
Leonidas had 7 goals and 3 assists in the 1938 World Cup. Gyorgy Sarosi had 5 goals. Do you have information on how many assists Sarosi gave in the 1938 World Cup? It would be great to have this information to compare. I think goals and assists are a good source to get a good idea of these players. In Trachta10's work, Moreno's between 1936-39 in terms of goals and assists was at the level of Messi, Cr7, Cruyff, Di Stefano, etc. Moreno in 1937 had 31 games, 32 goals and 16 assist But in the 1940s, his production dropped significantly. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/career-stats-josÈ-manuel-moreno.199024/ Four years with a G+A of almost one per game is a superstar in any era. Of course, many players from this era scored almost a goal per game. But we would have to see if they were capable of creating plays too, with the number of assists Anyway, there were few intercontinental confrontations (another point that made it difficult for a player to dominate at goat level), the 1938 World Cup was one of the few moments in which many pre-war stars faced each other, with the exception of England, Uruguay and Argentina, who boycotted the tournament.
I dont want to turn this into another Messi vs Ronaldo Thread as ive seen too many crumble into that but for me There was never a debate after 2015
I do think it is important to note that the talent pool is so much larger today though, and dominance of peers mean different things now than back then. For example, there were no great African talents pre-war because the infrastructure isn't there. However, the talent, statistically speaking, may have been dispersed there pre-war, just undeveloped. So in theory, a Sarosi might actually be a 89/100 but because the 90+ players never got developed, he became the best player in the world. In the modern game, it is less likely to be the best player in the world without having outlier natural talent because the talents are so much more developed globally. You are competing against the Africans as well as the East Asians. In the future, this might be even more the case if we can somehow unlock the rest of Asian and N. American talents.In a few decades, there could literally be a hundred more Chinese/Indian talents equivalent to Son and Min-Jae playing in Europe. Tbf, this is unlikely because China and India don't look like they will prioritize football any time soon.
In fact, it's the opposite. Because the most successful period of Cristiano's career was after 2015 when he won the Euro with Portugal and 3 Champions Leagues in a row with Real Madrid. Not to mention memorable performances such as the hat trick against Spain in the 2018 World Cup and against Atléti in the round of 16 of the 18/19 Champions League. The debate never ended and continues to this day.
I believe both of you are talking about the same things so I will answer it like this. Yeah, I agree that intuitively it makes sense that higher the level of competition and talent pool is, it is more difficult to dominate, but if that was the case, we would see less dominant figures today than in the past in any sport and any discipline, which is not the case. Remarkably, no matter how you shuffle the field or how big the talent pool is, distribution of "talent," success, achievment comes back to the same distribution. A few explanations of such phenomenon in the realm of football could be that, firstly, as the level of competition rises, so does the level of an individual. It could be that indeed, for example, Messi has became better player due to presence of Cristiano Ronaldo. Such individuals perhaps are not drown by a rising level of competition, but rather inspired and rapidly learn from them which leads to them raising their own level of performance and ultimately to the same level of dominance. After all, players who reach the very top of the mountain must be lifelong learners who countiniously grow and absorb whatever value is available. Presence of more talent in this case would be just another mean to growing and raising their game. Better example is seen in other sports like chess. At the very top of chess scene, all of them have a deep understanding of all the tactics and strategies and are insanely quick in calculations, yet Magnus Carlsen is in a league of its own. Personally, I believe that is due to his mentality. Mentality gives him an edge But I believe that in history of chess, mentality wasnt always what gave players an edge. Other, more fundamnetal aspects were at play like understanding of tactics and positional play, opennings preparation, etc. With the rise of AI that became much better at chess than humans, those fundamental aspects became less prominent because everybody knew them so naturally what gave players the edge has shifted to mentality. I guess my point is that no matter how much you rise a level of performance in any given domain, ultimately it is down to imperfect player 1 vs imperfect player 2 and within that clash, there is something, that if you did better than the opponent, would gave you a concrete edge against him and would result in dominance. The edge likely shifts over the years but it is always there. Anyhow, I think it is unfair to dismiss someone's dominance in their own time because the state of the game and global talent pool wasnt at its final best. Pioneering aspect of dominance in that case would be completely overlooked. There are things we look at now and take for granted, but in that time, you had to be a true pioneer and giant to be able to stand out from the rest and be successful in that environment.
I've thought about this quite a bit. Firstly some obvious points: Ranking historical and current players is a fun but ultimately impossible task, so taking our basis of doing it too seriously can seem a little bit po-faced. But at the same time, it feels unfair to entirely dismiss the first 80 years of the game and not include those pre-war players. All these rankings have to be relative. We are trying to establish how good the players were, relative to their contemporaries because almost everyone will concede that there has been some improvement in absolute quality over the course of the last 160 years. So if the ranking is relative we need to be able to have a baseline of the level of opposition and competition that the players faced. For the pre-war era that is extremely difficult because the best teams and players didn't face each other with sufficient regularity. The competition structure wasn't in place. In essence none of the tools that we can use to effectively rate players are in place. We don't have enough available footage to accurately assess the players. We don't have the sorts of statistics that we have for modern players (beyond goals). We don't have the wealth of match ratings. We don't really know how strong (for instance) the Hungarian league was and he played only a relatively small number of games against foreign opposition at a top level. What we typically have are the opinions of contemporaries which, while useful and informative, are extremely hard to gauge. We can have little doubt that players like Sarosi or Meazza or Andrade were great by the context of their time, but quite how great is impossible to say. For instance we don't really know how much international contemporaries would have seen of players. Personally I think it's very hard to make a case to put someone like Sarosi in the top 10 of all-time but equally it feels unfair to completely discount them.
They should definitely have a tax, but should still be credited, and not entirely out out of a list of the all-time greats. Players like Sarosi, Moreno and Örth dominated football, becoming the best player of a whole decade, and we shouldn't ignore that. Sarosi was the Messi of the 30s, Moreno was the Messi of the 40s and Örth was the Messi of the 20s
According to who? There is a widespread global consensus that Messi is the best (or right up among the best) player of his era. There was no consensus around any of those players that they were the best. Certainly not a global one.
It is extremely unlikely that football had 3 Messi's back to back to back, especially because Messi's reign goes beyond a decade of football.
Personally I have no problem with rating old players without footage. Old footage represents a tiny sample size and is inconclusive. The written word is fine. Problem is that the world's best footballers did not appear together until the 1954 World Cup, and even then Argentina were missing. Due to lack of communication there was no global consensus on the world's leading player before Puskas and Di Stefano, and possibly not before Pele. We have seen on various threads here that there was not even a consensus on the leading British player before WW1, nor on the best European footballer pre-1950. According to the British press, the outstanding foreign footballer of the 1930s was Fritz Szepan. Hardly anybody in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe, held that view,. None of those British journalists would have seen Moreno. Some may never have heard of him. Quite a few Argentines who did thought he was better than Di Stefano and comparable with Pele. Others placed him behind Pedernera and Sastre. Even within Argentina there was no clear picture. All the more reason to seek out as many old sources as possible, even if they are confined to a single country or continent.
My bad , didnt mean to write it to make all of you interpret it like this. What I meant by "Messi" of that decade was the best (or at least the best in MY opinion), my apologies.
My bad, I meant Messi because he is undisputedly one of the greatest footballers of all time (and even arguably the greatest), and I meant to say it as "the best" of that decade, my apologies
It is difficult to know if Sarosi is one of the 10 best players in history or not due to the lack of images, but it is true that what is said about him makes it possible to estimate that the Hungarian is one of the best players in history ( I would have many options to be top-25 or top-30 in my opinion and maybe even a top-20). I admit that I am increasingly attracted to the figure of this player based mainly on how complete he was, surely among the highest level players one of the most complete along with Di Stéfano, Gullit, Matthäus or Beckenbauer to give some examples. And precisely because he is such a complete player, it is likely that I consider Sarosi the best player until 1950, not by much difference but perhaps somewhat above Meazza and Moreno and also Sindelar or Zizinho. This is a personal opinion today, maybe it will change tomorrow, but I think Sarosi is a safe top-3 until 1950. I think Sarosi has in his favor the fact that he has the best individual numbers in the history of the Mitropa Cup (the most important club competition in the world at that time and which this player won in 1937) in addition to being runner-up in the World Cup in 1938. It is true that Meazza has an unsurpassed track record of national teams with 2 World Cups and another 2 Central European International Cup. Moreno has 2 Americas Cups in addition to having triumphed in several American countries, Sindelar won 2 Mitropa Cups and also on one occasion the Central European International Cup and Zizinho won a Copa América and was runner-up in the world. All of them great players, but today I would surely choose Sarosi as the best in history until 1950, although by a very small margin. As I said before, I think it is difficult for it to be a top-10 but as @comme has already said before, we cannot completely rule it out. In fact, there are lists (although somewhat obsolete) that have included players before 1950 among the 10 best in history: 1- Guerin Sportivo in 1997 placed 3 players before 1950 among the 10 best: 5- Valentino Mazzola 8- Giuseppe Meazza 10- Ricardo Zamora https://www.abc.es/archivo/periodicos/abc-madrid-19971101-92.html 2- By 1999 Guerin Sportivo had modified its list, leaving only 2 players from before 1950 in its top-10: 5- Giuseppe Meazza 7- Valentino Mazzola Zamora dropped to 17th position, still 3rd among players before 1950. https://www.rsssf.org/miscellaneous/best-x-players-of-y.html#gs-50 It is also true that not everyone shares this opinion, if you remember in 2015 Kaiser magazine published a list with the best players until 1958 (here, therefore, Di Stéfano, Puskas, Kubala, etc. already entered) and Sarosi does not here had good results: 3- Sindelar (and first among those before 1950) 9- Meazza 30- Moreno 37- Sarosi 44- Zizinho
With that in mind, is it plausible that one of them is actually a dominant player pre 50s, on the level of Pele, but there is just no way to tell? if that was the case for any player, would it be obvious from the records?
I personally struggle to rate pre-TV era players alongside those that we have at least a few full games of. It's undeniable to me that the likes of Meazza, Sarosi, Sindelar, Zizinho are among the best footballers of all-time but I still have no idea how to compare them to the likes of Di Stéfano, Pelé, Cruyff, Maradona based purely on (very limited) stats and written evidence.
What I think is quite odd in a way is that there is one pre-war era of football that we should be well positioned to assess. There is almost universal recognition that British football was far and away the best prior to WWI (and for much of the period was the only football). The Home Nations played each other regularly and we know pretty categorically that England and Scotland had the best leagues at this time. Why is it then that people (including myself) are uncomfortable with the idea that a pre-WWI player could be in the conversation? Why are people willing to put a Hungarian of the 1920s in the mix but not an Engishman or Scot of the earlier era?
The thing with this is that most people do not know enough general information about someone like Steve Bloomer, Bobby Walker, or Nick Ross to conclude where they rank, even "football historians." I was like this, ranking Bloomer, G.O. Smith, Bobby Walker, and Crabtree lower than other pre-war players that now I know they are better than. I know these late 1800s and early 1900s English, Scottish, and Welsh players are so good because I subscribed to a newspaper website and now I can read articles on them, and I have met people online that give me a better understanding of them.
This was my thinking. We can put the best of them in the Top 20 or Top 30, but ranking them among the likes of Pele, Messi, Cruijff, Maradona, Puskas, and every other player in the Top 10 or Top 15 is harder.
Like many have said here players should be ranked all time based on how they compared to their contemporaries, and I agree that no one player stood out in the 1930s the way Messi and Ronaldo stood out in the 2010s. Players like Sarosi, Sindelar, Meazza, Bastin, Braine, and Orsi were all having their moments where they appear to have a case for the best European player. One thing I don't totally agree on is the idea that to top players of the 1930s were playing the other top players less often than modern players do (I would not make the case in the 20s or 40s). In Europe in the 1930s there were constant games between the best clubs and countries every year. England and Scotland consistently played a few of the best continental team every year, the top continental sides (Hungary, Italy, Czechs, Austria) played each other twice per year without fail, and the Mitropa Cup provided more opportunities for these players to meet in a club setting. So Meazza and Sindelar in the early and mid 30s usually played one another 2-4 times per season. Now you note that this excludes South American teams who were isolated at the time, with only Brazil bringing its best side to Europe on one occasion, but much of South America's best talent was in Europe playing for both European clubs and national teams (Orsi, Monti, Andreolo, Cesarini, Guaita, Porta, Demaria, Fedullo, Puricelli, Sansone, Scopelli etc). Another thing to consider when comparing eras or decades, lets say comparing the 30s or 50s to modern football, is the impact that talent concentration of a few clubs has on modern football and the total depth of talent and top quality players. In the 30s and 50s, top international players from the best countries were spread among a far greater number clubs than they are currently. Meazza, Sarosi, or Sindelar did not have the overwhelming talent disparity between their clubs and basically every opponent they faced. Messi and Ronaldo have a huge imbalance of talent towards their club in nearly every game they play. The only times this is not true is when they play one another or are playing in the champions league semifinal an on. Messi and Ronaldo's accomplishments are also weighted far more to the club side of their career where they benefitted from this talent imbalance, while their national team careers are less impressive, a setting in which they are not overwhelmingly surrounded by superior talent compared to opponents. The top players of the 30s have good balance between club and national team achievement, there is no evidence that their success is context dependent. I also think the accumulation of top talent in a few teams that we see in modern day just creates less top footballers. So many excellent young talents never fulfill their potential because teams like Chelsea and many others just buy all the top young players and basically kill their careers because they get stuck on the bench. What if in 1927-1929 two to three Italian clubs bought all the great young Czech players arriving on the scene. What if Juventus bought Puc, Nejedly, and Svoboda and Braine also went to Inter. What if Puc was stuck behind Orsi and never played at the club level, and Nejedly was rotating periodically with Ferrari. One a whole, the Czech's would be a worse national team, and the Mitropa Cup would be a poorer competition, with a smaller number of games being meaningful as Sparta and Slavia would no longer be able to compete with Italian teams. In periods where nations were isolated it is much harder to compare players to their contemporaries. All we can say is that Meredith and Needham were the best players in the British Isles, but there was no world wide talent pool to compare them to. We say they are the best player in the world in 1899 or 1906 by default. The same is true for the best Scottish players from the 1920s, we know they were the best British players, but we have no direct information on how they compared to Uruguay or the Czechs top players. The same goes for Argentinian players from the 40s, we only know that they were the best players in South America. We have to make more assumptions about comparative strengths of leagues and countries to name the best player in the world in 1943 or 1926. It is much harder to say with any confidence that Moreno in 43 and or Alex Jackson in 26 were the best players in the world compared to Sindelar in 32 or Messi in 2015. In 1943 there were no connections, even small ones to make a decision on the comparative greatness and impact of Moreno to Matthews, Lawton, or Bican. In 1926 there was no way to compare Jackson to Scarone, Pesek, or Samiter. In 1932 there were many opportunities to see Sindelar play against the other top players of that season, like Meazza, Orsi, and Sarosi (less direct comparisons to someone like Alex James, but there are far more crossovers in 1932 between British teams and continental ones compared to the Scottish Side of the 1920s that never took their A team to play a continental opponents of any kind, and England only played weaker continental sides in the 1920s). In 2015 we obviously had many opportunities to so Messi on the same pitch as Ronaldo, Neymar, Griezmann, Aguero, Suarez, Neuer, Vidal, etc.