I'm sure I can't be the only one who's had this debate in the pub, the question of 'what would Pele do in todays game' or 'what would have Messi done in Pele's day'. The simple answer is that Pele would not have been anything special and Messi would have been special still. However we cannot look at things in a vacuum here because there is so much to take into account such as; facilities, training structure, diet, medical care, money invested, quality of the ball, quality of the boots... The list goes on. Gone are the days where a team can pop down the pub and get wasted after a game, mainly because that gives the opposition an advantage. It's a paradox because we'll never know what a Pele with todays training and equipment would look like, we can only assume that he would be good? Can we? Would a Messi born into Pele's world have been as able to drift round players on a rubbish pitch, with a clunky ball, schoolboy shoes for boots and being kicked at every chance? We can only assume yes again.
I find that makes it so hard to pick a 'greatest team' of all time, because again looked at in a vacuum of todays game if 2 people pick a greatest team to have a hypothetical game in todays world, you must pick 21st century players mainly because they are better athletes. You only need to look at the history of The Olympics to see how humans are getting bigger, stronger, faster etc (down to the same factors as footballers improving).
But I also don't think it's fair to those who played in the past not to give them extra leeway for their training etc as they only worked with what they had. I suppose my question is:
How do you pick a greatest team ever? What do you need to take into account and what can you ignore?
Logged