Modern Football and the Raising of The Bar
Picture this scenario; for years, the best sprinters in the world record 100-meter times of around 9.60 seconds. For this, they are rightfully hailed as legends, because indeed, that is no small feat. But a new era is ushered in. An era led by two new sprinters who regularly record superhuman times of around 9.20 seconds. Beneath them remain several sprinters still able to achieve 9.60 seconds, but suddenly to spectators, all that is seen is a massive gap at the finishing line between the first two and the rest. But suddenly they don’t seem good enough anymore. They are being compared on the one hand to two superhumans, and on the other hand, to champions of the past. Those champions were also in the 9.60 second region, but actually have medals to show for it from an era where that was the standard.
This is the story of the group of footballers who will be known as ‘The Unfortunates’. Unfortunate because they were born in the same period as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Unfortunate because they were destined to play second fiddle. Unfortunate because in another era, the football world would have looked kindlier upon them.
Last week, quotes from an old Luis Ronaldo interview resurfaced on social media, where he was asked about his thoughts on the level of competition in football currently. His response was, “During my generation, the competition was much tougher than it is now, without wanting to speak less of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. In my day, the stars were Zidane, Rivaldo, Figo, Ronaldinho. It was a better generation”.
“It was a better generation”.
These are sentiments that are regularly echoed among a section of football fans, purists and critics. But was it really?
Certain conversations in football are practically forbidden. Some players are deemed untouchable. That is the power of nostalgia. There are the players who most young fans grew up watching. These are the players who made most fans fall in love with the game. Their names are sacred and any form of dialogue or comparison is deemed as blasphemy.
Today, we blaspheme.
One of the most difficult things about football analysis is attempting to compare players from different eras without nostalgia or recency bias/availability heuristic playing an influential part. Striking a balance is close to impossible. How does one tell a Manchester United fan that Sergio Ramos’ 93rd minute equalizer in the 2014 Champions League final was just as important as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s famous 92nd minute winner in 1999?
How does one assess the output of players from different eras, taking into account the evolution of football systems and positions? Take the evolution of wingers for example. In the 90s, goal scoring wingers were quite rare, and for the most part, their primary role was to run down the by-line and provide pinpoint crosses. Most teams played with two strikers, on whom the goalscoring burden was placed. Goalkeepers were also judged solely on goalkeeping ability, unlike now where importance is increasingly being placed on ball playing.
Also, striking a balance on the parameters to be used can be challenging, considering how football fans love to shift goal posts. Fans love to use statistics to compare players, until the stats don’t favour them, then it’s about team trophies, when that fails, it’s about individual honours and when all else fails, they resort to the eye test.
Let’s attempt to strike a balance.
Currently, by all indications. to win the Ballon d’Or/FIFA POTY, a player would mostly require at least one of the following; record incredible stats throughout the season, play a key role in a ‘very’ major trophy win (World Cup, Champions League, Euros, Copa America etc), or both. Traditionally, voting in the Ballon d’Or has been less populist than the FIFA Awards. This is mainly because excluding the period between 2010–2016, the voting is done only by sports journalists, who tend to be more analytical in their assessments, hence the larger variety of Ballon d’Or winners historically.
Now let’s take Luis Figo, for example, who won the 2000 Ballon d’Or. In the 1999/00 season, he scored 14 goals and recorded 17 assists in all competitions. His biggest achievements that year? Finishing second in La Liga with Barcelona on 64 points, behind winners Deportivo, and reaching the semi-final of Euro 2000. Now compare this to key seasons by a few selected wingers between 2009–2019:
Each of the players in the table had major trophy-winning campaigns, excluding the Ballon d’Or winner. Neymar and Franck Ribery trebles and Robben came close in 2010, but lost in the Champions League final. At the same time, Gareth Bale and Di Maria played significant roles in Real Madrid’s La Decima, with the latter also reaching the World Cup final with Argentina that same year. Putting aside the petty fact that generally, all these players have also recorded more career goals than Figo and have also provided more assists, except Bale and Hazard, this is not an attempt to diminish Figo’s legacy with numbers. But it does put his then remarkable statistical contributions in a different light.
Balancing the scale of his team achievements and individual impact, would Figo’s 1999/00 season be befitting of a Ballon d’Or winner in the Messi and Ronaldo years?
Pavel Nedved, an incredible player on his day, won the Ballon d’Or in 2003 after winning the Serie A with Juventus but losing in the Champions League final to AC Milan. He recorded 14 goals and 3 assists in 46 games in all competitions. Should this even be regarded higher than Franck Ribery or Neymar’s treble seasons?
Cast your minds back to the widespread disgruntlement among football fans after Luka Modric won the 2018 FIFA Best Men’s Player and the Ballon d’Or, even after winning the Champions League and reaching the World Cup final with Croatia. Looking back now at the accomplishments required to win these awards in the past, suddenly, Modric does not look out of place.
Of the current top 5 Champions League scorers of all time, four of them are players from this current era of football. The one player who isn’t, also happens to be the player with the lowest goal per game average of the five. These are not the easiest of times.
Several players of the modern era are performing at a level that would have been viewed more positively when measured on the scale of 20 years ago. In 2001, Michael Owen won the Ballon d’Or after winning the ‘Mickey Mouse’ treble with Liverpool, scoring 24 goals in all competitions. Where does this rank among the most prolific seasons of Luis Suarez’s career? 10th. In 2015/16, he scored a whopping 59 goals in 53 matches for Barcelona, with an additional 24 assists. A mind-boggling 83 goal contributions in 53 games. This was only good enough to earn him 4th place in Ballon d’Or voting and 5th place in The FIFA awards that year.
In 2004, Andriy Shevchenko won the Ballon d’Or following a league-winning season with AC Milan where he scored 29 goals in all competitions. Ranked among Robert Lewandowski’s most prolific seasons, this total would place 8th; 6th for both Sergio Aguero and Zlatan Ibrahimović.
Imagine the uproar by rival fans if Cristiano Ronaldo won the FIFA World Player of the Year following a season when he was knocked out of the Champions League in the group stages. Yet Rivaldo was afforded that luxury in 1999. The only team his Barcelona team beat in the group stages that year? Brondby of Denmark.
The 1996–2006 period is littered with Ballon d’Or winners who might have been rated on the same scale as The Unfortunates, had they been born 15 years later. A number of the greats were not consistently at the top of their game every year, as history would suggest. This opened gaps for other players to win accolades of their own. Messi and Ronaldo have not been so generous.
Neymar Jr, one of the unluckiest of The Unfortunates, went on a run of six consecutive top 10 Ballon d’Or finishes between 2013 and 2017, finishing 3rd twice. This is a longer run of consecutive Ballon d’Or top 10 finishes than the likes of Luis Figo, Rivaldo, and Ronaldinho. At the age of 28, he is already the 3rd highest scorer in Brazil history, just five goals shy of the great Luis Ronaldo. His career total of 310 club goals is already greater than the number raked in by the likes of Gabriel Batistuta (292), Francesco Totti (307) and Ronaldinho (280), while his total assists count of 151 places him ahead of Zinedine Zidane (117), Rivaldo (88) and just 11 shy of Ronaldinho (162). In addition, he carried a sub-par Brazil side to the World Cup semi-final before suffering a tournament ending injury.
The unprecedented longevity of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi’s football domination, is an understated element of the uphill battle that The Unfortunates have faced, in trying to leave their mark on football. Together, both players have found themselves on the FIFA World Player of the Year top 3 podium 26 times. This is more than Ronaldo, Zidane, Figo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho managed combined.
Undoubtedly, barring injuries, Luis Ronaldo would most likely have accumulated more podium finishes. But there are many ‘ifs’ in football. Perhaps if a player like Neymar had been born 15 years earlier, he might have snagged a Ballon d’Or of his own.
Statistics do not tell the full story. However, they do show that there are a few players, outside of the ruling powers, matching and even surpassing some bona fide legends in the numbers game, while receiving less recognition.
Unfortunately, under the spectrum of modern sport, weaknesses and failures are magnified much more than ever. Yet it needs to be understood that comparisons with retired icons are not insulting to them, far from that. But football is an evolving game, and credit must be given where credit is due.
The bar has been raised in football. The standards that were are not the same standards that are. Players today are under more scrutiny than at any other point in football history. A large variety of the football statistics used today to put players under the microscope, even more, were only introduced after 2006 when Opta debuted its real-time data collection for football matches.
This is not a story that belittles the legends of old. Their names are permanently etched in football folklore.
But always be ready to welcome more names to the football high table.
