Has Messi surpassed Gretzky/Jordan and others as the GOAT for all sports?

[HaNotsri]

Not sure Messi is the best football player of all time. Gretzky is on another level and while the talent pool of hockey is smaller that talent pool is already elite.

 

[Future GOAT]

While Messi is definitely the best footballer of all time, I don't think so, I think Gretzky's lapping of his peers is significantly more dominant than those of the other major sports.

 

[Xspyrit]

lol I had no idea Gretzky was considered the GOAT in all sports

I mean, Lemieux, Orr, McDavid... all/will all deserve to be considered as the great hockey of all time so when you compare to guys in other much bigger sports, it's a ridiculous idea.

Problem with Gretzky is he dominated the highest scoring era and hold most scoring record so people assume he's automatically the best

From when Lemieux started until he got sick (1984-85 to 1996-97), Lemieux had a 2.01 PPG while Gretzky had a 1.90 PPG. Even after Mario came back from 3 years off, he still had the best PPG in the NHL (2000-01 to 2005-06) with 1.35

Also, 0.75 career GPG for Lemieux and 0.60 GPG for Gretzky.

Seriously, Gretzky or even Lemieux has the GOAT athlete in history is just a weird thought


Anyway, it's going to be Dieu Mbappe soon enough

 

[TheStatican]

The dominance from Gretzky and Brady over shadow Messi's, while being the best in his sport he hasn't separated himself from Pele, Maradona and Ronaldo like the other 2 have from their peers.

Because that's pretty much impossible to do in soccer. A tiny fraction of people play hockey and football compared those who play soccer, the more people that do an activity or sport the less likely there'll be outliners and the separation between the very best and those below them will be less.

wheres the everyone is on the same level option? I guess thinking is hard

Can you? But sure, next time I'll put in a "No, they're all exactly the same" option for questions that are too complex for you to formulate an opinion on.

 

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Not sure Messi is the best football player of all time. Gretzky is on another level and while the talent pool of hockey is smaller that talent pool is already elite.

Problem with Gretzky is, I don't think he was better than Lemieux or Orr. Greater sure due to health.

 

[psycat]

Pointless discussion without an answer.

 

[Korpse]

Basketball around the world is slightly different than NBA. There have been plenty of highly succesfull players even in the NBA who have been slightly above average in so called physical stature. Similar line can be said about football (soccer) actually, it greatly favours smaller players.

There is huge amount of basketball players around the world, thus is can't be considered niche. There are certain set of physical attributes that give you an advantage to play basketball, then there's certain set of physical attributes that give you an advantage at playing football, etc.

When it comes to players of mentioned calibre certain things have to fall in place to reach these heights (physical attributes that are conducive to the played sport, genetic lottery, and hard work), and size of the pool isn't as big of a deciding factor (I'm talking specifically about these types of players).

What is slightly above average to you? Just looking at the previous Olympics 12/144 players were under 6'3, 2/144 were under 6'0 and of course all those players being limited to two positions. There maybe successful player under 6'0 but they are outliers, The vast majority of successful players are 6'3 or taller which make up such a small portion of any population, likely 5% or less. Football (soccer) doesn't favor smaller players. Just look at World Cup Squads, if anything you'll see squads average heights come in above the national average.

I'm not suggesting there isn't high participation in the sport, and maybe I'm using niche in a way you aren't familiar with but I don't think there's any denying that the pool of potentially successful athletes is limited based on height. I think you'd find the physical attributes to succeed in football are far more common. The competition to reach top levels is just far higher.

 

[WarriorofTime]

NHL hockey players in Gretzky's day solely came from Canada (more or less), what a silly thing to even try and compare.

They are different sports.

 

[TruePowerSlave]

Messi is the greatest footballer ever and has done it in a sport that has a shit ton more competition.

 

[TBF1972]

No, Messi benefitted a lot from amazing Barcelona teams to get all the goals he scored as well as UEFA basically gifting Barca numerous games in the champions league.

And the refs helped greatly with Argentina this year. I would rate Tom Brady and Gretzky over Messi any day of the week.

barca benefitted more from messi than vice versa. they had great player's before, but never close to the success. young messi was a two way monster, which made barca's play style possible. after the losing the ball control messi was reacting so quickly to put pressure on the ball barca in most instances regained the ball immediately.

if you haven't seen the very young messi you never understand, what makes him so faboulous. he is processing the game so much quicker than anyone else. today he uses this ability nearly exclusively on offense to conserve his energy. but messi is so much more than a goal scorer.

If we purely talk greatest athlete in my view, I know it's very controversial, but I'd go Lance Armstrong. I know he doped, but it was the norm in his era. Winning that many consecutive Tour de France (I think 6 or 7) is incredible. I think pro cycling is by far the hardest sport in the world. It's the only sport in which suffering is that prevalent on a day to day basis. So in my view he's the greatest athlete ever.

if you look at the standings the tour de france in the armstrong years, you can clearly see few teams dominating. there was not an equal access to dope. armstrong had the best dope support by far.

 

[RefalancheStillLose]

No soccer player will ever supercede any of the real sports athletes

 

[T REX]

It's Brady...not even close.

 

[Rants Mulliniks]

After Messi's performance and victory in the recent world cup I've heard this argument being brought up in conversation more than ever. All three have achieved simular levels of dominace in their respective sports and they are commonly regarded along with a handful of others such as Mohammed Ali, Jerry Rice, Babe Ruth, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt, Roger Federer (to name a few others but not all) as amongst the greatest athletes of all time. The one thing that Messi has over all the others is that he has achieved an almost unparalleled level of domiance in the biggest sport in the world. In soccer history he is seemingly only matched by Pele but that was when the sport was smaller.

Now I'm not a big soccer fan by any means, the sport barely even registers in my mind outside of the world cup but I do recognize the fact that it is the biggest and most popular sport in the world and has been for quite some time now. This is relevant in this conversation because it means that it has the largest talent pool to draw from. This should make it much more difficult for any single individual to come along and dominate the sport and there should be many players at the top vying to be recognized as the sports best player year in year out and yet Messi has been largerly unrivaled for that title.

Seeing as how this is a hockey forum I think we all know which way the result will trend towards.... But I'm still curious about it and the arguments for and against. So what say you?

Among the greatest at their sports. Far from the greatest athletes. That’s for those great at multiple sports.

 

[Kshahdoo]

Messi first has to pass Pele and Maradona as the best football player of all times.

 

[jetsforever]

IMO he's not even clearly the best soccer player
Gretzky was much more dominant, while Messi plays a much bigger sport

 

[HofT]

There are way more people playing soccer than hockey so it's much more difficult being the best in the world at soccer than it is hockey.

 

[Breakfast of Champs]

I mean, if you ask 100 people from a country outside of Canada who the greatest athlete ever is, you would get 0 answers for Gretzky. In america you might get Brady, but outside of that nobody would say him. 90% of answers would be Messi,, Pele, Ronaldo, Bolt, Jordan, Ali, etc.

I think gretzky is further ahead of his competition than the others are, but at some point people have to know who you are to be considered the greatest athlete of all time. If literally less than 10% of the world's population have heard of you - it's really hard to make an argument that you are that.

 

[Montag DP]

If hockey had as big a talent pool as soccer (football), Gretzky would have been nothing special.

 

[TBF1972]

Basketball is not a "very niche sport", and has, compared to ice hockey, orders of magnitude more players (pro and amateur) world wide.

Basketball has grown a lot in recent years and Jordan and the Dream team were a huge part of that. The international players, who made the NBA without going to college (like Olajuwon) were extremly rare. Drazen Petrovic died young in a car accident, before he could make an impact.

The best non-US born player at the time made the NBA, when he was physically shot. Too bad the NBA never saw prime Sabonis.

 

[TBF1972]

Nah, people who ever believed C. Ronaldo was better than Messi are deluded, and I actually hated Barca in Messi's prime. Ronaldo is a better athlete of course but Messi has been a technically superior player from day one, with significantly better ball skills, a much better playmaker, and MUCH smarter overall. This is like comparing Ovechkin and Mario Lemieux.

Mbappé has some gaudy numbers but he's playing in an inferior league, and his reputation owes a lot to two short tournaments. He needs to move to Spain or England as soon as possible. He's a very unique talent for sure but I'm feeling quite comfortable to say that Messi was clearly a better player at the age of 23.

There are two things that always stood out about Messi for me. First, he not only exceeded the benchmarks set by all-time great forwards before him; he simply tore them apart. 50 goals in a single La Liga season in 2012 is incredible, and even more so for a player who wasn't deployed as a pure goal scorer, as he was playing in a deeper role and was consistently creating a ton of scoring chances for his teammates.

Second, he's always been a player that seemingly never makes mistakes like flawed passes, failed dribbles, botched attempts at a shot, bad first touches etc. There are players like this but those are used in more defensive roles, such as deep-lying midfielders or central defenders. It's something else for a purely offensive player like Messi though, who (given the nature of position) has consistently been taking a lot of risky plays. Especially in his (very long) prime, it looked like he was ALWAYS making the right decision, with the ball or without it. His technical ability and sense of the game were out of this planet, even compared to other all-time greats.

looking at young messi you can clearly see, that he processes the game quicker than anybody in all situations. his awareness is off the charts.

his effort shifted strongly to offense with stardom and advanced age. but the awareness is still there.

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

lol what? no. as someone else already stated, 2 years ago 'Rinaldo' was the best the world, you cant consider someone as the 'GOAT of GOATs' when there is legitimate debate about if they are even the best in their sport. besides, divegrass is barely a sport, people are just high because their team won the big trophy, if argentina finished 2nd then nobody would be talking about him right now.

Gretz got non-hockey ppl into hockey. theres like 5-6 teams in the NHL that wouldnt exist if 99 hadnt been traded to LA.

Jordan got non-floor squeak ppl into basketball. I hate basketball and even I watched Jordan's career, to include when he came back with the Wizards. aint nobody getting murdered over messi's clothing line either.

tiger woods got non-golf ppl into golf.

senna / big boy go karts etc etc

ive never met anyone that started watching soccer because of messi.

 

[TBF1972]

True lol, we here can barely compare hockey forwards to hockey defencemen to hockey goalies.

the ability to judge players here starts and stops with the colour of the jersey for most posters.

 

[FDBluth]

Pele is still the GOAT anyway. Messi #2

 

[ItWasJustified]

Has Messi surpassed Gretzky/Jordan and others as the GOAT for all sports?

No. Anyone who knows anything about football would say it's still Maradona.

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

Pointless discussion without an answer.

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