This is a series of posts made by a member on Redcafe claiming that Messi is over-hyped and that may not even be in the Top 10 players of all time. Now, many would say that this is just an idiot and why waste any time on what he says. But I think that there is a deeper issue here. In my view, this person is not an idiot at all, he is just reasonably confident that however wrongful his claims may be, there will be at least some support for them. If somebody's lies are not pointed out by others, then those lies can be presented as truths.
His main arguments on why Messi may not even be among the Top 10 of all time are the following two:
a) Who of us has seen all the greats of previous decades, going even all the way back to the early decades of the 20th Century?
b) Messi's stats are so awesome because he has been playing in a very good team in a very weak league. Notice when he wonders on what George Best's would have been had he been playing for Rangers in the Scottish league.
In matter of fact, both arguments (especially the 2nd) can be destroyed with ease. Firstly, the internet is chock full of videos and even entire games from Pele, Best & Maradona eras. Moreover, the stats of each past great are well known and with a little bit of patience and intelligence can be placed in a proper context and compared.
As for his attempt of drawing parallels between the Scottish league & La Liga in order to devalue Messi's achievements, this can be shot down by merely glancing at European Cup competition results of the past 20, and especially last 10 years. This line of argument also conveniently forgets that Messi is the number 2 all-time top-scorer in the Champions League, with a higher goals-per-game ratio to CR7 and enough time to overtake him, despite playing in a more playmaking position that Ronaldo.
Anyway, I thought it would be enjoyable to have a look at this absurd claims and how they can be repeated, even today.
