JULY 19 — The debate over the identity of the greatest footballer in history has resurfaced in the last couple of weeks following the death of Alfredo di Stefano — a man described by his former club Real Madrid as the best of all-time — and the failure of fellow Argentine Lionel Messi to exert a meaningful impact upon the decisive latter stages of the World Cup Finals.
Was Di Stefano better than Messi? Do either of them compare favourably to Pele or Diego Maradona? Should we also consider legends like Johan Cruyff and George Best?
In the past, I was more than happy to join in the speculation and debate on this kind of topic, to the extent of agreeing to appear on a BBC World Service radio programme last year to argue on Messi’s behalf.
Now, however, I have come to the conclusion that such discussions — although they can be entertaining and thought-provoking — are ultimately futile and that it’s close to impossible to provide a meaningful answer.
Who is the greatest, Messi or Di Stefano (and for simplicity’s sake, let us assume there are no other candidates)?
To answer that question properly, to begin with we would need comparable evidence of their respective careers…and that just isn’t available.
Grainy black and white television images of a small selection of Di Stefano’s goals can hardly do his case justice when we’re accustomed to multi-angled, high definition, super slow-mo replays of everything Messi has ever done on a football field. Problem number one.
Even if we did have access to full footage of Di Stefano’s career, that would still be insufficient to properly judge whether he was better than Messi or vice versa.
As managers who have mistakenly bought players on the basis of video highlights could attest, watching a game on television is no substitute for actually being there and seeing the full effect of a player’s performance: his movement, his response to difficult situations, his level of cooperation with teammates, his effect on the crowd and the atmosphere surrounding a game…all these factors can only be partially ascertained on the small screen.
Therefore, to objectively and accurately judge whether Di Stefano or Messi was the better player, it would be necessary to have personally witnessed a significant number of the games played by both performers — but the six-decade age gap between the two surely ensures nobody can make such a claim.
Even if that problem could be solved, we would have to move onto the perhaps even more difficult question of how greatness should be defined.
As Socrates (the Greek philosopher, not the former Brazil captain) argued, in order to meaningfully answer a question first it is necessary to fully define and understand that question. Therefore, we have to agree on what the word ‘greatness’ actually means.
And here’s the problem: your definition of ‘great’ may well be very different from mine, and within reasonable parameters it would be impossible to say that one of us is ‘wrong’.
For example, I would argue that longevity — the ability to consistently perform at a very high level for a number of years — is extremely important when measuring greatness, thus favouring Ryan Giggs ahead of George Best, for example.
Other people, however, may prefer with equal validity a different definition of greatness: a statistical approach based on goal-scoring records, for example, or a purist examination of tactical and technical attributes.
Finally, even if the ‘greatness’ definition problem could be surmounted, we are left with the near impossible task of comparing performers from different eras.
When Di Stefano played in the 1950s and 1960s, the quality of pitches was worse, tackling was more violent, boots were less slipper-like and balls were less responsive; Messi, however, comes from an era when his sport is played at a significantly faster pace and he also has to contend with a much more demanding workload on the club and international calendar. Would Di Stefano shine in 2014 as much as he did in 1954? There is no way of knowing.
Taking into account all those difficulties — the lack of comparative evidence, complications in defining ‘greatness’ and comparing different eras — it is realistically impossible to argue with any credibility that Messi or Di Stefano was a ‘better’ player than the other.
The same arguments rage throughout all sports, of course. Is Tom Brady the best quarterback in NFL history? Was Muhammad Ali the greatest boxer of all-time or would he have been beaten by Mike Tyson in his prime? Does LeBron James come close to matching Michael Jordan? Is Tiger Woods better than Sam Snead or Jack Nicklaus?
These questions and many more are regularly debated at length, but I’m now convinced they are impossible to answer in any meaningful manner.
There is, however, one exception. As far as I’m aware, only one man in sporting history has ever attained a level of excellence head and shoulders above any of his nearest competitors.
For his test cricket career batting average of 99, when nobody else has ever managed to climb above the high 60s, Donald Bradman truly does deserve to be labelled the greatest batsman of all-time.
But he’s the only one.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
