21 ms·

Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014)

404 points by wallflower 4y ago

jamespwilliams 4y ago
Reminds me of https://twitter.com/xgphilosophy/status/1604202292139491328 https://twitter.com/xgphilosophy/status/1604202292139491328 that I saw this morning
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Idea for this visualization: Highlight every season for Messi (multiple colored points). Do the same for some other players. One needs to look around in data to learn more from it.
balaji1 4y ago
who else is here at half time?
- susrev 4y ago
  yup!
- mellosouls 4y ago
  checking in
- nodra 4y ago
  Here to watch the Argentinian flop fest
  - andrepd 4y ago
    Didn't age well :)
- nkzd 4y ago
  Haha, right here!
- xenospn 4y ago
  So exciting!
- hamparawa 4y ago
  hello!
- benrmatthews 4y ago
  Hola!
- mromanuk 4y ago
  Me!
- samwillis 4y ago
  This was submitted at the start of the match, but didn't get any comments till half time, quite telling. (currently 13 comments 10min into half time) I wander what a vote count over time graph looks like for this post. I assume everyone is going to disappear again in 5 min. (also here during half time) Edit: 20 comments at second half kick off.
- maguirre 4y ago
  Looking for a dopamine hit :)
- mromanuk 4y ago
  I was trying to clear my mind from the match, but the world clip and our hero Messi is everywhere, even in HN
- pelasaco 4y ago
  Me! Looks like this comment from Mbappe will age like Milk https://twitter.com/espnfc/status/1529214154015395842?lang=en https://twitter.com/espnfc/status/1529214154015395842?lang=e... EDIT: OR maybe not LOL.. France is just physically too strong... Technically? Meh.
  - samwillis 4y ago
    Not looking that clear cut now...
  - ianmcgowan 4y ago
    Aged like milk indeed :-)
    - pelasaco 4y ago
      Not sure, what I should write here now, LOL.. let me wait 10 more minutes :)
- pookah 4y ago
  Haven't watched soccer in 20 years. Watched two teams in Europe kick a ball mid field for what felt like four hours. Thank god for Patrick Mahomes...
- Darmody 4y ago
  I stopped watching it after the penalty. This is not football, it's geopolitics.
  - subpixel 4y ago
    I felt the penalty was a gift from the sponsors but kept watching. France almost overcame that thumb on the scales, and I’m glad I didn’t tune out. Still, it’s an egregious shame and it tarnishes the win.
    - subpixel 4y ago
      Okay, I re-watched. Everything about that foul was stupid - including, I think, the decision to call it - but it was a foul.
  - peregren 4y ago
    Can you explain the relationship between the penalty and geopolitics?
    - tootie 4y ago
      This is just an unhappy sports fan howling at the moon. The ref is a fallible human being who makes mistakes, but the consensus was that the match was called impeccably well. The penalties awarded were correct. Ref also carded France for diving that was really hard to see in real-time but he was definitely correct.
  - whoevercares 4y ago
    Geopolitics that is in favor of Argentina?? That does not make any sense. I would buy that story if it were for China - look at all the ads and they even built the stadium. Too fantasy though since China men’s soccer team is a total joke
    - Darmody 4y ago
      More in favour of Qatar. They spend 10 times more than the other countries to host the world cup. They want it to be a big hit. That's why FIFA has been saying that this is the best wold cup ever and bla bla bla.
smhg 4y ago
When I navigate back to HN after reading the article, I get a page 'more stories before you go'. At least the first time I opened the link. How is 538 able to intercept my navigation away from their page?
- xwdv 4y ago
  JavaScript
  - MrPatan 4y ago
    JavaScript doesn't make websites shitty, people make websites shitty.
    - noirbot 4y ago
      Sure, but the question was "how do they do this" not "why would they do this"
- dclowd9901 4y ago
  Specifically, in Javascript you can superficially push a navigated state into the location stack so that when the user presses the back button, it is now the inserted page instead of the “actual” one. Most FE devs consider this a dark pattern and refuse to implement it. That said, it’s basically just the front end’s version of a redirect. Unfortunately it’s been used a lot especially by malware sites to basically jail people into their site.
  - bscphil 4y ago
    > Most FE devs consider this a dark pattern and refuse to implement it. How common is it for FE devs to refuse to implement features that their employers tell them to implement?
    - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
      I tried to when I worked at The Huffington Post a long time ago and was ridiculed. Some people don't care so they can point to increased metrics, ethics be damned.
quirino 4y ago
There's a subreddit called r/toprightmessi which is a collection of graphs showing how much Messi excels in so many respects. Crazy how in the biggest sport in the world there can be a player so far above and beyond the rest.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  Alternatively, is it due to the ubiquity of soccer that particularly gifted individuals can be developed into their full potential? Someone that has a one-in-a-billion level of skill in something like frisbee-golf is less likely to be spotted and made into a professional player.
  - Jenk 4y ago
    This is so true when looking at the distribution of top olympic athletes Vs distribution of countries that invest in developing said athletes in their chosen sport.
    - derbOac 4y ago
      Do you know of any sites offhand that discuss this? I can look it up but wasn't sure if there were some you'd recommend. The thing you're mentioning seems really important as an example in these kinds of discussions.
    - User23 4y ago
      Actually, it's the yams[1]. [1] https://www.firstpost.com/sports/firstpost-explains-how-does-jamaica-consistently-produce-world-class-sprinters-8059061.html https://www.firstpost.com/sports/firstpost-explains-how-does...
  - derbOac 4y ago
    This is the weird thing for me about some of these discussions. I'm not going to question Messi's ability or ability in general but I've always wondered how much "extraindividual" factors start to play a role in those upper tails that are incentivized. We talk about Messi like he's just a marble sculpture handed down from God but that's not the case. Looking at the figure, for example, one thing I noticed was the gap between the two upper points and the rest. It's hard for me to imagine there aren't some missing points there. In other fields or areas, I think you have to start asking about things like fraud, other vice, or circumstances. As you suggest, there's probably also some unique things about international football that make it difficult to generalize to other things. Everything is probably a little unique in certain ways really, but the incentives are so extreme and the play is very visible.
epivosism 4y ago
He has had an interesting medical journey: https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/marcanovicoff22/messis-medical-journey/ https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/marcanovicoff22/messis-medica...
- Aromasin 4y ago
  Wow. That's an incredible read.
- rurban 4y ago
  The call him "greatest soccer player of all time", but then the talk about Messi, not Maradona. Lol
  - sweettea 4y ago
    Messi's captured the hearts of the casual World Cup fan unlike anyone else. I don't know a whole lot about soccer -- more or less all I know is that the World Cup happens every few years, is played by national teams, and Messi makes impossible plays. What I do know is all because of Messi, whose wholesome relatability and exceptional ability brings casual viewers like me; I generally avoid sports because the players are hard to relate to or have personal flaws, but I love Messi's strong family roots. I would propose that merely for being a truly exceptional face of the sport he's the GOAT. Maybe Maradona was that way in his day -- I'm barely aware that he was a good player of yesteryear -- but his drug problems (and the fact that his heyday was so long ago) make him much less relatable or exciting to investigate as a inspiration.
    - bhrgunatha 4y ago
      > I'm barely aware that he was a good player of yesteryear As an English football fan, that cheered me up (it still hurts). I suspect no English football fan could accept Maradona as the greatest. Do you know about Pelé? When I was a kid, it seems everyone (even non fans) knew Pelé was the greatest.
      - 4y ago
divbzero 4y ago
Related: An analysis of Lionel Messi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7972815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7972815 - July 2014 (129 comments)
shkkmo 4y ago
He's impossible, but not winning the golden boot anymore...
- cryptonector 4y ago
  No one beats aging. But he's still amazing at 35.
andrea76 4y ago
If Lionel Messi is impossible, Maradona is more than.
- chrisweekly 4y ago
  Messi's faced better defensive players as the game's evolved.
  - epolanski 4y ago
    Those arguments are non sense, both sides. It's a very different sport and likely both would've not been that huge in each other's steps.
    - chrisweekly 4y ago
      You're confused; Messi and Maradona both played for Argentina's national football (/soccer) team.
      - epolanski 4y ago
        I'm not, I know football very well. What I mean is that the sport is very different from what it was in the 80s, there was a different set of required skills back then and now. The amount of fouls and violence that 80's football had was a different level, go watch the Maradona documentary, Diego would get punches in the guts every few minutes and there was no VAR or tv coverage like we do today it was not easy to see and spot. Would've Messi thrived in such a sport the same way he did in the 2000s, when teams played very different strategies and football, when he would've needed to get immensely stronger phisically and be able to get beating after beating? Those fouls weren't even yellow cards back then, today all of those would be straight reds. Maradona needed to put on 10 kilograms of muscles in Italy to be able to do well and completely change his play style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E73caWunOVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E73caWunOVE
  - joe463369 4y ago
    Messi's great but he didn't have to deal with this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andoni_Goikoetxea#:~:text=Maradona%20foul%5Bedit,Goikoetxea%20injures%20Maradona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andoni_Goikoetxea#:~:text=Mara...
wslh 4y ago
Messi just won his first Football World Cup! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040277
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  Perfect end to a career.
- susrev 4y ago
- heywhatupboys 4y ago
  world football championship
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    It’s incredibly annoying how whenever someone calls the game “soccer”, a smug European person pipes up to say that it’s really called “football”. (And yes, I’ve only ever seen Europeans doing this, not people from any of the other parts of the world where it’s also called football). Is it really so hard for you to accept that there are different words for things in different countries, and that not all cultures are identical to your own?
    - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
      True. It’s also called soccer in Australia and in Japan (transliterated as サッカー), too. You can’t really expect people in all places to use the same words for things.
    - Nux 4y ago
      It's incredibly annoying to keep hearing this word, "soccer" is an insult, the game/sport is called "football".
      - jzoch 4y ago
soheil 4y ago
Better believe it!!
axiom92 4y ago
Not to be a buzzkill, but being fooled by randomness is a thing that should at least be mentioned here. Of course Taleb has more to say on the matter in [1]. [1] https://www.amazon.in/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Markets/dp/0141031484 https://www.amazon.in/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Market...
- nl 4y ago
  It's not obvious why you think this applies here. If statistics showing Messi is a great player were just random we'd expect them to regress towards the mean. It's true that as he ages they have a little, but if we compare him to players who are also his age he remains a far outlier. And even against the world's best, in the a tournament that matters (ie, this world cup) he ended up being the second highest goal scorer, second highest assist giver, highest chance creator and second highest dribble completer[1]. So yes, I'd like to understand how randomness applies here. [1] https://www.foxsports.com/soccer/2022-fifa-world-cup/stats https://www.foxsports.com/soccer/2022-fifa-world-cup/stats
  - axiom92 4y ago
    I'm not saying it directly applies here, but it's a caveat worth mentioning. Consider giving a fair coin to 5 random people and asking them to toss it 10 times. The probability that one of them will get 10 heads is 1 - (1 - (1/2^10)) ^ 5, which is less than 0.5%. However, if you manage to get 10^2 people to toss the coin, the probability of someone getting 10 heads is about 0.10. This number goes to ~1 with about 10000 coin tossers. Let's say you manage to get 10k people to somehow toss the coin, and one person, say Mr. A gets 10 heads in a row (as mentioned, the probability of this happening is close to 1). With enough people tossing coins, you are bound to get a Mr. A. Should Mr. A be hailed as having special skills? No, not really. Mr. A was just lucky. He was in the right place at the right time. The probability of him getting 10 heads in a row is still only 1/2^10. It just so happened that he was the person who got 10 heads out of the 10k people tossing coins. Bottom line: With large enough sample sizes, even extremely unlikely events are bound to happen. Let me clarify again: I'm not saying that Messi is Mr. A!
didip 4y ago
He did it. He won. The ultimate GOAT! He finally got it before retirement! I will remember this game for a long time. The dramatic twists and turns are so memorable.
- samstr 4y ago
bandyaboot 4y ago
It would be immensely fun as a layperson to go up against Messi just to see how many seconds of trying to separate the ball from his possession I could go before I’ve tripped over my own feet and am laughing hysterically at the sheer magic of what he’s able to do.
- faitswulff 4y ago
  I think it would be more fun to match him against an entire team of laypeople. Any single individual wouldn't even be able to see him.
  - rvba 4y ago
    Since every Messi thread somehow ends up with Ronaldo, there is a video where Ronaldo is "smurfing" disguised with a fake beard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68E53lcUIKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68E53lcUIKE The video is not really that interesting. As for "entire team playing against a team of laypeople" - I would like to see something like this too. Best we can have is probably the match between American Samoa and Australia that ended 0-31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wg9ox9F7Vw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wg9ox9F7Vw
  - SPBesui 4y ago
    You might like this: 100 school kids against 3 professional soccer players. https://youtu.be/f5Irak2H9GE https://youtu.be/f5Irak2H9GE
- xcambar 4y ago
  Messi or any other pro player doesn't really make a difference if it's against the average person. Average Joe/Jane just doesn't get to touch the ball. Period.
- elorant 4y ago
  I used to play semi pro volleyball in late puberty. We had a quite nice school team and we were second in regional championship which was taking place in the largest city of the country. One day while we were having a workout a friend of our coach showed up who was playing in the national team so we asked him to participate. Dude was willing to do so and from the way he played it was obvious he wasn’t really trying. So at one point he’s on the offensive and I jump to block him which I did. The one thing I remember even three decades later is just how much my palms hurt. Both my hands had gone numb. There was a lot of cheer and he came alongside to congratulate me, but all I was thinking at the moment was fuck this hurts so much. I can’t even imagine how it would feel had he gone full force while hitting the ball, although I seriously doubt I could have blocked it if he did. A layman person can’t realize how vast the gap is between him/her and a pro player, let alone elite players. My guess is that you wouldn’t even have the time to react because he’s so agile he can change direction in a fraction of a second. You wouldn’t trip and fall, you’d simply stood still and by the time you’d register what happened he’d be ten feet behind you.
plandis 4y ago
> Messi and his compatriots a 16 percent chance of winning the tournament — second only to host nation Brazil. How it started for Brazil was certainly different from how it ended for Brazil in that World Cup.
eointierney 4y ago
I love football, sometimes called soccer. Messi is the greatest and purest player of football. I study Michaelangelo the same way I study Messi. Art
redditor98654 4y ago
These athletes are beyond any of my abilities to even comprehend their level of skill by I always wonder if it is just recency bias or are these athletes truly the greatest of all time. Multiple 100+ year old sports seems to have coincided their arguably greatest of all time players play at roughly the same time. Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Sachin Tendulkar, Usain Bolt, Lebron James, Michael Phelps, Michael Schumacher, Magnus Carlsen. No doubt they are just that good but so many of them playing at around the same time is very interesting to me.
- headsoup 4y ago
  I think you have to factor in the amount of technology (i.e. video review of technique, mocap, etc), training level, 'performance' programs (diet, additives, etc) and of course pay/background funds these athletes compete through. More time, more training, better stuff that many past athletes could only dream of. In saying that, Messi is on another planet, with perhaps Pelé , Michael Jordan and Ayrton Senna...
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > Multiple 100+ year old sports seems to have coincided their arguably greatest of all time players play at roughly the same time. I agree! > ... Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, And most of all Novak Djokovic. It's totally insane that these three were playing at the same time. Now Djokovic has 373 weeks as world number 1 (Federer 310 weeks, Nadal 209), 21 grand slams (Federer 20, Nadal 22), six ATP World Tour Finals -- arguably the hardest tournament ever-- (Federer six too, Nadal zero) and contrarily to the others (if I'm not mistaken) Djokovic also held the four Grand Slams at once (consecutively but over two years). Even though Federer was a bit older these three mostly played at the same time and that is completely insane. It makes their achievements even more incredible: the records each of them would have had one of the two others not been there would have been even more unbelievable.
Shorel 4y ago
The best outcome of all this is that if Argentinians call Messi the GOAT, Maradona is no longer it XD
- andrepd 4y ago
  Being the GOAT is subjective, it's not just about dry statistics. I'd argue the cultural impact of Diego Maradona was incredidibly more profound than Messi's, ironically much due to his turbulent life off the pitch. People like an anti-hero :) The 1986 world cup was incredible, the impact of that WC run on the Argentinian national psyche, including the final but especially the Argentina–England game, just cannot be overstated.

404 points by wallflower 4y ago

Reminds me of https://twitter.com/xgphilosophy/status/1604202292139491328 https://twitter.com/xgphilosophy/status/1604202292139491328 that I saw this morning

kzrdude 4y ago
Idea for this visualization: Highlight every season for Messi (multiple colored points). Do the same for some other players. One needs to look around in data to learn more from it.

balaji1 4y ago

who else is here at half time?

susrev 4y ago
yup!
mellosouls 4y ago
checking in
nodra 4y ago
Here to watch the Argentinian flop fest
- andrepd 4y ago
  Didn't age well :)
nkzd 4y ago
Haha, right here!
xenospn 4y ago
So exciting!
hamparawa 4y ago
hello!
benrmatthews 4y ago
Hola!
mromanuk 4y ago
Me!
samwillis 4y ago
This was submitted at the start of the match, but didn't get any comments till half time, quite telling. (currently 13 comments 10min into half time) I wander what a vote count over time graph looks like for this post. I assume everyone is going to disappear again in 5 min. (also here during half time) Edit: 20 comments at second half kick off.
maguirre 4y ago
Looking for a dopamine hit :)
mromanuk 4y ago
I was trying to clear my mind from the match, but the world clip and our hero Messi is everywhere, even in HN
pelasaco 4y ago
Me! Looks like this comment from Mbappe will age like Milk https://twitter.com/espnfc/status/1529214154015395842?lang=en https://twitter.com/espnfc/status/1529214154015395842?lang=e... EDIT: OR maybe not LOL.. France is just physically too strong... Technically? Meh.
- samwillis 4y ago
  Not looking that clear cut now...
- ianmcgowan 4y ago
  Aged like milk indeed :-)
  - pelasaco 4y ago
    Not sure, what I should write here now, LOL.. let me wait 10 more minutes :)
pookah 4y ago
Haven't watched soccer in 20 years. Watched two teams in Europe kick a ball mid field for what felt like four hours. Thank god for Patrick Mahomes...
Darmody 4y ago
I stopped watching it after the penalty. This is not football, it's geopolitics.
- subpixel 4y ago
  I felt the penalty was a gift from the sponsors but kept watching. France almost overcame that thumb on the scales, and I’m glad I didn’t tune out. Still, it’s an egregious shame and it tarnishes the win.
  - subpixel 4y ago
    Okay, I re-watched. Everything about that foul was stupid - including, I think, the decision to call it - but it was a foul.
- peregren 4y ago
  Can you explain the relationship between the penalty and geopolitics?
  - tootie 4y ago
    This is just an unhappy sports fan howling at the moon. The ref is a fallible human being who makes mistakes, but the consensus was that the match was called impeccably well. The penalties awarded were correct. Ref also carded France for diving that was really hard to see in real-time but he was definitely correct.
- whoevercares 4y ago
  Geopolitics that is in favor of Argentina?? That does not make any sense. I would buy that story if it were for China - look at all the ads and they even built the stadium. Too fantasy though since China men’s soccer team is a total joke
  - Darmody 4y ago
    More in favour of Qatar. They spend 10 times more than the other countries to host the world cup. They want it to be a big hit. That's why FIFA has been saying that this is the best wold cup ever and bla bla bla.

smhg 4y ago

When I navigate back to HN after reading the article, I get a page 'more stories before you go'. At least the first time I opened the link. How is 538 able to intercept my navigation away from their page?

xwdv 4y ago
JavaScript
- MrPatan 4y ago
  JavaScript doesn't make websites shitty, people make websites shitty.
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Sure, but the question was "how do they do this" not "why would they do this"
dclowd9901 4y ago
Specifically, in Javascript you can superficially push a navigated state into the location stack so that when the user presses the back button, it is now the inserted page instead of the “actual” one. Most FE devs consider this a dark pattern and refuse to implement it. That said, it’s basically just the front end’s version of a redirect. Unfortunately it’s been used a lot especially by malware sites to basically jail people into their site.
- bscphil 4y ago
  > Most FE devs consider this a dark pattern and refuse to implement it. How common is it for FE devs to refuse to implement features that their employers tell them to implement?
  - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    I tried to when I worked at The Huffington Post a long time ago and was ridiculed. Some people don't care so they can point to increased metrics, ethics be damned.

quirino 4y ago

There's a subreddit called r/toprightmessi which is a collection of graphs showing how much Messi excels in so many respects. Crazy how in the biggest sport in the world there can be a player so far above and beyond the rest.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
Alternatively, is it due to the ubiquity of soccer that particularly gifted individuals can be developed into their full potential? Someone that has a one-in-a-billion level of skill in something like frisbee-golf is less likely to be spotted and made into a professional player.
- Jenk 4y ago
  This is so true when looking at the distribution of top olympic athletes Vs distribution of countries that invest in developing said athletes in their chosen sport.
  - derbOac 4y ago
    Do you know of any sites offhand that discuss this? I can look it up but wasn't sure if there were some you'd recommend. The thing you're mentioning seems really important as an example in these kinds of discussions.
  - User23 4y ago
    Actually, it's the yams[1]. [1] https://www.firstpost.com/sports/firstpost-explains-how-does-jamaica-consistently-produce-world-class-sprinters-8059061.html https://www.firstpost.com/sports/firstpost-explains-how-does...
- derbOac 4y ago
  This is the weird thing for me about some of these discussions. I'm not going to question Messi's ability or ability in general but I've always wondered how much "extraindividual" factors start to play a role in those upper tails that are incentivized. We talk about Messi like he's just a marble sculpture handed down from God but that's not the case. Looking at the figure, for example, one thing I noticed was the gap between the two upper points and the rest. It's hard for me to imagine there aren't some missing points there. In other fields or areas, I think you have to start asking about things like fraud, other vice, or circumstances. As you suggest, there's probably also some unique things about international football that make it difficult to generalize to other things. Everything is probably a little unique in certain ways really, but the incentives are so extreme and the play is very visible.

epivosism 4y ago

He has had an interesting medical journey: https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/marcanovicoff22/messis-medical-journey/ https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/marcanovicoff22/messis-medica...

Aromasin 4y ago
Wow. That's an incredible read.
rurban 4y ago
The call him "greatest soccer player of all time", but then the talk about Messi, not Maradona. Lol
- sweettea 4y ago
  Messi's captured the hearts of the casual World Cup fan unlike anyone else. I don't know a whole lot about soccer -- more or less all I know is that the World Cup happens every few years, is played by national teams, and Messi makes impossible plays. What I do know is all because of Messi, whose wholesome relatability and exceptional ability brings casual viewers like me; I generally avoid sports because the players are hard to relate to or have personal flaws, but I love Messi's strong family roots. I would propose that merely for being a truly exceptional face of the sport he's the GOAT. Maybe Maradona was that way in his day -- I'm barely aware that he was a good player of yesteryear -- but his drug problems (and the fact that his heyday was so long ago) make him much less relatable or exciting to investigate as a inspiration.
  - bhrgunatha 4y ago
    > I'm barely aware that he was a good player of yesteryear As an English football fan, that cheered me up (it still hurts). I suspect no English football fan could accept Maradona as the greatest. Do you know about Pelé? When I was a kid, it seems everyone (even non fans) knew Pelé was the greatest.
    - 4y ago

divbzero 4y ago

Related: An analysis of Lionel Messi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7972815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7972815 - July 2014 (129 comments)

shkkmo 4y ago

He's impossible, but not winning the golden boot anymore...

cryptonector 4y ago
No one beats aging. But he's still amazing at 35.

andrea76 4y ago

If Lionel Messi is impossible, Maradona is more than.

chrisweekly 4y ago
Messi's faced better defensive players as the game's evolved.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Those arguments are non sense, both sides. It's a very different sport and likely both would've not been that huge in each other's steps.
  - chrisweekly 4y ago
    You're confused; Messi and Maradona both played for Argentina's national football (/soccer) team.
    - epolanski 4y ago
      I'm not, I know football very well. What I mean is that the sport is very different from what it was in the 80s, there was a different set of required skills back then and now. The amount of fouls and violence that 80's football had was a different level, go watch the Maradona documentary, Diego would get punches in the guts every few minutes and there was no VAR or tv coverage like we do today it was not easy to see and spot. Would've Messi thrived in such a sport the same way he did in the 2000s, when teams played very different strategies and football, when he would've needed to get immensely stronger phisically and be able to get beating after beating? Those fouls weren't even yellow cards back then, today all of those would be straight reds. Maradona needed to put on 10 kilograms of muscles in Italy to be able to do well and completely change his play style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E73caWunOVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E73caWunOVE
- joe463369 4y ago
  Messi's great but he didn't have to deal with this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andoni_Goikoetxea#:~:text=Maradona%20foul%5Bedit,Goikoetxea%20injures%20Maradona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andoni_Goikoetxea#:~:text=Mara...

wslh 4y ago

Messi just won his first Football World Cup! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040277

ReptileMan 4y ago
Perfect end to a career.
susrev 4y ago
heywhatupboys 4y ago
world football championship
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  It’s incredibly annoying how whenever someone calls the game “soccer”, a smug European person pipes up to say that it’s really called “football”. (And yes, I’ve only ever seen Europeans doing this, not people from any of the other parts of the world where it’s also called football). Is it really so hard for you to accept that there are different words for things in different countries, and that not all cultures are identical to your own?
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    True. It’s also called soccer in Australia and in Japan (transliterated as サッカー), too. You can’t really expect people in all places to use the same words for things.
  - Nux 4y ago
    It's incredibly annoying to keep hearing this word, "soccer" is an insult, the game/sport is called "football".
    - jzoch 4y ago

soheil 4y ago

Better believe it!!

axiom92 4y ago

Not to be a buzzkill, but being fooled by randomness is a thing that should at least be mentioned here. Of course Taleb has more to say on the matter in [1]. [1] https://www.amazon.in/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Markets/dp/0141031484 https://www.amazon.in/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Market...

nl 4y ago
It's not obvious why you think this applies here. If statistics showing Messi is a great player were just random we'd expect them to regress towards the mean. It's true that as he ages they have a little, but if we compare him to players who are also his age he remains a far outlier. And even against the world's best, in the a tournament that matters (ie, this world cup) he ended up being the second highest goal scorer, second highest assist giver, highest chance creator and second highest dribble completer[1]. So yes, I'd like to understand how randomness applies here. [1] https://www.foxsports.com/soccer/2022-fifa-world-cup/stats https://www.foxsports.com/soccer/2022-fifa-world-cup/stats
- axiom92 4y ago
  I'm not saying it directly applies here, but it's a caveat worth mentioning. Consider giving a fair coin to 5 random people and asking them to toss it 10 times. The probability that one of them will get 10 heads is 1 - (1 - (1/2^10)) ^ 5, which is less than 0.5%. However, if you manage to get 10^2 people to toss the coin, the probability of someone getting 10 heads is about 0.10. This number goes to ~1 with about 10000 coin tossers. Let's say you manage to get 10k people to somehow toss the coin, and one person, say Mr. A gets 10 heads in a row (as mentioned, the probability of this happening is close to 1). With enough people tossing coins, you are bound to get a Mr. A. Should Mr. A be hailed as having special skills? No, not really. Mr. A was just lucky. He was in the right place at the right time. The probability of him getting 10 heads in a row is still only 1/2^10. It just so happened that he was the person who got 10 heads out of the 10k people tossing coins. Bottom line: With large enough sample sizes, even extremely unlikely events are bound to happen. Let me clarify again: I'm not saying that Messi is Mr. A!

didip 4y ago

He did it. He won. The ultimate GOAT! He finally got it before retirement! I will remember this game for a long time. The dramatic twists and turns are so memorable.

samstr 4y ago

bandyaboot 4y ago

It would be immensely fun as a layperson to go up against Messi just to see how many seconds of trying to separate the ball from his possession I could go before I’ve tripped over my own feet and am laughing hysterically at the sheer magic of what he’s able to do.

faitswulff 4y ago
I think it would be more fun to match him against an entire team of laypeople. Any single individual wouldn't even be able to see him.
- rvba 4y ago
  Since every Messi thread somehow ends up with Ronaldo, there is a video where Ronaldo is "smurfing" disguised with a fake beard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68E53lcUIKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68E53lcUIKE The video is not really that interesting. As for "entire team playing against a team of laypeople" - I would like to see something like this too. Best we can have is probably the match between American Samoa and Australia that ended 0-31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wg9ox9F7Vw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wg9ox9F7Vw
- SPBesui 4y ago
  You might like this: 100 school kids against 3 professional soccer players. https://youtu.be/f5Irak2H9GE https://youtu.be/f5Irak2H9GE
xcambar 4y ago
Messi or any other pro player doesn't really make a difference if it's against the average person. Average Joe/Jane just doesn't get to touch the ball. Period.
elorant 4y ago
I used to play semi pro volleyball in late puberty. We had a quite nice school team and we were second in regional championship which was taking place in the largest city of the country. One day while we were having a workout a friend of our coach showed up who was playing in the national team so we asked him to participate. Dude was willing to do so and from the way he played it was obvious he wasn’t really trying. So at one point he’s on the offensive and I jump to block him which I did. The one thing I remember even three decades later is just how much my palms hurt. Both my hands had gone numb. There was a lot of cheer and he came alongside to congratulate me, but all I was thinking at the moment was fuck this hurts so much. I can’t even imagine how it would feel had he gone full force while hitting the ball, although I seriously doubt I could have blocked it if he did. A layman person can’t realize how vast the gap is between him/her and a pro player, let alone elite players. My guess is that you wouldn’t even have the time to react because he’s so agile he can change direction in a fraction of a second. You wouldn’t trip and fall, you’d simply stood still and by the time you’d register what happened he’d be ten feet behind you.

plandis 4y ago

> Messi and his compatriots a 16 percent chance of winning the tournament — second only to host nation Brazil. How it started for Brazil was certainly different from how it ended for Brazil in that World Cup.

eointierney 4y ago

I love football, sometimes called soccer. Messi is the greatest and purest player of football. I study Michaelangelo the same way I study Messi. Art

redditor98654 4y ago

These athletes are beyond any of my abilities to even comprehend their level of skill by I always wonder if it is just recency bias or are these athletes truly the greatest of all time. Multiple 100+ year old sports seems to have coincided their arguably greatest of all time players play at roughly the same time. Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Sachin Tendulkar, Usain Bolt, Lebron James, Michael Phelps, Michael Schumacher, Magnus Carlsen. No doubt they are just that good but so many of them playing at around the same time is very interesting to me.

headsoup 4y ago
I think you have to factor in the amount of technology (i.e. video review of technique, mocap, etc), training level, 'performance' programs (diet, additives, etc) and of course pay/background funds these athletes compete through. More time, more training, better stuff that many past athletes could only dream of. In saying that, Messi is on another planet, with perhaps Pelé , Michael Jordan and Ayrton Senna...
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> Multiple 100+ year old sports seems to have coincided their arguably greatest of all time players play at roughly the same time. I agree! > ... Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, And most of all Novak Djokovic. It's totally insane that these three were playing at the same time. Now Djokovic has 373 weeks as world number 1 (Federer 310 weeks, Nadal 209), 21 grand slams (Federer 20, Nadal 22), six ATP World Tour Finals -- arguably the hardest tournament ever-- (Federer six too, Nadal zero) and contrarily to the others (if I'm not mistaken) Djokovic also held the four Grand Slams at once (consecutively but over two years). Even though Federer was a bit older these three mostly played at the same time and that is completely insane. It makes their achievements even more incredible: the records each of them would have had one of the two others not been there would have been even more unbelievable.

Shorel 4y ago

The best outcome of all this is that if Argentinians call Messi the GOAT, Maradona is no longer it XD

andrepd 4y ago
Being the GOAT is subjective, it's not just about dry statistics. I'd argue the cultural impact of Diego Maradona was incredidibly more profound than Messi's, ironically much due to his turbulent life off the pitch. People like an anti-hero :) The 1986 world cup was incredible, the impact of that WC run on the Argentinian national psyche, including the final but especially the Argentina–England game, just cannot be overstated.