All time leading World Cup goal scorer, 3 time world player of the year, 326 club and 62 international goals. Didn’t have the greatest header and could’ve worked harder, but he was fast as hell and lethal with both feet from 30 yards in. Where does he rank in the all time greats?
IMO, top ten for sure, maybe top 5.
Fat Ronaldo was an awesome player - peak years before his knee injury at Inter he was on a different planet. Even after it he was one of the world’s best centre forwards. Top ten all time is high praise, but I reckon he must be in the frame for it. Definitely top ten of the modern era - Dixie Dean probably takes the #9 shirt off him all time.
Oh no.
Just catching up on a few of his highlights. e.g.
Brings back what a truly exceptional striker he was - had it all technique-wise and an explosiveness that no one in today’s game can match.
Always played with a smile on his face as well.
As a pure striker? #1 no question in my mind. He was the single best striker in the history of the game. As an overall player? I’m not sure he gets in the top ten.
Gerd Muller or Puskas are his competition for that, imo. That argument is as much about comparing eras as it is players.
Who are your all time ten? Pele, maradona, cruijff, beckenbauer, zidane, do stefano… maldini? Mattheus?
Where do Platini, Yashin, and Eusebio fit into that list? It’d be nice if assoc. football/soccer had something like baseball’s WAR metric.
Platini is a huge oversight on my part. I think eusebio is beneath ronaldo, bit still.a great. Yashin… keepers are a different category, imo.
Yeah I’m probably biased to the modern era. But I would still put him in front of Muller or Puskas.
And I’m not sure I feel qualified to make a top 10. I’ve only followed the game closely for about 15 years. There are too many damn fine players. Maybe Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, Yashin, Cruyff, Eusebio, Charlton, Matthews, Stefano, & Matthaus? I can think of a dozen others that deserve consideration.
Roanldo’s goal scoring record is astonishing. He scored goals in basketfuls at the highest level of competition in multiple leagues, for club and country. Just remarkable.
I don’t think people remember how good he was a his peak. Only Zidane could compete (though Zidane’s peak came after Ronaldo’s)
Defintely top ten of all-time. Zidane, Maradona, Pele, Messi*, Best, Cruyff, Ronaldo, Beckenbauer, Moore.
*yeah I said it, what ya gonna do?
Check out Gerd Muller’s scoring record - 68 in 62 international and 365 in 427 German league games :eek:
Before my time, but I understand he was the archetypal did-nothing-all-match-except-score-3-goals type of player.
Van Basten would be the 2nd best centre forward of the modern era IMHO - 90 in 147 for Milan in the toughest defensive league in the world.
Actually i have to admit, I forgot Van Basten. Gerd Muller is before my era, but I rate him in the same catergory as Jimmy Greaves and Dixie Dean (again both long before my era) neither of whom would make by top ten.
Roanldo’s scoring record:
44 goals in 44 for Cruzeiro
54 goals in 57 for PSV.
47 goals in 49 for Barcelona
59 goals in 99 for Inter
104 goals in 187 for Real Madrid
9 goals in 20 for Milan
35 goals in 69 for Corinthians
62 goals in 97 for Brazil
Ronaldo is without question one of the greatest of all time, top 10 easily. I can only imagine what his records might have been had he stayed injury free.
It’s more impressive when you know that he had horrible knee injuries between the Barca and Inter days. He scored 145 in 150 before trashing his knees.
No way! Dixie Dean finished playing before Muller was born. I think there’s a clear break pre and post Pele. Or WWII if you wish. While not “modern” Muller played in the 70s with Cruyff and Beckenbauer, both considered top 5 all time by pretty much everyone.
Greaves had a 0.65 goals per game average. Muller a 0.87. 0.93 goals per game if you don’t count his time in America. He won the World Cup and the European cup. He was the World Cup’s leading scorer for 40 years. His Bayern teams was the league 4 times and 3 consecutive European titles. He twice scored over 50 goals in a year and scored over 40 7 times. He was by far a better striker than Greaves.
He was a great striker for sure, but that is pretty much it. When talking about the best players ever, I usually prefer the types that were leaders on the field, the generals if you will. So there you would get the types like Cruyff, Zidane, Beckenbauer, Platini, Maradonna, etc.
The main point for me is how much they feature in a game and how telling their contribution is. So of the players playing today, I would find types lik Rooney, Messi, Ronaldo, Robben, Sneijder, Ozil, Xavi, Fabregas far more important - and thus liikely to be on my all time best list - then all and out goals scorers like Van Nistelrooij, Raul, Villa, Berbatov, Higuain, Gomez, etc.
There is a decent argument that Ronaldo is not even the best Brazilian striker of the last 20 years.
All the stats quoted above don’t take into account the quality of the oppostion, nor the quality of the player that was supplying the bullets for him. Playing for Barcelona - and especially Real Madrid, in his era, meant tremendous players giving him the chances.
Romario scored 98 in 109 for PSV in his stint there (when the Dutch league was stronger than it was when Ronaldo played for them), 34 in 46 for Barcelona (when the talent pool of players was more spread both within Spain and within Europe) and 55 in 70 for Brazil. For Brazil, he also didn’t play in a team that had Rivaldo and Ronaldinho supplying him the ball, as Ronaldo did. Bebeto was a pretty good player - but he wasn’t as good as either Rivaldo or Ronaldinho.
Was Romario better than Ronaldo? Or vice versa? I don’t know - but it’s not cut and dried when you take into account era, quality of team-mate, etc. I have a lot of time for Ronaldo though - mostly for his ability to continue scoring at a high level after losing a fair chunk ofn his career to injury.
Also second footballisplayed…'s comments about best player ever. A Ronaldo, Romario, Muller, etc, is not, imo, in the same category has a player that can bend the game to their will. Players capable of that are the best players that have ever played the game (Maradona (90) and Zidane (06) in particular willed average teams into the final of a World Cup pretty much single handedly - pure goalscorers are not going to be capable of something like that).
Obviously Bayern were European Champions multiple times when Muller was there, but you have to also be aware of the context that he played in the years immediately following the formation of a national professional German domestic league. A higher goal averegae was much harder to obtain in English football at the time that Greave played because he was playing in a more balanced league of experinced professionals. Greaves’s stats are phenoumenal in the context of where and when he was playing. By the time that English teams started to take the European Cup seriously Greaves career was already starting to wind down.
I would say Muller was better than Greaves, but not by anyweher near as much as you think.
Romario was good, but for me no question that Ronaldo was better. Ronaldo at his peak,it’s diffciul;t to describe how good he was and how there was really no question that he was the best player in the World. Despite the fact that circa 1994 Romario was the best player in the World he still didn’t quite acheive the same level as Ronaldo.