Was thinking of Ozil as well, but hesitated to write about him.
Regarding Messi, I didn’t say he’s average or anything, just that a huge number of fans have a certain perception of him, as if there’s a huge gap between him and the next best player, as if there was a night and day difference. If we were to quantify footballing ability, people act as if he’s 10x or 100x the next best player. He’s not. There are faster players than him, there are players in his position with better workrate, there probably are better finishers than him. Yeah, if you put all his skills together he’s probably among the best players of all time, but by no means is he as good as other people make him out to be. A team of mediocre players and a Messi is not a great team, so he can’t be a 10x player. That’s just limited by the basic human physiology.
This just goes to show that there’s a big halo effect around him, and this was the purpose of this post.
I think he was an amazing player but I think he often gets spoken about as the greatest Italian player ever so I feel he fits the criteria of being slightly overrated as I don’t view him in that light.
John Terry, everyone was like ‘oh best defender by miles’ but he made so many stupid mistakes slipped over at inopportune times and a lot of the time got away with blatant fouls that should really be penalties etc, and to add to all of that the guy is a total shitbag.
I disagree, I thought John Terry was a decent defender but nowhere near world class. Read the game well and was good at defending and attacking corners. But not the best defender in the world.
He’s not very good at all, getting into the England squad because of Spurs progress in recent years. Sure England don’t have many DM’s but he’s quite limited indeed.
