This.
I see many people easily putting Marcelo in the same place as Alves and that couldn’t be more off.
As you sad, Alves, at least as far as I remember now, was never easy to get past one on one. Quick, very aggressive, tight on his opponent…
Marcelo in the other hand, even at his defensive peak, wasn’t near Alves defensively, and I don’t even want to talk about all the years where he was nowhere near the requied level to be a full back in a top team, even an attacking one.
Extremely talented on the ball, but even when talking about attacking production alone, he was never near Alves in that area too.
Comfortably a class beneath Alves.
True only issue I have is alves was a right back and Marcelo left back. For me Marcelo never really came close to Roberto Carlos comparing LB to LB and light years behind ours truly king of all LB Andre Santos
Thiago Silva belongs in this conversation, probably not as a legitimately top five South American player of recent times, but if we’re discussing guys like Dani Alves, Marcelo, Zanetti, etc then he at least belongs in that company. His highest level was probably a bit below some of the other top CBs of the last 20 years but he has had a remarkably long run at the top of the game. And he has been able to do it in three different major European leagues, playing for teams with very different styles, and during a time period when the tactical and physical requirements for top CBs changed a lot.
