First of all, I think people should be more careful and more fair when comparing players. Saying X or Y is THE goat is very superficial, How do you even try to compare, for example, Messi with any legendary player from literally any other position? Messi is better than Beckenbauer huh? Better than Cafu, manybe? No. We should start being more specific about what we are exactly talking about, if people keep discussion like this, football will be reduced and oversimplified. It is easier, Yes, but we must fraction every single aspect of the game to have a proper and meaningful debate; Messi is maybe the most talented player of all time relatively to his position? Maybe, but this is it: relatively to his position and role.

Not only that, but people should stop using stats like maniacs to try to get their point across. Football is not played through stats, and mind you, for example, the attacker with the most goals is not necessarily the best, the Midfielder with the most assist is not necessarily the best, etc. People should watch the full matches of the players they are talking about: Watch footaball. Stats are indeed a good way to have a north, but they do not speak for themselves, and they should, at the very least, be contextualized, which is not the case most of the times. People are more worried about getting their point across than actually having a meaningful and fun debate.

Lastly, people should analyse better each player’s role in the specific team and why and how they performances that role, even tho they play at the same position? For instance, Haaland is an attacker with top tier positioning and scoring efficency, but that does not necessarily make him a better attacker than another attacker Who plays in a completely different way and does not score that much. Haaland is much more dependent at a good team who creates the opportinities for him, and if the rest of the team performs well, he will score, but if the team does not perform well or is not able to get through the opponents defense, Haaland is unable to do virtually anything, and he won’t be the one to create the opportunity 90% of the time. Whereas attackers like Neymar or Mbappe, who do not have the same strenghts as him and that will most likely end up with less goals than Haaland, have the capabilities of helping the team in a way Haaland cannot, and they will play a completely different game, because as I said, each player has a different role and characteristics. I think I got my point across, this post is not about Haaland lol, and even tho I think it’s obvious, I’m not hating on Haaland in any way, the dude is a great player, I just used him as the base of my last argument.

So, what do you think? Is any player THE goat? Stats matter that much? Can you compare completely different players from the Same position?

I’m honestly just thinking out loud for the sake of a debate hahahahaha