The Best Football Seen In England

[Johnny Velvet]

EDIT: Removed

[Duncan Gardner]

Broadly players are fitter, bigger, stronger, perhaps more skillful than ever?

Related from another sport- Shaun Murphy says rival Ronnie O'Sullivan is the greatest of all eras because the standard was much lower in the 90s and before. I know there was a closed shop back then but that sounds like baloney to me

[ad hoc]

This is the best football ever seen in England. It was only about 15 minutes, but it is head and shoulders above anything seen before or since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDcu81EPYnk

[Janik]

Snooker at least has some kind of objective criteria, in that average size of breaks and number of centuries/maximums made are easily countable and that once a player is in amongst the balls his opponent cannot influence the outcome. I believe all of these measures are at all-time highs, in some cases comfortably so, which supports the idea that the current standard is the highest it has ever been. Ergo O'Sullivan, as someone clearly ahead of the strongest ever pack, has a very good case to the GOAT. Golf would be another sport where each player essentially plays their own game, and then compares how they did to someone else. However Football is typical of many sports in that you've got an opposition actively trying to stop you at all times. Balague's claim can only ever be subjective.
What could be said in objective terms is that Man City are the most dominant side England has seen during an opening half of the season. The flip would be that they definitely have not (yet) proved themselves to be the best side in Europe, which a number of other English sides have done down the years.

[Janik]

Can Man City do this?

Answer is probably, yes. But it's amazing what confidence can do, isn't it?

[Duncan Gardner]

Thanks Janik- seems I was unfair to Murphy, apologies.

ManU won their first 10 games in 1985/86 and ended up 4th behind West Ham...

[Satchmo Distel]

Man City players would get to the ball quicker than the great sides of past eras. They would not necessarily score a large quantity of goals but, as with Spain in 2010, would grind out a lot of 1-0's. In fact some of their recent wins have been ground out not steamrolled, but that was also the case with Liverpool et al.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Man City's current style of play is mesmerizing, but no, not dissimilar to Liverpool's pass and move under Paisley and Shankly that culminated in 1983 and was arguably taken to an even higher level with Barnes and Beardsley in 1987-88.

It is faster though, that's the thing. It's amazingly paced now. It's like Guardiola studied that team and thought to himself "What if Steve McMahon and Ray Houghton could actually run about a bit as well?"

[Patrick Thistle]

Snooker at least has some kind of objective criteria, in that average size of breaks and number of centuries/maximums made are easily countable and that once a player is in amongst the balls his opponent cannot influence the outcome. I believe all of these measures are at all-time highs, in some cases comfortably so, which supports the idea that the current standard is the highest it has ever been. Ergo O'Sullivan, as someone clearly ahead of the strongest ever pack, has a very good case to the GOAT.

I think Ronnie probably is the GOAT (at least so far). What can't be measured is how easy he makes it look. And you can't measure flair or just the way he does out of the ordinary things. Like deliberately sinking a pink to score a 146 because 147s are too common. That was a royal fuck you to everyone else.

In the pantheon of sporting gods Ronnie is Loki.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Most players today are definitely fitter and more athletic than those from previous eras but are they really more skillful? I'm not altogether certain. Is David Silva, for example, markedly better with the ball than someone like Peter Beardsley or Paul Scholes? He might well be and things like club bias are invariably going to colour perception but I don't really see how.

professional footballers now are technically, and tactically a million fucking miles ahead of the players of the past. the 1970 world cup is the favourite world cup of everyone of a certain age, but every player had 4 times as long on the ball before being challenged than those at the 1998 world cup. And that was 20 years ago.

There's a documentary that they keep showing on BT sport about David Rocastle, (a player that I never actually saw playing as his career was over by the time I got access to UK tv) and I think the thing that is most striking about him is that he looks like a player from 2006, not 1986. Watching England win two under age world cups playing straight down the line Louis Van Gaal Barcajax football really brings home that those kids have grown up watching Messi and they think that this is how you're supposed to play football. It's also really obvious that players like Anthony Martial, Ousmane Dembele and kylian Mbappe have grown up watching Messi and Henry, and are taking those players as a baseline, in much the same way that Henry would just have been another shit brainless winger if he hadn't seen ronaldo, and realised what was possible.

[SouthdownRebel]

It depends how we define "better" as well, which increases the subjectivity. There are plenty of teams who have been technically and tactically superb and yet utterly dreadful to watch. Personally, I'd prefer a team that falls a bit short on those measures but provides great entertainment value. Even better if it's the team I support and have an emotional connection with.

[Satchmo Distel]

Guardiola has absorbed what he loved about Liverpool + Brazil 82 + France 84 into the Barcelona system and then imported that to City with players who are faster and fitter than those predecessors had. For example, De Bruyne may not be technically any better (or worse) than Dalglish but he's doing it in a far bigger frame at higher pace. Silva might be Beardsley but he's got a super fast Argentinian striker who is somewhat better than John Aldridge.

Furthermore, if you say that a team is only as good as its weakest player, a team with today's megabucks is always going to win that argument. Even the greatest Liverpool sides had a weak link or two.

[Sam]

Also pertinent: Guillem Balagué has a certain interest in bigging up the achievements of a team managed by someone he's written a biography of.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

also the relationship between him and mourinho is deeply rancorous and personal.

[RobM]

It's not really what he's getting at but the first half in this game is the best 45 minutes of football I've ever seen, probably not for the purist but the TV highlights only hint at the utter bedlam that day.

I was in the Roker End that Walker scored his hat-trick into, utterly fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysDg9JodQnY

[1974ddr]

Surely you can only be measured by the standards of the time in which you compete? Modern players are significantly fitter, faster, stronger and bigger than their predecessors of even twenty years ago, never mind fifty. But does that make... let's say Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain... a better player than Tom Finney, for example? And that's without even mentioning the Shankly / Keegan / Finney story- oh damn, I've mentioned it.
The same applies in most other sports- golf was mentioned upthread, and I know next to nothing about golf, but even there you have to take into account the improvements made to equipment design so the balls fly farther, and I dare say there are other changes. Snooker might be an exception, but my brother- who knows about these things- has bored me on several occasions going on about the way pockets are cut wider for some tournaments to 'assist' break scores.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

actually it does. They can do things that those players could only dream of, but only because they were born later, and didn't have to make it up themselves.

The way you can spot a great player of the past, is that they look like football from the future. They have to invent what becomes normal for the people who are watching them.

[Satchmo Distel]

Today's Man City performance v Spurs must very close to the best league performance ever seen in England, only let down by some of the finishing. Spurs were slower to every ball, and even the City keeper was nailing 60 yard inch-perfect passes. De Bruyne's vision is just amazing: always picks the right pass, reads the play so well at high speed, very hard to play against. Some the interplay and angles were breath-takingly good, and the ability to regain possession astounding at times.

I doubt we'll see a performance that good at the World Cup.

[Patrick Thistle]

They seem to be trouncing everyone, don't they.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Kevin De Bruyne was a cut above everyone else on the pitch today.

[Patrick Thistle]

So, what do we reckon? Is anyone going to beat Man City in the Premier League this season?

[SouthdownRebel]

The only way I see it happening is if they take their foot of the gas after they've won the title. Which might be some time in late February.

[N est à?]

They're at Palace new years eve, we'll do those mugs, nae bother.

[Hot Orange]

So, what do we reckon? Is anyone going to beat Man City in the Premier League this season?

Is anyone going to draw with them, even? The only game they haven't won was one in which they played with ten men for 45 minutes, back in August.

[Patrick Thistle]

They're at Palace new years eve, we'll do those mugs, nae bother.

Very, very close to coming true.