What Else Messi Must Do To Be Called 'The Best Of All Time'?

What more has Lionel Messi got to do to earn the title of ‘best player of all time’? It’s a tough question to answer; different people will say different things. Some may say that he has to win a World Cup; others could say that he has to win things with a ‘smaller team’.
It might as well be accepted now that nobody will ever unanimously agree on his status compared to the other contenders, Diego Maradona or Pele, all he can do is change the mind of as many people as possible but accept that complete agreement is impossible. When has a topic on football ever been unanimously agreed upon? The greatest manager, the greatest goal, the greatest team – all are up for debate.
Of course this is written in response to Lionel Messi scoring his 76^th goal of the calendar year and surpassing the best of Pele – and there’s still a month and a half to go of the rest of the year! This represents Messi achieving one of the realistic records of Pele; his record of 1,281 goals is untouchable (unless Messi begins to play games for his national army as Pele did!) as it was set in a different generation. So, as Messi chalks off this record and begins to approach the all-time record of Gerd Muller with 9 goals to go (Barcelona have 9 more games to play this year) you must start to ask what he must do to become the best of all time. I would like to challenge 2 beliefs or criteria that people hold, I’m not saying that it’s wrong to hold that belief; I just wish to highlight what I believe to be flaws in the logic.

A common argument in the debate regarding the best player of all time; Pele and Maradona have both won a World Cup while Messi has not. I personally take issue with the notion of judging players ability on the achievements of a team. If you were to take the respective players out of their national teams, you would reach the conclusion that Messi’s Argentina team are significantly weaker than Maradona’s Argentina or Pele’s Brazil. So therefore you could also say that it would be a far greater achievement for Messi to win a World Cup than it would be for Maradona or Pele to do so. After all, neither player will provide the match defining save or play the pinpoint pass to the star player (themselves) so therefore the quality of their team-mates is incredibly important. So how about individual honours then? Well, Messi has won the Ballon d’Or 3 times in a row and looks to make it four, which would be a world record. So he is the best, right? Wrong. At the time of Maradona and Pele, the Ballon d’Or was only available to be won by European players at European clubs; a change in the rules in 1995 made Messi eligible to win. So we’re still waiting for individual statistics to decide which is the best.
How about goals? Well who said goals define how good a player is! A game of football contains much more than goals. Also, neither players were or are out and out goal scorers; Pele himself describes his position as attacking midfield. It would be like judging strikers on their pass completion rate; a statistic which is secondary to their primary function. There’s also the factor of the quality of the defence that they’re scoring against, showing that even individual statistics are influenced by other players. Unfortunately, there is no statistic for ‘number of games won single handedly’ or ‘biggest influence on match’ so we should be resigned to arguing over many different ones for as long as the argument remains.

It’s no coincidence that the people who say this are the people who watched Pele or Maradona while they were in their youth. This can transcend into all walks of life; films and music especially. The people that you idolised or the films or music that you fell in love with always be the best, in your eyes. I’m not criticising this, I’m sure that I’ll be guilty of this too later in life. I doubt that I will ever believe anyone other than Messi to be the best player that has graced this planet, even if young Thiago Messi grows up to reach the same heights as his father!
This will be because I will remember Messi by the effect that he had on me, the excitement that I felt every time I saw him grace a football pitch, the way I would pay extra attention to the game every time he took possession of the ball. I will forget all his failures and misdemeanours; I won’t remember his penalty miss in the Champions League semi-final or his mistake which lead to Drogba scoring in the first leg of that tie. I will always remember the best of him; the four goals against Arsenal or the goals in the Champions League final. I am sure that this is what the generation older than me do with Maradona and Pele. I don’t believe any player could break this barrier down, no matter how good he is; I believe the key to this debate is that it’s a generational thing, which only goes further to extend my point that not everyone will ever agree.

One person seems to be ignored in the ‘best player of all time’ debate. People keen to add another name to the mix may mention Zidane or Gascoigne but Cristiano Ronaldo will not get a mention. I’m only playing devil’s advocate, I don’t believe him to be the greatest of all time. It’s curious, with there being a fierce debate about if Messi truly is the greatest current player, his competitor is not mentioned in the same breath as him in the ‘best of all time’ category. However, put Ronaldo in a different generation and I’m sure he would be mentioned in the pub discussions alongside Messi, Maradona and Pele.  Scoring over a goal a game for over 100 games is a phenomenal achievement and none of the other greats could manage a goal scoring record like that.
Let us return to my original question: What more does Messi have to do to earn the title ‘the best of all time’? My answer would be that he can’t earn that title, but definitely not through lack of ability. With a lack of a definite stat to compare the three contenders with, we’re resigned to compare achievements that fail to provide the full picture. Therefore opinion is king here, and opinion is shaped by the generation that you’re from. For me, Messi being considered as the greatest of all time is the best that he could hope for; unanimously being considered the best is damn near impossible.
Follow Myself and Soccerisma on Twitter: FanaticNeutral and Soccerisma