[ad_1]
Attribute this to the never-ending need to create “one thing,” but the all-time “record” (it’s in quotes for a reason) for most goals in a career that Cristiano Ronaldo is chasing or has already broken – he scored. his 760 goal on Jan. 21, which either surpasses Josef Bican’s 759 or keeps him behind Bican’s 805-goal mark, depending on his measure, just isn’t, well … a “thing.”
This isn’t Hank Aaron chasing Babe Ruth and getting chased by Barry Bonds a generation later or, when it happens, LeBron James getting close to Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It is an artifice. By its very nature, soccer doesn’t work that way – it’s vast, messy, and disorganized. There is also less sense of history. (Even casual baseball fans probably know who Bonds and Mark McGwire are, as well as the guys whose records they broke: Aaron and Roger Maris. Are casual English soccer fans that familiar with their counterparts, Dixie Dean and Jimmy Greaves? ?)
So why is the goal record really flawed? Let me count the ways.
First of all, it relies on scoring international and club goals in a career that, frankly, no one did until recently. If we had, then the guy who held the record before him would be a household name, if only as a legendary, unattainable pacemaker, like Cy Young with his 511 baseball victories or 99.94 career test average. Don Bradman in cricket. But is not. Ask around. Survey your friends. If someone tells you that they knew Josef “Pepi” Bican was the all-time top scorer in soccer before last month, it’s probably one of three things: Czech, soccer historian, or liar.
Then there is the fact that the whole premise is flawed. Counts “official” matches (ie league matches and cup competitions) at club level, but adds friendlies at international level. Talk about apples and oranges. Why one and not the other? Are we sure that one of those international friendlies at the end of the season against Latvia on a rainy Tuesday, with a maximum of 10 substitutions per team, is as significant as a competitive club match?
– Stream ESPN FC daily on ESPN + (US only)
– ESPN + Spectator Guide: Bundesliga, Serie A, MLS, FA Cup and more
The other big problem is that for the records to be meaningful, we need reliable data that can really be compared, and we just don’t have it. It is the nature of the history of this sport. There is no central authority for record keeping, and the professional game evolved in its own messy way over many years before reaching a semblance of order only in the 1970s. And that’s before you get into the minor inconveniences of wars, politics and nationalism that get in the way of sport.
Ronaldo may feel like the owner of an all-time record, but the dispute over accurate goal totals means we must look for other ways to distinguish the game’s legends. MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP via Getty Images
Take Bican, whose total career goals are:
– 703, if only top category goals and international goals are counted, or
– 759, if some of their goals in international club tournaments that existed at the time and were not sanctioned are excluded, mainly because the sanctioning body, UEFA, was not founded until 1954, the year before Bican’s retirement , or
– 800, if only first team and international goals are counted, or
– 805, if you pay attention to historical sites like rsssf.com, even though they themselves admit that they are missing some data (meaning they may have gotten more scores), or
– 827, if you listen to the official historian of the Czech FA, or
– 5,000, if you pay attention to Bican himself, who was probably joking
Then what is? We are not going to force Ronaldo to play until 80 so he can reach 5,000, right? (That being said, if I could, I probably would.)
Also do not seek help from FIFA with this. They will tell you that the only goal records they keep are in their own competitions: World Cups and the like. That’s right. Why would they get involved in this hornet’s nest?
(And this is not a blow to Bican, by the way. He was one of the best footballers of his time, a star of Austria’s “wunderteam” of the 1930s who, just before the war, fled the Nazis and opted for playing for the country of his inheritance instead of his birth and spent his career in what was then Czechoslovakia).
Bican is not the only one that is objectively difficult to compare. Pele, synonymous with goal-scoring prowess, finds himself in a similar situation. Brazil didn’t have a national league until 1971, when he was 30 years old. Until then, most of their league’s football was played with Santos in the Paulista championship, a regional league in Sao Paulo. It was probably the best region in the country, but simply put, he did not play with some of the best teams in the country, like Flamengo, Botafogo, Gremio or Fluminense, on a regular basis.
Bican, top row, fourth from left, played in an era that is fundamentally impossible to measure in terms of goals and totals, although that shouldn’t rule out his past achievements. Schirner Sportfoto-Archiv / Picture Alliance via Getty Images
However, that does not mean that he did not face maximum opposition. In addition to the powers in the state of Sao Paulo, such as Palmeiras, Corinthians and Sao Paulo, he played in the Copa Libertadores (the equivalent of the European Cup), in the Taca Brasil (effectively the National Cup, facing regional champions against each other) and, of course, many prestigious friendlies. Download a spreadsheet of all his goals and you’ll see that he toured the world most summers – in the summer of 1963, for example, Santos came to Europe and played nine games in four weeks – in addition to playing in several regional parties. All-star team and even for the Brazilian Coast Guard early in his career.
Tours and all-star teams don’t count toward his “official” total (whatever that means), but as the Brazilians point out, he wanted to take on the best in the world and that was his way of doing it. (And so, by the way, is how you get to his famous 1,283 goal total.)
GAB MARCOTTI
Read the latest news and reactions from ESPN FC Senior Writer Gabriele Marcotti.
This should be enough to convince you of the absurdity of these goal-based comparisons, although you could go further. It could be pointed out that Bican scored many of his goals during World War II, when many of the best players were in the military and others suffered from malnutrition. Or that Pelé, for political reasons, was never allowed to move to Europe and compete at that level.
Neither of them is to blame for having played in another time when the world was different and, in addition, war and politics got in the way. It does not diminish the achievements of either of the two and both belong to the greats of all time; it’s just that you can’t use goal rankings to measure greatness. Has no sense.
Hell, it would go further. While it can be argued that Ronaldo and Lionel Messi (who is a few years younger and whose numbers could end up in the same neighborhood) can be compared because they are contemporaries, it still feels silly. Yes, he scores industrial amounts of goals, despite the fact that neither of them is a center forward. But the best point of reference? In the last 20 years, no one in Europe’s four major leagues has scored more than 40 league goals. Messi and Ronaldo have done it three times each. Between them, they have scored 30 or more league goals 16 times, more than the rest of the European center forward have achieved in the last 20 years. And only two, besides Messi and Ronaldo, have done it more than once.
If you need goal totals to validate your respective greatness, try it out by size. But it really isn’t, is it?
Leave lifetime score totals to other sports. Soccer is much bigger than that. Not to mention that it is much more complicated to compare between times.
Source: espn.co.uk
[ad_2]
