Would it be valid to rate a footballer if one has never watched him before? :X It's something that always pops up in my mind, after all, at most we have stories of their past glory and a few video clips of highlights if we're lucky that they were born in the era of TV.
Well, I feel it's only fair to rate a player of our time. Couple of reasons.
It takes more than some highlights to judge a player, and that naturally means we should watch a whole match. After all, a player should also be judged for his game away from the ball and the 99% of the game that aren't highlights. Take Ozil for example. Fantastic assist record, but what will probably be forgotten years down would be his sublime off the ball movement, those exquisite through balls that his teammates fail to convert, those nifty little passes no one without his footballing brain would ever see and attempt. To fully enjoy Ozil's game is not to only admire the goals (though his are typically taken with such aplomb and elegance) or the assists, but to understand that he plays more like a puppetmaster, hiding in the shadows and manipulating the team. He remains languid almost the entire game, and then catches the opponent off guard with a move so outrageous, yet simple.
I feel that such attributes would both be wholly left out in replays and wouldn't leave an impression on people in the future. Ozil isn't doing well in terms of goals/assists in the past two seasons, but anyone who watches and understands the game will rate him highly. But that's only possible if you watch, and even rewatch the whole match.
It's also only expedient to rate someone we've seen before and not just through hearsay. We can rave about the great Di Stefano, but he played four decades ago, and I'm not going to judge someone I can never watch play!
We must also take into account that football has changed in recent times; Football is saturated with an emphasis on talent, technicality, training, fitness high-tech sports science and all that jazz, whereas in the past it wasn't so. The standard of footballers has gone up as the sport has become more professional and commercialized, whilst in the past (at least in the English leagues), many footballers were just your average blokes who trained hard, who smoked and drank copiously. We'll never have another Crazy Gang from Wimbledon in the top flight anymore. So do players then simply look better because the average talent pool was so shallow? Again, we can't know for sure.
Andrea Pirlo is definitely the best the game has ever seen. Pirlo is from Italy and plays center midfield. He doesn't have the skill and power as most top class players but his understanding for the game is outstanding. Pirlo is only 5' 10" but still performs, he was recently in the champions league final playing against FC Barcelona. Pirlo!!!
