Completely irrelevent!

There has always been quality club players who were unable to step up and produce their best at international tournament level. There has always been players who could deliver the goods for club and country. Nothing has changed in that part of the game!
Maradona was able to lift the 86 Argentina team to a higher level and win the WC. Ronaldo cannot and never had come close to being able to lift Portugal.
That is because Maradona is a true great and Ronaldo is not.
When I think of Maradona, I never think of great talent but then think of flat track bully and what's he like when the going gets tough.

Take out Maradona and Ronaldo respectively, Argentina were still a much better team than Portugal are.

Look, Ronaldo hasn't won the World Cup but Alberto Gilardino has. I think we can all draw the obvious conclusion from that.

Now why do think they are up there with Pele and Maradona when both of these players

Won the World Cup

Pele won the World Cup three times. He scored in two finals
He scored over a thousand goals in his carreer
He is regarded as the best player ever to play the game

Diego Maradona won the World Cup practically on his own
He won games by scoring some of the greatest goals of all time
He either scored or assisted nearly every goal scored by Argentina in that tournament
He reached the final again with Argentina at the next World Cup
He played for an unfashionable club called Napoli and won them a title and a Uefa cup

Now apart from scoring Fifty goals a season winning World player of the year and winning titles and Champions Leagues

What have Ronaldo and Messi won when playing for their country and what impact have they made at World Cups

"Now apart from scoring Fifty goals a season winning World player of the year and winning titles and Champions Leagues"

Yeah, ignore all that meaningless stuff that gets nobody anywhere in football.

This sounds like a "what have the Romans ever done for us" parody...

I could space out all of Ronaldo and Messi's achievements and reduce Maradonna and Pele's to one sentence if you like.

And this may surprise you but I HAVE actually heard of Napoli.

I said they were a unfashionable club at the time because before Maradona joined them they were not winning anything. I did not say that nobody had heard of them. And your comment in the other thread saying that i said that Ronaldo was not an all time great. Well i did say he was an all time great but you cant compare his achievments to what Pele and Maradona achieved playing for their country. These two players reached the pinnacle of their profession by winning a World Cup. Some people would say winning a Champuons League is a bigger achievement but i cant see it, because when you are playing in a World Cup you are playing against the best players in the world and on the biggest stage of all being watched by billions of people around the world

Which of the world's very best aren't being regularly featured in the Champions League?

The argument about players "doing it at international level" has never worked for me. International football is a bit of a lottery. You don't choose where you're born. Some people get to choose which country to play for but even that is out of your hands when you're born. Playing for Barcelona or Real Madrid isn't just about where you're from.

You don't have to work hard to be born in Argentina. But you do have to work hard and be good enough for Barcelona. By doing it consistently over the years against the world's best at the best clubs in Europe you are the world's best. And that IS in their hands. They have to be good enough and work hard to get to that level and do the things that they've done.

By saying they have to "do it at the World Cup" or whatever then you're only really allowing players from countries like Brazil and Spain to be up there with the best, and they have to hope that there are other good players born in their country. They can't buy better players or transfer to a country with better prospects. What if Messi was born in Iceland? Would he still be expected to win international tournaments before he can be compared to Maradona and Pele? Or Ronaldo? Portugal aren't exactly a great side. He could only do so much on his own.

Poor old George Best never got to go to a World Cup.

I was actually going to bring him up.

Robbie Fowler didn't have much of an international career. He chose a bad time to be a good English striker.

Ronaldo - the record goalscorer for Real Madrid who has just won the CL and has scored against the best defences the world has to offer, winning every domestic and individual honour the game has cannot "rise to the occasion" because he didn't beat the mighty Iceland on his own?

You are putting Iceland ahead of Barca, Man Utd, Chelsea, City, Arsenal, PSG, Bayern, Dortmund, Juve, Inter, Milan as a measure of a players ability?

How much did he carry Man Utd to the CL and to domestic titles?

You have absolutely lost the place altogether here.

Ronaldo has lifted Real Madrid to a different level and lifted Man Utd to a different level.

You may also want to look at the quality of that Argentina team that everyone is so happy to dismiss. Unless you put Ronaldo in the same XI as Maradona its a bloody stupid comparison.

Maradona was a genius and I won't get into a scenario where Im downplaying his achievements or saying he is better or worse than Ronaldo . What I am saying is the measure of talent and ability in the modern game is club football at the top NOT international football.

If Maradona was playing today he would be judged based on playing for a top club and what he was winning there not whether he could hit a patch of form in a random July at the same time as his team mates randomly did, oh and stay fit for that month too.

Dumb reply.

At tournaments, Ronaldo doesn't look close to being world class, never mind a true alltime great! While he can't be held responsible for the performances of the other players in the team he is responsible for his own performances and time and again he fails at this level.
He's like the football version of Grahame Hick, who used to smash to pieces county cricket attacks, but when the ball was fizzing round his ears at 95 mph he was found wanting.

Yeah, like UTD and RM never won the bit ones without Ronaldo.
Maradona joined a crap Napoli side and took then to the title. That is a world of difference to Ronaldo at UTD and RM.
Ronaldo couldn't even inspire his team to beat a country with a population of 300,000. His own individual performance was absymal as it is many times at this level.

What this has to do with the primacy of international football over club football, who knows?

You keep talking about performing "at this level" while failing to realise that the "level" Ronaldo is performing at with Real Madrid is often HIGHER than the level of a Portugal Vs Iceland International match.

Performing in CL games as he and Messi and the worlds top players do month in month out from the knockout stages onwards is a bigger test than a tournament in the close season when they should all be resting after a hard club season.

It isn't a dig at the World Cup its just being logical. If you were testing anything to see which was best you would want to offer up the best testing conditions possible and a summer tournament which may amount to a handful of games with people they rarely play with is in no way as good or accurate a test of player abilities as a much larger number of games, season in season out with the guys they play with every week. The likes of the World Cup was previously the big test simply because that was really the only time the worlds best players came together but it is a poor way to judge players. By your own admission its a poor way to judge players because you yourself were referencing the Brazil team of 82 and the Dutch teams of 74 and 78 as being great but they didn't win. You cannot now move the goalposts and say that you have to win the WC in order to be great. You are shifting your argument for the sake of it.

The top players of today have all proved themselves in the CL and with their club sides and whilst International glory is nice and those lucky enough to be born in the right countries will of course seek it, its no longer "fit for purpose" (copyright Codeblue) as a measure of a player.

The defending at club level these days is pretty dire!
Even Barca are not that good at it!
Clubs are not able to stifle Messi or Ronaldo, but at international tournament level they do stifle them and they have not been able to overcome that. That is just a hard fact.
The prancing primadonna is reduced to bitching about the mighty Iceland being too defensive.
Maradona had lumps kicked out of him, man marked and teams packing their defence in fear of him. He found a way to beat all of that because he was truly great!

Hang on, just to stop and clarify. Is it your opinion that Cristiano Ronaldo is not a great player?

Ronaldo is just one player used as an example, focus on the actual point please.

Is it just me, or has this thread gone off of the basis of Belgium v Italy somewhat??

Why do you care, the game has finished.

Petty.

Okay, fair enough, sorry, please go back to trying to figure out if Ronaldo is good player or not.

It refers to sports in general.
Sports stars who are what is called a ''flat track bully''
Those who look world beaters at a certain level and when everything is in their favour. BUT, at the very top when things get really tough, they are found wanting.
Grahame Hick was classic case in cricket. Great at county level but nowhere near as good when facing really quick bowlers at test level.
Mike Tyson. Great when going forward beating the crap out of fighters who were there just trying to survive. Folded like a pack of cards when faced with someone who had a go and hit back.
Pete Sampras. Unbeatable on ultra fast courts hitting countless aces, unreturnable serves and having huge numbers of easy points with his first volley. Any surface which wasn't lightening quick and he was made to look a complete chump. For instance, At his peak on the slow clay of France, he was thrashed in three easy sets by a player outside the top 200. The same again by a player outside the top 100.
He was extremely lucky to have been playing in the era that he was when all but the French courts suited his game. If he was playing today he'd be a nobody.