My opinion is he is a very talented player and great at a certain level and has achieved a lot at a certain level. But, no, i do not consider him to be a true great the way a Pele, Maradona and others were. The term ''great'' is one of the most wildly overused terms in sport.
At international tournament level, Maradona could do what he did at club level. He could do that WITHOUT the help of his team mates. He could get the ball, run at defences and tear them apart, scoring and creating goals galore. Ronaldo has never been able to do that, so lets please end this argument about him being up there with the greats who could reproduce their great club form at this level.

Jimmy White was a huge talent and had more natural talent than Steve Davis, but only one of them was a truly great player.

Yeah that was what I was doing. Thanks for your input.

I know what a flat track bully is. Not winning the World Cup doesn't mean that someone is nothing but a flat track bully.

And if the likes of Nadal or Djokovic were playing in Sampras' era, they wouldn't have got a sniff at Wimbledon. It was a fast court for fast, attacking players. Just because that has been all but drummed out of the sport doesn't mean that it's legendary proponents need to sniffed about after the fact.

And your confusion continues.

Its a shame that you forget what you say almost immediately you say it in order to justify your irrational likes or dislikes.

Allow us to recap. In the discussion about Mourinho - someone you disliked, you state that winning trophies is not the mark of greatness. Yes Mourinho may have won trophies but where was the style you asked. Thats what people remember you said. Brazil 82, Holland 74 and 78, now they were greats. The fact they didn't win the World Cup didn't matter because they were stylish.

Now we have Ronaldo, a man who has broken every record around and an undoubtedly stylish footballer, but wait, Dixon doesn't like Ronaldo much so hang on, lets have a change of tack, suddenly this doesn't matter and he can't be a great UNLESS he wins the world cup. Suddenly the trophy matters.Style and romance is dead its the bottom line that matters. So much so that in your ham fisted attempt to liken it to other sports you use Steve Davis and Jimmy White as the example . Jimmy White the footballing equivalent of Holland in 74 or Brazil in 82 suddenly can't be great because he didn't win! Whereas Davis, the very epitome of Jose Mourinho's winning mentality is the only show in town!!!

You have also managed to do this whilst calling Ronaldo a flat track bully. A flat track bully who has won everything imaginable in the biggest contests imaginable against the biggest sides in the world but deserves the title because he didn't beat Iceland and game in which if he had scored a hat trick you would have used do demonstrate why you consider him (wrongly!) to be a flat track bully in the first place!!!

The discussion wasn't about Ronaldo though, it was about the platform used to judge a players greatness however given your total confusion and about turning I think its best left alone.

No, back then Wimbledon had become a serving contest, not a true test of tennis ability. It was killing the game as a spectacle and that's why they changed the courts and the balls.
The Sampras vs Ivanisovich 5 set final was the final straw. A so called tennis match that had 1.5 shots per rally. That was not tennis!
Today's players are vastly superior all round players who can play on every kind of surface, fast, medium or slow.
The likes of Sampras wouldn't be in the top 50 if they were around today when actual tennis ability counts massively more than just being able to wack down unreturnable serves.

First off, I should not have used the Jimmy White comparison as that goes against the point I was making.
Back to Cruyff.
I have been talking all along about performance.
As with Maradona and the other true greats, Cruyff took his great club performances to the World Cup.
He made the Brazilians look second rate in 74.
All I am saying is Ronaldo does not come remotely close to performing at this level. He's had several tournaments to do it, but has failed every time. How can anyone dispute this?

Oh, and since when did Euro club football suddenly become more important than World Cups or the Euros? The European Cup has been going since the 50's. Just because it's got dragged out group stage and runners up and third place teams in it, that is no reason to suddenly start vastly overating it's importance.
What we seeing right now dwarfs the ClL in evey kind of way. Always has and always will!

There are no such things as fast, medium or slow in modern tennis. Every court has become much of a muchness. Wimbledon just about plays faster than the French Open and both hard court slams are way on the slow side. The reason today's players are 'vastly superior all round players' is because slower, defensive play is favoured above all else. One of the beauties of tennis was the variety of styles, how they matched up together and how they adapted to the changing conditions each season. That element has all but been killed off. Things may have got too fast at Wimbledon in the 90s but it's now gone the complete other direction and become simply an endurance sport.

And considering the likes of Raonic and Isner have been in the top ten in this supposed 'golden era', the idea that Sampras wouldn't even be top 50 is just so divorced from reality that it doesn't bare taking seriously.

Ronaldo is being punished for his consistency, clearly a trait Dixon does not admire!

What does "more important" have to do with anything? We are talking about which is the best platform on which to judge a player.

I am saying that a platform which involves the player playing with his team mates and playing over the course of half a season, during the season, home and away year in year out against the best players in the world is a good way to judge.

You are saying the coming together of a group of individuals based on an accident of birth that they have no control over, once eery four years, assuming they are all fit at the end of their normal season and for only a handful of games is a good way to judge.

You are basing yours on history and how football once was when the best players were spread all over the place and rarely played each other. I am basing mine on the reality of football as it is now.

Do you guys think that Messi and Ronaldo could play for an average team and they would still win the league like what Maradona did with Napoli

Is it possible that Messi and Ronaldo could play in an average international team and still would win the World Cup like what Maradona did with Argentina

Look im not saying Messi and Ronaldo are not all time greats. They are two of the greatest players who ever played the game. But you could never compare these two players with Pele and Maradona and it is not because they won a World Cup, because you can be one of the greats by not winning the World Cup. But to be one of the true greats and to be a legend of the game, they need to do what Pele and Maradona did for they country

Messi and Ronaldo have never really performed well for their country on the biggest stage. Why, well i dont know. Maybe expectation, maybe the pressure of not letting down your country or maybe because your not playing with the same players week in week out

Why is Messi and Ronaldo great for their club, but is average when they play for their country in major tournaments. I think it is because they are not playing with the same amount of quality than they do with Barcelona and Real Madrid

So what Maradona did playing in an average Argentina team and winning games for them all on his own was something that will probably never happen again and yes i know he had ten other team mates, but without Maradona, Argentina would never have won that World Cup. So thats why he is regarded as a legend in the game and thats why Messi and Ronaldo are not regarded like that yet

Argentina were not an average team, very far from it. They were certainly capable of lifting a cup they'd won two tournaments previous.

Yes, but would they won the World Cup if Maradona was not playing because there were games in that tournament that Maradona won on his own like the England game. Alright the first one was a handball but that second goal was one of the greatest goals of all time
The semi final against Belgium where he scored twice and one of them was when he went round about five players and scored off balance. And the final where he controlled the game and produced a great pass for the Argentina player to score the winner

Now are you telling me that Argentina would still have won the World Cup without Maradonas goals, assists and his individual brilliance

They were good enough to beat any of the teams they played yes. We don't know what would have happened, but we do know that if Maradona hadn't played there wouldn't have been an empty space and a load of Argentinians passing to nothing and wondering why they were a man down.

Well Argentina would have went into the tournament without a World class player who could win a game on his own, so it would have been tough for them to win that World Cup. The last World Cup Argentina had Messi and what did he do

Well not a lot really

Because we did not see the real Messi. And thats why he wont be talked about in the same company as Maradona. He maybe a better player but he is not a legend like what Maradona is

You're defining football by international football alone though, exemplified by the bizarre idea of disregarding all the leagues, European cups and world player awards that the players you mention have won. What defines a great player isn't set in stone.

Maradona's the best player to ever live as far as I'm concerned, but if you seriously think he was constantly surrounded by a load of unknown jobbers he dragged through games I believe you only know him from compilation videos.

They reached the final you know.

Once again, this conversation was not started to decry the achievements of Pele or Maradona or anyone else it was simply saying that in the modern game club football is now a far more accurate measurement of greatness than international football.

But they did not reach final because of Messi

They reached the final because the team was good enough to win the World Cup

Did Messi do anything in that World Cup which would say was outstanding apart from scoring a couple of goals

Can you remember a game where you thought Messi was out of this world and made you think that he is the greatest player of all time

Ah so now to be a great player you not only have to succeed with your nation, your nation has to be perceived as being rubbish and you have to do it by yourself??

Are we to believe that George Best's achievements with Man Utd are now no longer enough for him to be considered a great because he failed to single-handedly lead Northern Ireland to World Cup glory?

This thread is getting more stupid by the second.

Brazil were always quite good, so bad news for Pele's standing.

Did i say Messi was not a great player

Did i say Messi was not an All time great

Did i say that if a player does not win the World Cup on his own then he is not a great player

No i dont think i did, if you read my previous comments

I have actually praised Messi achievements and what he has done in the game. He is one of the greatest players the game has ever seen. Im even a big fan of Messi and i love watching him play

All im saying is that he has never played as well for Argentina than he does for Barcelona. This does not make him less of a great player, but to be seen as a legend of the game and to be talked about in the same breath as Maradona he has to play well for Argentina like he does for Barcelona

Why? He's enjoyed around a decade of bewildering consistency with Barcelona that evaded Maradona through his career and he's still got years in him.

He's already spoken about in the same breath as Maradona, he's the player who finally broke the 'next Maradona' curse for one.

No he doesn't. Why don't you say that in order to be considered a legend Maradona should have had to play as well for Barcelona as Messi is doing?

So you are saying that Messi from now until he retires could play badly for Argentina and in the next World Cup and he will still be talked about as the greatest player of all time

He didn't say that but it's true so erm, yeah.