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Football fans are renowned world over for their passion and support that has led to football being the world’s most popular sport. On the odd occasion, football fans can drive your head to the cleaners.
What happens when you mix half baked knowledge with fans of lower IQ? Pointless banter. Here are the top 5 most annoying debates in world football today :
5) Arsene Wenger vs Jose Mourinho
With Arsenal and Chelsea having squared off against each other just a few days ago, the usual comparisons between fans erupted as due course during banter. The routine allegation of Wenger’s lack of trophies in comparison to Mourinho was brought up while none of these fans could comprehend that Arsene Wenger in professional and punditry circles is widely regarded as the one manager that revolutionized modern English football and has been the singular force instrumental in the transformation of Arsenal from a good English Club into a European giant with a net expenditure of 10 million, providing their fans with sustained success, club legends and a state of the art 65,000 capacity stadium to match Europe’s elite.
That said, Mourinho is a giant too enjoying varied success across Europe and as you already know, debates like these are pointless.
4) Ronaldo vs Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo’s immaturity in selling his image publicly doesn’t affect him but it does garner unwarranted hate. Even before he could begin a string of consistent performances at Manchester United, fans across different clubs began comparing him to the great Brazilian Ronaldo and dismissed his contention against the mighty Brazilian even though Cris was just a boy of 18. The judgments to this day still revolve around the now superstar Cristiano whose detractors use this ploy to belittle his magnificent achievements against former greats.
How these fans compare two players with different playing styles whilst one is retired and the other one’s career is far from over, is beyond me.
3) Gerrard/Lampard vs Scholes
Chelsea and Liverpool’s rise in the Premier League circuit inevitably pitted their icons against Manchester United’s own midfield general Paul Scholes. While Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard relatively peaked at the same time, Scholes enjoyed his peak in the early 2000s as a prolific attacking midfielder(whom most of my generation were too young to witness) and then switched to a deep lying playmaker role where he excelled and was the fulcrum of United’s sides from 2004 to 2011. Lampard and Gerrard being completely contrasting players offer no basis for comparison, yet Chelsea and Liverpool fans constantly gloat over whose better. While most Liverpool and Chelsea fans ridiculed Scholes while Chelsea and Liverpool began to make a mark, his retirement tributes that flowed from every fellow professional silenced their scorn once for all. Xavi and Pirlo’s heroics later on educated the uninitiated about the role of a deep lying midfielder, a position currently that Gerrard and Lampard are both finding edgy, to put it in its mildest.
2) Pele vs Maradona
The most ludicrous aspect of this debate is that the people that deliberate over this issue have seen neither Pele nor Diego Maradona in action during their playing days. Their deductions are purely based on Youtube videos and old clips, a very unreliable source indeed especially when television broadcasting was not as extensive as it is today. This comparison is the most bizarre as both these players played in two different eras, both of which were substantially contrasting. The pitches were different, tactics were miles apart and the footballs were not the same as well. Pele barely has any video clips of his career and thus his heroics were restricted to journalistic accounts and his World Cup performances while a major portion of Maradona’s club career as well as his international career has been well documented.
It’s tragic that the lack of personal experience does not impede “know-it-all” fans to ensure that football’s greatest players are reduced to mere pawns in demeaning football banter.
1) Messi vs Ronaldo
This one deserves to be number one. No other football argument has transcended beyond the sane boundaries of discourse to complete lunacy. What started out as usual banter has now grown into fight for an identity bordering on personal hatred.
Forgetting that they are players with strengths that are influential in their own way, these fans have almost stuck to a bandwagon of sorts and religiously support either player as if their life was genuinely affected by the outcome of their personal squabbles with rival fans. Ironically, both players have great admiration for each other and owe it to the delusional bunch that they could use their time debating things that matter. Personal issues, financial matters, charity contributions and bizarre facts are thrown about as if they influenced the outcome of Messi and Ronaldo on the football pitch.
Instead of acknowledging their genius and being privileged to watch two heavyweights in one era going head to head, time is wasted on who pays their taxes and who has the hotter girlfriend.
I love football with all my heart, but sometimes, pointless banter drives me to take a break watching a sport as unappealing as cricket.The word “banter” has lost all meaning.
