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Pedro Porro

SubZero said:
A bit exaggerated for effect I'll admit, but they were far from a one plus one equals two in my book. Though I would not use words as phenomenal, brilliant and magnificent either. Toby for example, was great in the air but slow as dirt and was nothing special after Jan left. Jan was pretty versatile, faster and had the heart of a lion, but a Ledley King he was not. What made them so fantastic in my view, were their superb anticipation and sharing tasks in between themselves as well as organizing the entire back line. I'd say that a great defence is the one you don't see, not stopping chances but reducing the probability for them to happen in the first place. That's organizing.
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They were great when they also had 2 brilliant defensive screeners in front of them in Dembele and Wanyama. But I agree, as good as they were, neither in their own right were as good as Ledley or dare I say it Rsol.
 
Robspur12 said:
They were great when they also had 2 brilliant defensive screeners in front of them in Dembele and Wanyama. But I agree, as good as they were, neither in their own right were as good as Ledley or dare I say it Rsol.
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Who is that good? No one playing in the Premier League these days.
 
Robspur12 said:
They were great when they also had 2 brilliant defensive screeners in front of them in Dembele and Wanyama. But I agree, as good as they were, neither in their own right were as good as Ledley or dare I say it Rsol.
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I didn't want to stir that pot, so I deleted my paragraph about having at least 2 or 3 similar or better individual central defenders even in our own team in the same time frame since they were here (11 years back from 11 years back, roughly). I'd also argue that I'd probably prefer Woodgate over the Jan-less Toby.
 
Robspur12 said:
I think *cough* Saliba could be that good, Ruben Dias, and Virgil, There are decent CBs around.
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Van Dijk is on a Campbell level and maybe a hair in front. Ledley is of course untouchable and the best defender and human being that's ever lived, with or without having wet his pants after a night out.
 
El Guepardo said:
I don’t think they are on King’s level. I think the overall quality of defenders has decreased. Where one we had Maldini, Cannavaro, Nesta, Desailly, Thuram etc we don’t have close to those legends these days.
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To be fair, it's gotten easier to defend, and harder for *defenders* - which may have something to do with it.

It's easier to defend, the basic job of a defender, because of VAR and semi-automated offsides making it pretty easy to catch attackers offside if you have your lines right.

It's simultaneously harder to be a defender today, because just being a good defender is no longer enough. A brilliant defender who is terrible with the ball at his feet will get eaten alive in the modern game as teams target them as vulnerabilities and press them high and hard. Top defenders today have to be playmakers in addition to defending, adept on and off the ball and able to pass and dribble under intense pressure.

Not saying that any of the giants you listed were *bad* on the ball, necessarily - but I think it's pretty safe to say that the *average* top-level defender probably has better ball playing skills than almost every defender from even 20-25 years ago, to say nothing of fitness levels.
 
El Guepardo said:
I don’t think they are on King’s level. I think the overall quality of defenders has decreased. Where once we had Maldini, Cannavaro, Nesta, Desailly, Thuram etc we don’t have close to those legends these days.
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You don't even have to go up to mythical level. I'd argue, also in the partnership-sum-of-the-parts category, that Bruce/Pallister and those two down the road were on a top level for the time. It's easy to think that the quality has decreased, but football is even more competitive today where even an average footballer as DubaiSpur says, would probably stand out 20-25 years ago, defender or not. Not to mention evolution of equipment. I think that though the absolute top level is pretty much the same, the rest has narrowed the gap. And in a game of football, I'd say that having more great players make them all look poorer - as it's actually their job to make the opposition poorer.
 
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Modern athletes are simply a level above, to @DubaiSpur's point, even a mid level player today would stand out.

Fitness, diet, training make a huge difference and style of play. The piece that would probably kill a player from 20-25 years ago is pace, the fastest modern players can run at speeds that would have been Olympic sprinter numbers at that point.
 
Raziel said:
Modern athletes are simply a level above, to @DubaiSpur's point, even a mid level player today would stand out.

Fitness, diet, training make a huge difference and style of play. The piece that would probably kill a player from 20-25 years ago is pace, the fastest modern players can run at speeds that would have been Olympic sprinter numbers at that point.
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Saw a stat that Haaland, the big clumsy looking dog, had a top speed of 36 km/h vs Arsenal. I don't know how they measure that, peak or over some distance, but it was still during a game of football with football boots on a grass pitch. Usain Bolt had a peak top speed of 44 km/h (with 37.5 km/h over 100m at 9.58) probably without doing much more running that day other than warm-up. I remember word being that Roberto Carlos ran 100m at 10.4, with Geir Moen, Norway's fastest sprinter at the time ran at 10.08 which was an all time Norwegian record until it was beaten with 1/100th.
 
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Raziel said:
Modern athletes are simply a level above, to @DubaiSpur's point, even a mid level player today would stand out.

Fitness, diet, training make a huge difference and style of play. The piece that would probably kill a player from 20-25 years ago is pace, the fastest modern players can run at speeds that would have been Olympic sprinter numbers at that point.
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For a tv programme they got gary lineker to do the 100m with spikes on. His time was fast enough to qualify for the olympics. Edit - 10.56 seconds.
 
SubZero said:
Van Dijk is on a Campbell level and maybe a hair in front. Ledley is of course untouchable and the best defender and human being that's ever lived, with or without having wet his pants after a night out.
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I think Van Dijk is not as quick and physical as Campbell but his distribution and positional play making him a superior player, but either would be the level we need.
 
K.D.D.D.D.Soc said:
I think Van Dijk is not as quick and physical as Campbell but his distribution and positional play making him a superior player, but either would be the level we need.
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On footballing ability I would say peak Campbell was the better player.
 
SubZero said:
Saw a stat that Haaland, the big clumsy looking dog, had a top speed of 36 km/h vs Arsenal. I don't know how they measure that, peak or over some distance, but it was still during a game of football with football boots on a grass pitch. Usain Bolt had a peak top speed of 44 km/h (with 37.5 km/h over 100m at 9.58) probably without doing much more running that day other than warm-up. I remember word being that Roberto Carlos ran 100m at 10.4, with Geir Moen, Norway's fastest sprinter at the time ran at 10.08 which was an all time Norwegian record until it was beaten with 1/100th.
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Not sure if the measurements are accurate but youtube has lots of videos like this that shows Haaland is fast.


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Raziel said:
The injury killed him, the guy isn't half the defender he was, he gets beaten 1:1 regularly now and he's slow to react (one of his big strengths was reading the situation)
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ACL injury... Some players come back from it some don't.

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