Is football getting easier or better?

Thinking about the Ballon D'or, Messi and Ronaldo has made me think - there seem to be a bizarrely high number of individuals pulling off insanely good achievements at the minute in football. I remember when I was a kid, hitting 30 goals in a season was astonishing and rare, with things like Larsson's 50 being totally mindblowing.

Yet right now Messi and Ronaldo are scoring goals at a consistency level literally never seen before by any human being, whilst Suarez, Ibrahimovic, Aguero, and Diego Costa are also scoring at least 1 per game or even more!

Maybe i'm incorrect and nostalgia has got in the way but i'm sure when I was younger there seemed to be more or less one great striker at a time; Batistuta, original Ronaldo, Owen ect all had their time then it was on to the next one. So has there ever been a time like this where so many players are hitting such great heights simultaneously?

And if not, is football, or particularly defending, getting worse and making it eaier for people to score loads, or are the modern training methods, diets, strict regimes helping players get better than ever before?

 

Better, I genuinely don't think the world has ever before seen a player like Messi first of all in terms of skill, intelligence and as all round athlete.


There's people who like to poopoo modern football and rant about how in "their day" and list loads of footballers, however the fact of the matter is not only a players becoming more skill but in terms of athletes they're becoming much much fitter, like guys like Ronaldo and Bale are amazing specimens with their power and explosiveness at which they run at, it's like nothing the world has ever experienced in football terms.

 

Football goes in phases of attacking/defensive football. Right now we're in an attacking phase, which makes players be able to score more.

However players like Messi and Ronaldo are genuinely above anything else, as was players like Ronaldo and Zidane when you were younger.

 

I don't think football is getting easier. It's more of a put two and two together sort of thing and I think it's incorrect to an extent. Just because more players are playing at a level never seen before doesn't mean that football is getting easier but it's easy to understand why people may come to that conclusion.

In the modern game, the tempo of the football is extremely high therefore the players need to be conditioned to extreme fitness levels and therefore the importance of good nutrition and healthy lifestlyes cannot be underestimated. Obviously as the game has evolved as the years have went by, more and more has been made available to players in the terms of training facilities, equipment, etc and I'm sure that has a part to play in why so many players are playing at an extremely high level. Moreover, as a result of a higher level of conditioning and fitness then players can maintain the same level of performance over the course of a game therefore it makes it easier for them to do what they do.

You just have to look at the outrage when Jack Wilshere was caught having a * outside a nightclub. I mean what he does is entirely up to him but there was public outrage over something so little. Iconic footballers like Cruyff and Platini are known to have smoked 10-20 a day and then you have Socrates who puffed like a chimney and these players were outstanding and I'd say Cruyff is arguably the most influential footballer/coach ever. I highly doubt that any professional footballer playing at the top would be able to if they smoked or drinked for that matter as well unless they were just naturally fit people such as George Best and an relatively unknown footballer called Robin Friday who drank so much and were still gifted footballers. That wouldn't be accepted these days.