The thing that unites the great players when you look back at them playing, is that they look 20 years ahead of their time. Be it pele, be it eusebio, best, cruyff, beckenbauer etc. we look back at them now and go he wasn't that special, because footballers today have learned so much from their way of playing, that a lot of what they did then looks kind of familiar and boring to us. The closest example I can think of for us in this category was early period john barnes, who looked like a footballer from another planet, a prototype thierry henry, strength, power, speed, largely two footed, good in the air, great at free kicks, at a time when football was..... radically different.
Maradona was like messi, except at a time when people were allowed to kick him really violently without even conceding free kicks. can you imagine how difficult that must have been? If maradona were snatched away and hothoused from the age of 13 at the heart of barcelona, given all of the possible support he could have ever needed, and if fouling him became a yellow card, never mind the continuous wave of assaults that maradona had to face, he could have achieved so much more.
He really was an extraordinary player, and while there is little sense in ranking players through the ages, to go back to the original post, there's a reason that so many people think so highly, of what was an extremely flawed, difficult and tempermental footballer, and damaged human being. And that is because in between all of the nonsense that came with being maradona, he was a complete and utter footballing genius who lit up football in what was a very thuggish, brutal and nasty time.
