You often wonder how Best or maradona or pele would have thrived in the last 20 years? Maradona and Best were outrageous talents and lifted teams to other levels. Pele was the top dog of a team of top dogs. I reckon if the former 2 had been playing nowadays they would wipe the floor with Ronald or Messi as I just think they had more in them, and that’s no disrespect to messi or Ronaldo
so hard when comparing eras - you balance the level of fitness required in today's football against the shite pitches and animal tackles of the past, and that's just the start of it (don't underestimate how rule changes have favoured goal scoring, can't back pass to the keeper has had a huge impact on how teams can and do get caught in possession cos they can't simply pass it back safely, changing whole mindsets on how the ball is moved through the pitch, cos we know getting caught in possession is the most likely scenario for conceeding)
i know for sure messi and the other guy aren't scoring at the rate they have in the days of Best, Pele and Maradonna - pitches alone would make carrying the ball so much more difficult (and more draining on fitness) and they're getting cut in half on a regular basis with no cards being brandished, so repeat and rinse
and im sure the level of fitness required from Best etc will be much higher consistently than it was back in their day (i think pele would be fine, probably) and this is an issue for Best and Maradonna, cos you have to throw in drug tests etc as well - you might not like stuff like that in a 'purely football' discussion but it's part of it, as are the pitches and tackles of yesteryear, so in short, Best definitely would suffer fitness wise in the modern game and probably Maradonna's habits would get him banned (and if he's not on the coke on game day, fitness would be an issue at some point)
FWIW, i've said before on RAWK, messi (who i consider the best player of the modern era) isn't as good as maradonna or pele imo - i rate those two the best ever players i've seen, now messi has done something international, for the fanboys that has elevated messi to best ever, to which my reply is go fuck yourself
and educate yourself while you're there and look what greatness those other two players could elevate teams to (esp maradonna, having played in some pretty average national sides)
Best was a wonderful talent and player i loved to watch (tho Law was my fav manc player, whether red or blue, just loved the guy) but he wasn't good enough for long enough, tho if we were talking just pure football skills, i'd put him up there with anyone, a true genius in that regard
as a side point, i think something that gets overlooked when talking about the great players of yesteryear among all the talk of strength, toughness, skills, talent etc is football brain. the three mentioned in the quote had phenomenal football brains, that's a huge factor in their greatness (one reason for me why kenny is the most Best-like player we ever had, i dont look at our more out and out dribblers as i noticed mentioned in the thread, i look at the talent level and football brain as well as style of play). and on that point you can throw in players like The Kaiser and Cruyff - wonderful players working on another level to most of their peers, in part, due to their football brain
he's right, you've obviously not watched him enough. I probably watched every Barcelona game for a 10 year period and numerous players have tried to break his legs, starting from his first el clasico with Emerson nearly breaking his ankle to Amorbieta nearly blinding him and Mark Van Bommel elbowing him (as Mark Van Bommel does 
), if you watched the 5-0 game vs Mourinho's Real Madrid game back, you could tell he was specifically targetted. It's a myth there's not horrible tackles now, the difference is the physique of the players is improved, some are just too quick to be caught. I'm sure there's a youtube compilation somewhere of Ramos on Messi.
That's also one of the many reasons why George Best was so good, he was so quick and instinctively avoided those ridiculous challenges.
tho i disagree with the overall point you're agreeing with from a previous post (you really can't compare eras in terms of brutality of challenge, it was just a different game back then, players weren't even carded for career enders more often than not) that game against Mourinho's Madrid was kinda like that, it was disgusting, not only was he clearly targetted under orders but i believe specifically targetted at his achilles, cos early on there's three clear really painful hacks at his achilles in short succession - there was clear intention to injure messi out of the game and the ref was slow on reacting to it
