2021.08.14 梅西是欧洲足球有史以来最好的射手

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Graphic detail | Simply the best
By the numbers, Lionel Messi is European football’s best scorer ever
Goals make up only half of his value, but his scoring was more impactful than that of other greats
Aug 14th 2021

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Football’s most fruitful partnership has ended in tears. On August 8th a weeping Lionel Messi said he was leaving Barcelona, the club he joined when he was just 13. The Argentine forward has scored a record 474 goals in La Liga, Spain’s top league. His teams have won ten La Liga titles and four Europe-wide Champions League trophies.

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Mr Messi offered to slash his salary in order to stay. But Barcelona is deep in debt, and pays 95% of its revenue in wages. La Liga has set a ceiling of 70%, forcing the club to let him go. On August 10th he joined Paris Saint-Germain (psg), a rich French team.

Now 34, Mr Messi may not even be psg’s top scorer next season. But the only question about his peak in 2009-19 is whether it was the greatest ever. Although historical comparisons are tricky in football, the best available data suggest that it was.

Mr Messi’s standing relative to his contemporaries can be analysed reliably. Today, the location and result of every shot, dribble, pass and tackle are tracked. ku Leuven, a university, and SciSports, an analytics firm, have built a system to measure how each action affects a team’s odds of scoring, by comparing where the ball was before and after a player touched it.


In 2012-20, their model reckons that Mr Messi would have boosted an average team’s scoring margin by 1.77 goals per match. Cristiano Ronaldo, his old rival at Real Madrid, came a distant second at 1.43.

Comparing Mr Messi with past greats is harder. The only data available for all European leagues before 2000 are goals scored and match results. And not all goals are created equal: scoring rates fell sharply from 1950 to 1970, and goals are easier to come by in weaker leagues.

To level the playing field, we devised an exchange rate called the Modern-Equivalent Soccer Scoring Index (messi). For each season in each league, it uses the average number of goals per match and team strength—as measured by the Elo system, which rates clubs based on their results and the quality of their opponents—to estimate how many goals players would have scored under different conditions. For example, in the 1960s Eusébio played in a weak, high-scoring Portuguese league. His goals are worth 37% less than those in La Liga in 2004-21. By contrast, Diego Maradona faced stout Italian defences, making his goals worth 5% more than the modern baseline. (We excluded penalties, which pad some strikers’ stats more than others’.)


After these tweaks, the diminutive Mr Messi stands head and shoulders above the competition. At his best, he averaged one goal per 90 minutes. Mr Ronaldo reached 0.9; greats from earlier eras were below 0.8.

These rankings are far from perfect. They underrate players like Maradona and Johan Cruyff, who were as much creators as finishers. And they cannot capture the value of defenders like Franz Beckenbauer.

Even among strikers, important data are missing. Ferenc Puskas’s latter years roughly match Mr Messi’s recent seasons. Unfortunately, Elo ratings do not exist for the post-war Hungarian leagues that the young Puskas dominated. Nor are they available for Brazil or America, where Pelé, widely seen as the greatest player of the 20th century, played club football.

What is certain, based on modern analytics, is that only half of Mr Messi’s value comes from shots at goal. He is also an extraordinary dribbler and passer. This suggests that even the prolific Puskas and Pelé may not have been his equal.



图文详解｜简直是最棒的
从数据上看，梅西是欧洲足球有史以来最好的射手
进球只占他价值的一半，但他的进球比其他伟大的球员更有影响力
2021年8月14日



足球界最富有成果的合作关系以泪水结束。8月8日，哭泣的梅西说他要离开巴塞罗那，这个他在年仅13岁时加入的俱乐部。这位阿根廷前锋在西班牙顶级联赛的西甲联赛中创下了474个进球的记录。他的球队已经赢得了10个西甲冠军和4个欧洲冠军联赛奖杯。

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梅西先生提出要削减他的薪水，以便留下来。但是巴萨深陷债务，并将其收入的95%用于支付工资。西甲规定了70%的上限，迫使俱乐部让他离开。8月10日，他加入了巴黎圣日耳曼（psg），一个富有的法国球队。

现在34岁的梅西先生甚至可能不是psg下赛季的最佳射手。但是，关于他在2009-19年的高峰期，唯一的问题是它是否是有史以来最伟大的。尽管在足球领域进行历史比较是很困难的，但现有的最佳数据表明，它是。

梅西先生相对于他同时代人的地位可以被可靠地分析。今天，每一次射门、运球、传球和擒抱的位置和结果都被跟踪。鲁汶大学和分析公司SciSports建立了一个系统，通过比较球员触球前后的位置，来衡量每个动作对球队进球几率的影响。


在2012-20年，他们的模型估计，梅西先生将使一个平均每场比赛的进球率提高1.77球。他在皇家马德里的老对手克里斯蒂亚诺-罗纳尔多(Cristiano Ronaldo)以1.43球遥遥领先。

将梅西先生与过去的伟大人物进行比较是比较困难的。2000年之前所有欧洲联赛的唯一数据是进球数和比赛结果。而不是所有的进球都是平等的：从1950年到1970年，进球率急剧下降，而且在较弱的联赛中，进球更容易获得。

为了公平竞争，我们设计了一个汇率，称为现代等效足球得分指数（messi）。对于每个联赛的每个赛季，它使用每场比赛的平均进球数和球队实力--由Elo系统衡量，该系统根据俱乐部的成绩和对手的质量进行评分--来估计球员在不同条件下会有多少进球。例如，在20世纪60年代，尤塞比奥在一个薄弱的、高得分的葡萄牙联赛中效力。他的进球价值比2004-21年的西甲联赛少37%。相比之下，马拉多纳面对的是坚固的意大利防线，这使得他的进球价值比现代的基线高5%。(我们排除了点球，因为点球会使一些前锋的数据比其他前锋的更多。）


经过这些调整后，身材矮小的梅西先生在竞争中脱颖而出。在他最好的时候，他平均每90分钟进一个球。罗纳尔多先生达到了0.9；早期时代的伟大人物则低于0.8。

这些排名远非完美。他们低估了马拉多纳和约翰-克鲁伊夫这样的球员，他们既是创造者又是终结者。他们也无法捕捉到像弗朗茨-贝肯鲍尔这样的后卫的价值。

即使在前锋中，也缺少重要的数据。费伦茨-普斯卡斯的晚年生活与梅西先生最近的几个赛季大致相当。不幸的是，战后匈牙利联赛的Elo评级并不存在，而年轻的普斯卡斯在这些联赛中占主导地位。巴西和美国也没有这些数据，而被广泛认为是20世纪最伟大的球员的佩雷在那里踢俱乐部足球。

根据现代分析法，可以肯定的是，梅西先生的价值只有一半来自于射门。他也是一个非凡的运球者和传球者。这表明，即使是多产的普斯卡什和贝利也可能无法与他相比。