I must be one of the few players who doesn’t have a peremptory answer to the question in the title. Football is divided between current and past fans. Ultimately, the two blocks produce gems such as “anyone from Bangu in 1966 would be a starter in the national team today” or “Pelé scored a thousand and so many goals because he only played against bricklayers”.
It’s tiring, because these comparisons tend to ignore what the differences are between the games of 1974 and 2024, which talents were most valued in 1974 and today, which tournaments represented the pinnacle in each region or country in 1974 and today.
In an irritating internet meme, the question is asked who is better, each member of the current team or each member of a virtual selection of those not called up from 2002. The conclusion is repeated with tedious predictability: Romário, Julio Cesar, Djalminha, Alex, Amoroso, Serginho and others would be members of Canarinho today in their respective positions.
The purpose of this article is not to argue that this is false, but simply to point out that it has been this way for the last 55 years. It is remarkable that so few people notice this visible feature of the discourse on football since Pelé’s retirement from the national team: the dominant discourse on Brazilian football in the last half century has been that the stars of the present are inferior to those of the past.
Imagine a footballer from 1978 (who, therefore, didn’t know everything that Zico would achieve later) who was presented with a list of those not called up from 1966. He would conclude that Carlos Alberto Torres was better than Nelinho, that Vavá would put Reinaldo on the bench and that that guy Zico, who in three years hadn’t even won the Carioca Championship, would have no place in a team that included Ademir da Guia.
The fallacy of these comparisons does not just come from the futility of comparing players from different eras without considering changes in the game. The additional fallacy is that those not called up in 2002 are evaluated based on the totality of the affective memory they left with the fans, considering everything they did. They are never evaluated solely on the basis of their condition in 2002.
Anyone who consults the complete collection of Revista Placar or looks for the preserved round tables will see that the 1974 generation, one of the most talented in history (with Rivellino, Jairzinho, Caju, Marinho Chagas, Ademir da Guia, Dirceu Lopes and others at their peak), was always compared with the past based on the axiom “Brazil will never have players like Pelé and Garrincha again”.
While Rivellino and Caju retired and the generation of Zico and Falcão was consolidated, it was common sense to say that they would never reach Jairzinho. This is so visible in archival research that it is forgotten today, as is the fact that the later generation, of Romário and Bebeto, said that it would never reach Zico.
You can imagine the time of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho as a golden era, but just look at the dominant discourse in Brazil between the 2001 Copa América and the 2002 World Cup to know that that era was not perceived like that.
What does all this mean? About the football actually played, nothing. To do so, you have to watch the games. But it says everything about what has been the dominant way of seeing the game in post-Pelé Brazil and how healthy it would be to view with skepticism the chant that “Vinicius Junior or Raphinha wouldn’t even shine the boots of X or Y from the past”.
