Stop Arguing About Who's Best. Start Coaching From It.
England lost. It hurt. We played well, had our chances, didn't take them. Moving on.
The World Cup final is France vs Argentina — Mbappe vs Messi, the argument the internet has been waiting for. And I'm here to tell you: don't have that conversation.
Not because it's not fun. It is. But because "who's the best player in the world?" is a subjective, unprovable, ultimately pointless debate — and when you frame it that way, you lose the entire coaching value of what just happened on that pitch.
The Problem With the GOAT Argument
The second you ask your players who's better between Messi and Ronaldo, they pick a side. And once they've picked a side, they stop watching the other one clearly. They discredit everything the opposition argument does. They stop learning.
I've coached kids who think Messi is a joke because their favourite is Mbappe. And so they watch Mbappe and ignore what Messi does with his body shape on the wing to beat a defender without pace — the kind of thing your midfielders could actually use. Because the minute you dismiss a player, you stop watching them properly.
The reality is: there is no greatest of all time. It's a measurement that can never be proven. What there is are remarkable players, each with unique qualities, each with limitations they've built around. If you open your players up to that idea, the World Cup becomes a classroom.
What the Stats Actually Show
I track this through Opta Analyst — here's some of what jumped out.
Take-ons attempted: Mbappe leads with 46, Messi second with 38. But third? Jamal Musiala, Germany. Now out of the tournament and largely forgotten. But he was extraordinary while it lasted, and that's the point — great players appear all over the bracket, and they disappear from public memory the moment their nation exits.
Messi: 14 chances created, 2 assists, 84% pass completion. And he walked — we all know it. He walked more than anyone. The fear is that your players will see that and think it's permission to switch off. It's not. It's a lesson in reading the game well enough to know when your speed matters and when it doesn't. Messi knows. Does your midfielder?
Harry Kane: 3 assists, 5 chances created. Also, the penalty that went over the bar. We're not talking about the penalty.
Antoine Griezmann, who I don't think gets enough credit: 8 tackles, 6 interceptions for an attacking midfielder. He ran the game against England, created, tracked back, competed. That's the full picture of a modern 10 that nobody talks about when they're listing the greats.
Jude Bellingham: 15 tackles, most in the tournament. He's 19. He won the ball 15 times in games against the best players in the world. What are you asking your central midfielders to do in terms of defending?
Tyler Adams: I had three players training the other night — one in a Pulisic shirt, one in a McKinney shirt, one in a Dest shirt. That's remarkable and it's something I've never really seen before at this level in the US. Adams is another one worth pointing your players toward. The clips will be everywhere. Watch how strong he is in the press, how he wins the ball in contact, how he reads second balls. That's teachable.
The Team Style Question
Beyond individual players, the World Cup is the best data set you'll see all year for thinking about how teams play — and how you want your team to play.
Spain: 135 sequences of 10+ passes in their games. The build-out, the positional play, the patient building from the back. They got knocked out by Morocco, who played a completely different style with complete conviction — pressing, winning second balls, defending with their lives. Both approaches got teams into the knockouts.
Teams that barely built out: Uruguay, Wales, Iran, Tunisia. Most of them didn't go far.
But this isn't about saying one way is right. It's about figuring out which way is yours — and then finding examples in the World Cup to show your players what that looks like done well. You play possession? Pull up Spain clips. You want to press high? France vs England. You're going direct? Find Morocco defending and counter-attacking and show your players exactly what that looks like at the highest level.
The Challenge I'm Giving My Players
Send them to Opta's stats. Or send them with a question: find me one clip of your favourite player doing something that connects to what we work on in training.
Not just a skills clip. Not a screamer or a nutmeg. Find me the moment where a player works to get into the right position before the ball arrives, or presses to win it back, or uses their body to create an angle. The detail.
You might say to your team: we want to play like Spain. We want to keep the ball. We want to build from the back. Now go find a moment where they did that, where 10 passes led to something. Watch it. Tell me what you see.
The access we have to this stuff now is extraordinary. FIFA used to release a technical report six months after a tournament. Now the data is live. Your players can watch everything. The question is whether you're giving them a framework to actually learn from it — or whether you're just letting them argue about Messi and Ronaldo in the group chat.
The World Cup is over in a few weeks. The window to use it with your players is now.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 74 — Who Is The Best Player?
@LeeDunneSoccer