Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
Baseball is drowning in stats, but they do facilitate discussions of comparing players across different eras, which people always love. I think it's relatively harder to do that in a sport far less given to stats, and it could be (just theorizing) that the lack of stats is one reason casual fans may be less interested in greats of the distant past?
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I think that is right, Peter... and I think the international aspect makes it even more difficult. There are so many leagues, so many players and historically not much play between them except the World Cup and the Olympics in the pre-war discussion... not many TV clips or game footage. So between stats, language and inability to compare it because harder to do that and there are no guides (that I know of) that consolidate the information. Many top soccer historians go a great job, but all the work is piece-mail. I am planning to consolidate some of this information in a book that I think will be helpful for collectors and I will base my information off of other people's historical efforts. In other words, I will try and show some collecting options of the players that most historians think were exceptional in their times which for me should always be the standard.
I generally like to look at the IFFHS site and read their articles. They try to rank clubs, leagues and players... They are now in the process of defining some legends that you can see here:
https://iffhs.de/iffhs-has-announced...egend-players/
Unfortunately they are even highly focused on post war players. If you look at all the people on this (somewhat political - note the inclusion of players from China and Kuwait) list only Stanley Matthews played many of his great years prior to WWII - so it is basically a post war list. This is phase one of their work and I am not sure how many phases there are. You can click on players and there are (albeit too brief) descriptions of the players and many have YouTube videos with clips of some of their antics. Check out the one on Zico and him amazing free kicks from outside of the box.
Anyway, it all starts with interest and education and I believe that, in time, these things will come to US collectors. Also when the World Cup in here in the USA, I imagine that there will be much more interest as well.