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Rivaldo, The Most Underappreciated/underrated Legend Of All-time?

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8.1K views 69 replies 38 participants last post by  Macumba  
#1 ·
He is arguably the best left-footed player since Maradona (yes Messi is lefty but he is not a FK specialist) and without a doubt one if not the best goal-scoring AM in the past 20+ years.

This guy had vision (perhaps not his biggest forte) was fast, strong, superb dribbling skills, great passing skills, and was a great finisher. On top of that, he was a leader and a PK & FK specialist. So how come people tend to forget him? He didn’t even make GOAL’s. COM la liga team of the century (Figo, Ronaldinho, Zidane) were chosen over him. You may say well he was at his best from 98-00 and he left Barcelona in 02, uhm okay if that’s the case how come he wasn’t included in the team of the decade? Again you may say his best came before 00’! Well his 2002 WC performance alone overshadows anything Figo did in his career, that’s for sure. The best Ronaldinho wasn’t as devastating as prime Rivaldo! Prime Zizou wasn’t as dominating as prime Rivaldo either.

Yes he was very unfortunate to have played in the same era as Ronaldo and Zidane but this man wasn’t that much behind them. Many people don’t consider him a legend because he “only played” a few good seasons in Spain and his reign as the world’s best player didn’t last long enough. These people dismiss everything he did from Brazil to Deportivo. On top of that, people forget how superb this man performed in the world’s biggest stage: THE WORLD CUP. Made the all-star teams twice scored a total of 8 goals in two WC tournaments and had a total of 4 assists. Yes I’m aware he played as a SS in the 2002 and he did a magnificent job at it. I always thought this man was an absolute Barcelona legend and two years ago (or was it last year) there was a poll to determine Barcelona's all-time dream team: Messi, Cruyff, Maradona, Ronaldinho were included in the midfield and Rivaldo was nowhere to be found in the starting line-up. Rivaldo won more than Cruyff and Maradona did at Barcelona and Rivaldo in his prime was better than Dinho and this current Messi. What a bloody insult!
It’s amazing how many people simply do not see him as a legend. Is it because he’s a modern-day legend? Players such as RIVELINO, RIVERA, GULLIT, RUMMENIGGE, etc. are held in a higher level than the great Rivaldo? WHY IS THAT?

Rivaldo won more than Rivelino did both at club level and international level. Both were lefty, both were free kick specialists, RIVALDO scored more goals, Rivelino had better vision probably but not by much…Rivaldo was stronger and faster, better dribbler, and a better finisher but NOooooo Rivelino gets the nod for some reason.

Rivaldo vs Rivera? Rivera probably won more at club level but not by much. Rivaldo eclipses Rivera at international level and overall talent.

Rivaldo vs Gullit? Gullit was a more complete player but never put-up Rivaldo like numbers, not even close. Again one was a better club player but the other shone at the International stage brighter than the other. IMHO, Rivaldo was a tad more gifted and had more technique than the Dutchman and was a better goal scorer as well.

Rivaldo vs Rummenigge…Both were wingers/LAM both could play as SS. Perhaps Rummenigge was a better finisher but Rivaldo was simply more gifted. In addition, Rivaldo has scored more career goals than Rummenigge!
So how come the aforementioned are considered legends among legends and poor RIVALDO time after time gets the cold shoulder? I think this next article sums it up nicely:

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A real # 10...not like that overrated Pitufina/Smurfette MESSI!

A common, if slightly cringeworthy, observation of pundits in this country is that, if you could marry British will with continental skill, you would have the perfect footballer. Such a mixed recipe was thrillingly in evidence in Diego Maradona. Since then, however, perhaps only Rivaldo has fused the two qualities. Yet when we discuss soccer's AM (After Maradona) greats, Zinedine Zidane invariably comes out on top, with Rivaldo well back among the pack. While it would be dubious to argue that Rivaldo was a better technician than Zidane, it is arguable that, if you took everyone playing at the absolute peak of their game, Rivaldo was the best and most unstoppable footballer since Maradona.

Yet despite his bona fide, bandy-legged genius, he is to some extent forgotten, still ploughing on with the Greek travesty that is the lingering death of a genuinely great career at clubs as irrelevant to the bigger picture as Olympiakos and AEK Athens. It is potentially anomalous to argue that a former World Player of the Year was underrated, yet even at his peak Rivaldo often played under a cloud. He was frequently abused while playing for Brazil, whose fans believed he spared his best for Barcelona and who had never forgiven him for a crucial mistake in the 1996 Olympics; at club level he inspired both awe and loathing on La Rambla, and his departure on a free transfer in 2002 was mourned by few, even though he had just starred in Brazil's World Cup win.

That summer, the Spanish football expert John Carlin wrote that Rivaldo "combines to dazzling effect the two essential qualities of the ideal footballer: artistry and efficiency". The same could not necessarily be said of Zidane. Sir Alex Ferguson once observed that Zidane didn't really "hurt" teams and, while it sounded sacrilegious, there was a degree of truth in it. In terms of ball retention he was probably the greatest player of all time, blessed with such grace and supernatural awareness that he could play a game of real-life Pac-Man and never be caught, but to some extent his work was done in less dangerous areas. He needed good players alongside him.

A team of 11 Zidanes would kill you time and time again, but a team of 10 Nevilles and a Rivaldo could on occasion do the same. Zidane was an avant-garde footballer, as rich in subtext as it is possible for a sportsman to be, whereas Rivaldo was a rudimentary blockbuster. Yet the suspicion remains that some appreciate Zidane without knowing exactly what they're appreciating; that they are perpetuating a discourse for fear of being seen as a philistine. Nobody wants to admit that they thought Citizen Kane was crap.

The cerebral genius of Zidane, nonetheless, makes him the ultimate fantasy footballer, whereas Rivaldo was the ultimate Fantasy Footballer: he dealt relentlessly in the hard currency of goals (86 in 159 games for Barcelona and 34 in 74 for Brazil, outstanding for a player who invariably played on the left) and assists. And if there were another category by which we judged players – coronaries induced in opposing fans when they get the ball within 30 yards of goal – he would surely be top. When he was on one, he was utterly terrifying.

Apart from a right foot, Rivaldo had everything. His wiry strength allowed him to bounce off defenders, he was a outstanding dribbler, and he had a left foot that was both educated and thuggish, subtle and a sledgehammer. He could larrup the ball in, arrow a daisy-cutter a few centimetres inside the far post (the winner against Denmark in the 1998 World Cup quarter-final is the best example, but there were so many), coax a free-kick high or low, left or right, and also pass the ball in (my colleague Mike Adamson pointed out how underrated the precision of his finish against England in 2002 remains). And his control – best exemplified by a stunning, über-Le Tissier assist against Deportivo in 2002 (after 5.00 of this video) – was sensational.

Most of all, however, he had bronca, the word used repeatedly in Diego Maradona's autobiography to refer to "anger, fury, hatred, resentment, bitter discontent ... [it was] his motivator, his fuel, his driving force". Zidane had rage blackouts, but he was rarely in a high state of bronca: for the most part, as we saw in his movie, he was a wonderfully still footballer, whose game existed in a vacuum of technical perfection, such as the volley in the 2002 Champions League final. But he could not win a game on his own by imposing his personality all over it. Rivaldo could.

Rivaldo often looked apathetic and sullen – his smile was so rare that, when it came, it broke a thousand mirrors, and at times he seemed to dither like a posh boy pretending to have commitment issues – but when the mood took him and he fancied the challenge, he pursued it with the remorseless will and purpose of Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. "You know how this is gonna turn out, don't you?"

Three examples spring to mind. There was his coconut-shy at an inspired Paul Robinson in a Champions League group game against Leeds in 2000, when Rivaldo finally equalised in the last minute to (temporarily) postpone Barcelona's exit; an astonishing tour de force against Manchester United in 1998 when, in a game Barcelona had to win to avoid elimination, he equalised twice before creaming an unbelievable shot off the bar and ingeniously creating another gilt-edged chance for Giovanni; but best of all there was the greatest hat-trick of all time, against Valencia on June 17, 2001, a midsummer night's dream of a performance that deserves a book, a film and even a Tim Lovejoy tribute all of its own.

In a straight shoot-out for the final Champions League place, which was worth tens of millions and even more in terms of pride, Barcelona needed a win and Valencia a draw. Twice Rivaldo screamed Barcelona ahead from long range, the second hit with such fury that it knocked him off his feet; twice Ruben Baraja equalised. Then, in the 89th minute, he scored with an overhead kick from outside the box so perfectly executed that it even swerved away from the dive of Santiago Canizares. Even now, it beggars belief.

Rivaldo also scored eight goals in two World Cups – including five in consecutive games in 2002 – and two in a Copa America final (in 1999, when he was voted Player of the Tournament). So why is he not in the pantheon? The slow fade of his career does not help: he has been in Greece since 2004, when he almost ended up at Bolton. Nor does a disastrous 18 months at Milan, during which he was even voted Serie A's worst player. Or the fact that he seemed to be the mardiest of bums.

He doesn't win on longevity, either: for most his peak lasted the five years he was at the Nou Camp, even if he played superbly for three years at Palmeiras and Deportivo before that. And he was rarely involved in the latter stages of the Champions League, but that was mainly the fault of a typical Louis van Gaal defence. Rivaldo was absolutely beyond reproach in the early exits in 1998 and 2000 in particular.

Yet much of the enmity towards him stems from his pitiful cheating at the 2002 World Cup, when he got Turkey's Hakan Unsal sent off. It was shocking stuff – described by Richard Williams in this paper as "an act so despicable that it deserves to rank alongside Toni Schumacher's assault on Patrick Battiston in 1982 and even the Hand of God itself in the tournament's gallery of infamous moments" - but, as Slaven Bilic could tell you in four languages, disgracing oneself in a World Cup match is not a barrier to widespread popularity.

Yet with Rivaldo, the deception seemed to reflect a personality defect so prevalent that one Spanish writer said he had "a kind of autism". He had the hapless air of a noir patsy, and seemed forever hit by ill-fortune. Those two awesome performances against the Uniteds of Leeds and Manchester meant bugger all in the end. When he was enduring the worst time of his life in Milan, his wife Rose left him. If he had a family pet, you just know he'd have reversed over it.

He was essentially clueless: whereas Zidane's headbutt on Marco Materazzi was impossibly cool, Rivaldo's act of World Cup skulduggery was hideously ham-fisted. For that he was reviled as a typical continental (even though, in reality, British players dive as much as anyone), but with the ball at his feet not even the most nationalistic stereotyper would deny that he gave us the best of all worlds.
Click to expand...

Your thoughts....your thoughts...
 
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B
#2 ·
He's not underrated at all actually. Everyone in the world knows him. I believe the true underrated players are players such as Susic, Dzajic, Stojkovic, Prosinecki, etc. as no one in the world knows them, no matter if they were legends or not. Ask any Argentine if they know of Prosinecki, they'd give you a blank glare.
 
#4 ·
He's actually pretty under-rated , but as as NB said still pretty much alot of peopl know him.


On top of his good season's , he had a wonderfull 2002 WC.

The goal he scored on Belgium was sweet , the goal on England was very nice , on top of that the way he let the pass go through his legs without touching it vs Germany when Ronaldo scored was Class.
 
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#7 · (Edited)
Older Brazilians (Garrincha, JC, etc) who have seen RIVELINO play live will say: Mestre Rivelino >>>> Rivaldo & Ronaldinho.

I would like to know, why is that?
Ask any one who saw Gullit and RUmmenigge play in the 80's and they too will probably say Rivaldo cannot compare!
 
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#9 ·
Dagoods said:
Older Brazilians (Garrincha, JC, etc) who have seen RIVELINO play live will say: Mestre Rivelino >>>> Rivaldo & Ronaldinho.

I would like to know, why is that?
Ask any one who saw Gullit and RUmmenigge play in the 80's and they too will probably say Rivaldo doesn't compare!
Click to expand...
I have seen vidoes of past players , but the 2004-2006 Ronaldinho was the best footballer to step foot on the the Pitch.
 
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#17 ·
Rivaldo carried the teams he played for on his shouldres. Zidane always needed someone around him to help him shine. He knows how to be in the spot light I'll give him that, so noobs llike you who know nothing about the true game put him with the best. He played for one of the greatest Juve teams, probably best Real team ever and defintely the best France NT generation. Anybody with half his talent could ahieve what he did.
 
M
#21 ·
I've always been a fan of Rivaldo and I tend to agree that maybe he isn't held in as high regard as he should. His left foot was phenomenal!! Certainly the best I've seen in terms of passing, shooting range and power. You just know what you get with Rivaldo - assists and goals. But he was also one of those players that would carry a team, he'd work hard, he had incredible strength and determination. Just pure brilliance.

I'd choose Rivaldo in his prime over Ronaldinho, he's less of a show pony and performed far more consistently. Ronaldinho's career is dead and he isn't even 30 yet.
 
#29 ·
He was amazing, to put it simply.
 
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#30 ·
Yes, Rivaldo was a stud (an bloody LEGEND IMHO) but he doesn't get the recognition he deserves. We have monkeys here who rate Ronaldinho higher...probably Gullit & Rummenigge...higher as well!

Where are the older Brazilians, I'm waiting for them to explain why they rank RIVELINO higher? Rivaldo is one of the best WC performers, EVER! And still he gets no respect!
 
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#36 · (Edited)
Great player, underrated definitely. Couldn't quite believe how early his time at the highest level finished, really under appreciated at Milan for sure, but he didn't exactly apply himself either. Had a rather stupid streak in him when he saw the opportunity.

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EDIT: The fact that he's ended his career at an Angolan club is sad.
 
#37 ·
The main language there is Portugese so I am sure that is a big reason on why he moved there. Wonder if that's where he'll end his career though, you never know with Rivaldo. I thought he'd be done after he left Uzbekistan but apparently not.

What a great player he was a decade ago, agreed on him not getting the plaudits that he deserves.
 
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