Legends Don't Walk On Water is a new series aimed to point out that no player ever carried a team singlehandedly to a trophy, it doesn't say that no player was more important or instrumental than the rest of his teammates in a win, but, there seems to be a myth of "insert name carried his team to the title" which is a completely mythical approach which has no roots in reality.

In this series, I will be talking about four players in specific as they're the ones who always had that myth surrounding them: Diego Maradona, Pelé, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Lionel Messi. When I wrote the post 'Outside The Messi Vs Cristiano Ronaldo Bubble" my goal was to point out how there are ridiculous things which are only said within that bubble because elsewhere they would sound idiotic.

Any sane person knows that Messi and Cristiano can't win a single match all by themselves, let alone an entire trophy, yet fans of those two plus Maradona and Pelé always behave like those players did just that. Those people also blame certain other players in case of a loss which is funny because it literally contradicts their statements as it proves their legend always needed someone else to perform.

The Most Important But Not The Only One

There's no doubt that Messi has been the most important player in Barcelona's league, UEFA Champions League, and local dups titles since 2009, this is something even his teammates and coaches agreed upon. But, there seems to be confusion between a player being the most important part of the squad with him being the only one in that squad. Giving a player 100% of the credit is wrong, even 80% is too much. Reality says, that no player deserves more than 20% of the total credit.

People could talk about how legendary Ronaldo was for Brazil in the 2002 World Cup, and I am one of the people who believe that Ronaldo, in his prime moment, was better than any other attacker behind Ronaldinho. But, even Ronaldo needed his team's defence to over-perform to cover for his lack of tracking back and keep a clean sheet for his two goals against Germany in the 2002 World Cup to be useful.

So, yes, Ronaldo gets credit for his goals, and credit also goes toward Rivaldo for his movement that helped Ronaldo, Cafu and Carlos with their defensive and offensive roles as wing-backs, Ronaldinho as a playmaker, Gilberto Silva and Kléberson for winning midfield battles, and finally the defence and goalkeeper. So, what starts as 100% credit to Ronaldo, eventually becomes 10-20%.

Of course, there's no scientific way to divide credit but those numbers were merely used to paint a picture. But, that lack of a scientific way to divide credit also makes it easier for someone to paint their favourite legend as a God. So, if someone brings up Messi being the only player behind Barcelona winning the league in 2012-2013 and bringing up his 91 goals tally, it's difficult to bring up Alves or Iniesta because that would make it a direct comparison of which Messi would win and social media comment sections or football studios aren't fit to have those long term dividing of credit.

Also, before we get into the details for each player, we must understand where that idea of the "only one" mentality originated.

Max Weber

A German economist and sociologist say that there are three types of authority, traditional, legal, and charisma, the latter of the three is what we're here for.

Charismatic authority is what exceptional people have as they are able to do things that others simply can't. It is the reason that people sleep peacefully at night knowing that this charismatic person would solve any problems that arise the next day. This is also what makes football crowds put certain players in a tier higher than humans.

Before charisma became all about Mourinho's press conferences and Cristiano screaming from the sidelines, the term was used to describe individuals with godly powers. It first came up when describing Saint Paul the Apostle, the man who was transferring the teachings of Jesus to new Christians. But, as time went by, people started treating him as an intermediate between them and God.

The only difference was that Paul was a human that they could talk to and interact with, unlike God. This is the idea of why people love saviours, superheroes, and messiahs. It was a desperate attempt to embody the creator in human form so they could understand God and interrelate with him. Football fans are no different. No matter how cautious of this idea they are, they always fall in the same trap.

The Seduction of the Idea

Daniel Kahneman, nobel prize winner and author of one of my favorite books, Thinking Fast and Slow, says that charisma authority is the strongest among all three, because unlike authority of laws and traditions, it doesn't actual stop people from doing anything. In fact, it gives them exactly what they need, an opportunity to disable their brains and sit back to do nothing.

The insane gravity of a charismatic person blinds any person from reality. It presents you with a beautiful story, stupid as well, trancending all life complications. It absolves you from anything responsibility and exhausting details. It terms of football, it says that we won't ever lose to Ajax since I am in the team, I will win you La Liga, or sleep tight and even if we lose, no one will blame you.

If that is the affect of charisma on teammates, you could only imagine how it would be on the fans. You actually don't need to imagine, it is currently what is happening after any tournament won or lost by Messi or Cristiano. So, we're still asking whether football is a team or an individual sport 150 years after its creation somehow. So, even when the loss of Messi and Cristiano is inevitable, we blame them because they couldn't score 2-3 goals so we could "evidently" prove that they could have won without their team and that they lost because of the team.

This is the result of people seeing signs from Messi and Cristiano that they could carry a team. But those were signs, not reality.

In Conclusion

The reality of football legends is the fans confusing two separate thoughts, you couldn't have won without those legends and that legend won by himself. The latter is a childish idea describing a god, the first is a normal thought to have describing an exceptional. The reason people resort to the latter thought is because the first would apply to many players in the same team. A deeper at Barcelona and Real Madrid while they were winning everything, locally and in Europe, would make this idea very clear.

Try removing Marcelo, Luka Modrić, and Kaylor Navas from Real Madrid in the past few years. Also, try removing Xav Hernández, Andrés Iniesta, and Dani Alves from Barcelona's squad and replace them with any average player that comes to you and tell yourself whether it was possible for Real Madrid and Barcelona to reach the same heights.

In fact, Barcelona and Real Madrid fans also often fight how those players, who aren't Messi and Cristiano, are also better. So, who's winning that title on his own? Of course it sounds fair to give all the praise to Messi and Cristiano when they also get all the criticism. The answer to this problem is very simple, let's not give them all the criticism and not give them all the praise. And that's what this serious is all about.