Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. He is currently ranked number one with many rating him as the greatest of all time. Carlsen said many things, including how he is a Madridista yet always believed Messi to be better than Cristiano, and the interview with Lex Fridman itself wasn't focused on football other than the first 5 minutes before it deviates to basketball then just goes to be all about chess.

Background

It was rather a quick statement that Magnus made regarding the World Cup being overrated, here's the full answer

I think the World Cup is pretty overrated seeing as it's such a small sample size. So it sort of annoys me always when titles are always appreciated so much, even though that particular title can be a lot of luck or at least some luck. So I do appreciate the statistics a bit, and all the statistics say that Messi is the best finisher of all time, which I think helps a lot. And then there's the intangibles as well.

The statement is clear as it states that the tournament itself is subject to luck and other factors that can't really be measured over simply the overall career of a player.

The Reason It Irks Me

It irks me because he is right. The fact is the World Cup, much like the Euros, African Cup, and any other tournament with a one-match knockout system are exciting because everything is on the line but also really lack any meaningful metrics to measure players' greatness. If we're looking logically at the matter then a team or a player shouldn't be judged based on seven games.

A few days ago I wrote a post about how Messi doesn't need the World Cup to be the greatest of all time and I still stand behind it, however, what I should have said that the World Cup as a whole could never determine anyone's greatness.

Ederzito António Macedo Lopes ComM, or as we know him, Eder, scored the only goal in the Euro 2016 final and gave Portugal their first-ever major title yet he could never be labelled as the greatest because he doesn't have impressive numbers in his career as a whole, yet Cristiano who didn't score was labelled the greatest by many. Still, others use the fact that Cristiano didn't score against him.

The funny part about all of that is all opinions would have remained the same regardless of the outcome. Eder being the goal scorer and Cristiano being on the bench at the time is just an empty statement that could have been replaced by something else. In fact, if France won that bout, it would have also been used as further proof of how great Cristiano is as the team lost without him. And if Cristiano remained and they lost, then Cristiano is great but the team wasn't helpful.

So regardless of what happened in that final, people would still have something to say, but none of it would be meaningful.

People label Maradona as the greatest ever because of what he did in the 1986 World Cup, others mention the greatness of what he did with Napoli claiming they saw magic there are absolute liars because the Italian league wasn't broadcasted outside of Italy at the time. On the other hand, if Argentina lost the final, no one would even dare rank Maradona as the greatest, yet, with that extra win, Maradona is ranked as the greatest, second greatest, or third greatest worse.

Take away those matches and no one would even dare put Maradona in even the best 20 players of all time. How do I know that? It's simple because people don't rank Ferenc Puskás in the top 20 even though he has scored 619 goals in 618 matches, and won 5 La Liga titles and 2 Champions League titles. But he lost the 1954 title against Germany, which had a lot to do with the quality of boots both teams were wearing.

When it comes to individual numbers, consistency, and team titles, Puskás trumps Maradona and it came down to one trophy of a tournament that is filled with variables that labelled Maradona as the greatest of all time if I were to say Puskás is even close to Maradona's level, I'd be laughed at.

The Forgotten Names Of The World Cup

Why isn't Di Maria in the GOAT debate? Why isn't Álvaro Arbeloa? Both have had the same club titles as the people we label GOATS. In Arbeloa's case, he has two Euro titles plus the World Cup. The same thing can be said about Henry and Villa, and I could name about 50 more players. The answer is always because they didn't achieve the individual numbers. But, if the World Cup is the holly grail that tells the difference between the good and the great then why do those numbers matter?

The World Cup And The Abundance Of Ignored Information

This is perhaps the reason the World Cup makes for such a wonderful topic for the world to fight about, similar to The Best award and the Baloon d'Or. There are just too many in the whole tournament that creates fragments of side argument for everyone to latch on to. I will talk about the ones I noticed tomorrow, so let's skip to the point.

There are way too many variables which occurred that I don't the human is even able to digest. We could talk about the possibility of Messi actually getting a red card against the Netherlands and Kane missing a penalty. Dembele's tackle on Di Maria could have easily been a non-penalty, the same can be said about Montiel's handball, hell, Benzema and Nkunku's injury could have changed the entire time. Maybe we even would have had Aguero instead of Alvarez. Those are very small samples of variables to consider.

However, it seems people just choose to skip the final product, Argentina won? Messi is officially and unarguably the GOAT, France won? Yet another time where Messi fails his country.

In Conclusion

What I am saying here is that people can't even comprehend all the aspects of the World Cup, so they skip to the final result as they mistake all the excitement and randomness of the tournament for quality. The reason the World Cup is exciting is the same reason why it can't be used to judge players' quality as the tournament is built around a surprising number of random variables including form and luck, over which players have only a little control over the first and absolutely none over the latter and you'd surprised by how much the latter exists in football.

Messi won the World Cup and not a single opinion about his GOAT status was changed for the overwhelming majority of the people watching, this means that Magnus Carlsen is right, the World Cup is overrated.