Not really. Plenty of fantastic players didn't win jack squat.
...that has literally nothing to do with what I'm saying. I'm saying you're very likely to be a very good player if you're one of the best in the best team in the world. That has nothing to do with good players that haven't won anything at all.
Maybe he is, that doesn't mean he has no other qualities that make up for that.
So list them. I'm struggling to find many facets that Koscielny is flat out better than Ramos in, other than his excellent positioning.
Analysing just tackles out of context doesn't mean much. And what other statistcs are you refering too, long pass acurracy? I'll pass.
Koscielny won't, though.
I'll also add that Ramos was dispossessed less and dribbled past less. As a side note, there's an interesting little thing I just found: Koscielny attempted the seventh-most tackles in the Arsenal team last year (sixth, if we take out the outlier that is Kim Kallstrom), which indicates that the whole "he doesn't need to tackle 'cause he positions himself so well" argument is at least slightly flawed. It's also interesting to note that in terms of tackle attempts vs success, he was beaten out by Vermaelen and Carl Jenkinson, and was only very marginally better than Sagna, Mertesacker, Flamini, Serge Gnabry and Jack Wilshere. This year, he's on par with those footballing luminaries Nacho Monreal, Joel Campbell and Wilshere again. Amusingly, he's worse than Hector Bellerin, Danny Welbeck, MESUT OEZIL, Big Per and Olivier Giroud.
By that logic Gerrard and Carragher were **** because they never moved out of Liverpool and Totti is woeful because he spend entire career in Roma. Sometimes people just stick around.
Don't be ******* ridiculous, you're smarter than that. All three of the people you named were local boys who loved their clubs and never wanted to leave. Koscielny was born in central France, and had no ties to Arsenal at all. We both know Gerrard and Totti would've been taken by the top clubs of the world in an instant had they not wanted to stay at their hometown clubs (Carragher probably wasn't quite good enough for that, but the same kind of point would theoretically stand if he was).
Are you seriously accusing anyone of defensive brainfarts and too much agression when comparing them to Sergio Ramos?
Yes. When was the last time Sergio Ramos made a major mistake in an important game? Certainly not last season. He used to be prone to mistakes, but he's worked hard on concentrating and maintaining focus and it has paid dividends. Also, I was referring to positional aggression, not discipline, though Ramos is hardly a saint when it comes to cards.
And no, pretty much all of the best defensive partnerships have people who are complementing each other's strength and covering for each other's weaknesses. Terry and Carvalho. Rio and Vidic. Kosc and Metersacker. The real all-rounders happen once a generation.
Thing is, Rio was an all-rounder at his peak. He legitimately didn't have a weakness. Same goes for the other best current centre-back in the world, Thiago Silva. And Vincent Kompany. And Jerome Boateng. ****, even less-lauded centrebacks like Curtis Davies and James Tomkins are legitimate all-rounders. To say that a centre-back without any glaring weakness is a once in a generational thing is ludicrous, when in reality there's plenty that don't specialise in any part of centre-back play. The same cannot be said of Koscielny, even if he is, overall, a better player than the last two mentioned.
I don't see Koscielny's praise as a circlejerk, he is just that good. SI has given him world class with modifiers ever since he joined Arsenal and that doesn't happen on a whim, either.
They also make him not as good as Sergio Ramos, if we're going to be using the game as gospel.
But most importantly it doesn't make much sense to be lashing at Arsenal's defense when the real problem has been lack of defensive coverage from midfield, something that has been going for couple of years now.
Even the most unpenetrable backlines of last two decades always had world class expert in defensive coverage in front of them. Early 90s Milan had Desailly, 2000s Milan had Gatusso, late 90s-early 2000s Arsenal had Vieira, Mourinho's first stint at Chelsea had Makelele...the list goes on. In the meantime Kosc and Metersacker are 90% of time covered by someone with no defensive skillset whatsoever.
That's a fair point, but I've been very careful to not criticise anything that could be a product of systems here. I've compared purely on the basis of bare bones of centre-back play.
