GOATs gallery at the mercy of the generation game

Just a quick glance over the hedge of social media reveals a field of GOATs as far as the eye can see.

The acronym crops up time and again in comments sections and social media posts in the wake of sporting spectacles and feverish discussions over the ranks of the greats.

Lionel Messi was already regarded as part of the pantheon before his fairytale World Cup triumph.

For the last remaining doubters though (a footballing rogues' gallery of sorts as Second Captains' Ken Early playfully put it), the prospect of being one of football's GOATs (Greatest of All Time) - if not the standout one - fits much more snugly around his shoulders after the dramatic events on Sunday. Needless to say, there will still be a few hold-outs against the narrative.

Certainly, winning the World Cup, and as some have phrased it, "completing football" by winning every available club and international honour in inimitable style, carves him out as the best player of this generation and onto the Mount Rushmore of the sport.

Whether he is at the very summit above Pele, Diego Maradona and other luminaries like Ferenc Puskas and Johan Cruyff is another matter entirely and a debate that is more at the mercy of the generational game.

From memory, for a child of the '90s, it always seemed that the name most verbalised as being football's greatest of all time was Pele, whether that was from the media authorities of the day or the elders who populated Leitrim and further afield.

Yet in the last 20 years or so, Diego Maradona's star began to shine just as brightly and then even appeared to surpass his fellow South American icon in the stratosphere as the clock ticked forward.

That is a testament to the strongest prevailing winds in each era. Those who overlapped with