Now let me start off by apologising for the clickbait headline, the truth is I’m not a huge fan of comparing players and many will no doubt leave this article unfulfilled by my conclusion.

Football fans love debating who was better Pele or Maradona? Or who is the best ever Ronaldo or Messi?

People will bring up who scored more goals, who won more trophies and who done it on the international stage but in truth it’s all down to individual opinion. You can twist the right facts and show why your choice is the best.

When it comes to who’s better Alfredo Morelos or Moussa Dembele? There’s other questions that should be taken into account.

This season, in his debut year at Rangers, Morelos has scored ten Scottish Premiership goals on his first twenty outings. Now if a main striker is based solely on goals then he’s better than Demeble in this campaign because the Frenchman only has four league strikes to his name.

So at this present moment in time, if I were an Old Firm manager then I’d pick the Colombian. Alfredo is raw and is very instinctive in front of goal. Importantly he’s hungry to prove himself in Scotland’s top tier. Whereas Moussa seems to have had his head turned and ready to leave for a perceived ‘bigger’ league. It should also be noted that the Celtic hitman has had niggling injuries this term and has stiffer competition for his starting place at Celtic Park.

Now let’s say I am a manager of an English Premier League side, who would I want Morelos or Dembele?

It would have to be the Celtic forward. He has more experience and importantly he has a good track record in both the English Championship and the Scottish Premiership. He’s also proven himself at under-21 level with France and he has bagged goals in the bigger games such as Old Firm fixtures, cup finals and Champions League ties. All in all, Moussa Dembele has twenty-one goals in forty-two league appearances for Celtic and that’s a tremendous record for one so young.

Dembele is also further forward in terms of his overall game. His pace is dangerous, he’s good at finishing with both feet and he knows how to find himself in space in the penalty area.

Morelos is developing well at Ibrox but he still needs to make an impact in the Old Firm games and in European matches. If he can do that then the bigger sides in Europe will start to check him out, like they’ve done with Dembele at Celtic Park.

Morelos still needs more focus in his all round game. It is also important that the Colombian forward learns to calm down a bit on the park. He has been targeted by opponents because of his hot head nature and he reacts all too often. While I believe referees should protect him more than they do, Alfredo needs to deal with the unwanted attention in a better way rather than get into it with bully boy defenders.

The thing is, instead of comparing the two strikers I prefer to enjoy the fact that Scotland has two very talented young forwards playing there football up here and they are helping raise our league’s profile. Hopefully the two will go from strength to strength, win big moves and succeed there too! Then other top youngsters will look at the Scottish Premiership and see it as a good pathway to the mega rich leagues.

Instead of fighting over who the better player is, just enjoy what you’ve got before it’s gone!

Posted on January 24th, 2018 by scott
Filed under: Article