Comparing yesterday’s sports with today’s is a pretty pointless exercise. We all know that, but we still spend a great deal of time and effort doing it.

Pele a better player than Diego Maradona? Your answer will probably depend on how old you are or on your nationality, especially if you happen to be either Brazilian or Argentine. Then again, maybe the Dutchman Johan Cruyff was better than either. An intriguing trio of almost, but not quite, contemporaries. Pele dominated the 1960s, Cruyff took over in the ’70s, while the ’80s belonged to Maradona. All three were skillful playmakers and goal-scorers, yet a direct comparison is impossible because of the changing nature of the sport in those three decades.

The game got more and more defensive and featured increasingly harsher man-to-man marking during that period, so you could argue that Maradona’s exploits are the most remarkable. But both Pele and Cruyff were obvious targets for rough treatment and were always able to handle it. So it goes, and sooner or later, the argument will reach back another decade to the 1950s, when another Argentine, Alfredo di Stefano, ruled the roost as leader of the great Real Madrid team.

Surely di Stefano was the most versatile of all players, a peerless triple threat, attacker, midfielder, and defender all rolled into one supremely athletic and tireless body? All true – but no one now believes that any one player could play such a taxing role today. The game has become so much faster, so much more physically demanding.

Comparing the different eras of the game itself, rather than the individuals, puts us on rather more solid ground. There is general agreement that today’s teams would be too strong for any from previous years. The evidence for that view is pretty convincing. We have the tapes. We can see whole games from the 1970s, plus films from the 1960s, and one thing leaps out from those old images. The game was, undeniably, slower. At times it looks painfully, almost laughably, slow.

Those of us who insist that Brazil’s Pele-inspired 1970 World Cup-winning team was the greatest we ever saw find it a discomfiting experience to watch the archive film and to realize how much faster the game has become.

So the game is faster, the players are fitter, teams are much better organized on the field, where they use much more sophisticated tactics and – if we believe the manufacturers – scientifically designed balls and footwear have both helped to improve the game. If all of that is not enough to convince you of the superiority of modern soccer, we now have the word of FIFA president Sepp Blatter that today’s game is better than anything the old-timers knew.

Writing in the May 2005 issue of FIFA Magazine, Blatter points out that soccer is now a truly worldwide game, where once it was limited to Europe and South America; and that FIFA, in addition to the World Cup, now organizes world championships in youth soccer, women’s soccer, indoor soccer, and beach soccer. “I firmly believe that soccer is now in better shape than ever,” says Blatter.

Case closed? Absolutely not. For a start, the arguments in favor of today’s game take no account of fan violence and racism, decidedly modern problems that have grabbed headlines in recent weeks. But I am concerned here with the game as played on the field, and the way that the modern version is rosily painted as a speedier, more athletic sport. Does faster automatically mean better? Or, looking at Blatter’s argument, does more mean better?

Is the modern game more exciting, more entertaining? If goals are the game’s highlights – and few would argue that they are not – then the statistics tell a depressing story. In the 1950 World Cup, goal-scoring stood at exactly four per game; by 1970, it was down to just under three, and in 2002, it had dropped to 2.5 per game.

Pele titled his 1977 autobiography “My Life and the Beautiful Game.” Soccer was beautiful the way Pele played it, but that is not an adjective that is much used to describe today’s game. Nearly 30 years on, beauty seems old-fashioned, almost irrelevant. What matters now is efficiency, not style.

The change is logical enough, brought about by the staggering amounts of money now circulating in the sport. In 2003, Newcastle United failed to qualify for the European Champions League when it lost a game to Partizan Belgrade. The defeat was calculated to have cost Newcastle nearly $18 million in television revenue.

When losing a crucial game can also mean losing millions of dollars, it should not be surprising that aesthetic considerations are low on the sport’s priority list. Winning is all, an end that justifies almost any means.

A brutal example of just what that mentality can do was laid before us on Saturday in the English FA Cup semifinal between Arsenal and Blackburn Rovers. The FA Cup, the sport’s oldest tournament, dates back to 1872. It is a tournament with a rich history of famous games and players, and it is viewed with a loving reverence around the world.

That reputation was badly sullied by a Blackburn team more intent on destroying Arsenal’s game than on creating its own. The beautiful game was replaced by the ugly game, as overworked referee Steve Dunn tried to cope with Blackburn’s systematically violent fouling and the Arsenal players tried to keep their cool in the face of massive provocation.

Blackburn coach Mark Hughes was unrepentant: “We had a game plan and we stuck to it.” Indeed they did, throughout the first half, and the hell with good soccer or entertainment value. Luckily for the game, and for the sport, Arsenal got the first goal just before halftime. In the second half, Blackburn was forced to concentrate a bit more on trying to score a goal than on kicking opponents. They never came close.

Then, with only seven minutes remaining, the beautiful game made a brief appearance. On came Arsenal’s 21-year-old Dutchman, Robin van Persie, to quickly score two superb goals. Suddenly, the sport of soccer sparkled again, but the moment was not to last.

Van Persie did not get to celebrate his second goal. He was lying on the ground with blood pouring from his mouth – the result of a collision with Blackburn’s captain Andy Todd. Accidental? Possibly – though the replays made it look anything but. The ugly reality of the modern game had the last word.

That game is assuredly faster, more physical, better organized, more widely played, all of that, yes. But better? More exciting, more entertaining? No, I think not.