It wasn’t until the 1994 World Cup in the United States when the “assist” statistic was popularized in world soccer.
Before that, it was tough to quantify the extent of one’s creative brilliance, with goalscorers enjoying much of the limelight. Many of the all-time great creators, like Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff, were reliable goalscorers, too, and perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that their careers weren’t reduced to numbers as some contemporary stars’ are.
