Bob and Bri,
All valid points, and again I must add that I wish there were a way to do a real apples to apples comparison. As for the European competition Rico faces - he goes to Bonzini Worlds and usually mops everybody up, regardless of how they might objectively be rated - he goes and beats the best there is virtually every time. Same with Garlando, TechBall, Jupiter, and pretty much any other table you can name, including Tornado.
As for Horton - he dominated his era which had a very different set of dynamics. From the mid 70's until 1981, the only big game around was Tournament Soccer, and Horton was among those/the one who set the standard. Then TS dissolved, Dynamo cloned the Brown top TS before redesigning their tables, Stryker had a small tour, along with a couple of others, including the one man goalie Tornado. The biggest difference was that for 15 +/- years virtually all the key tour players followed the same variety mix of tables at the same time. Everyone who was anything was primarily TS for 6 years, then an 80's mix followed in the 90's by a Tornado dominant sport. Rico plays at least 5 different tables, all with different 'feel', basically at the same time. To play Tornado only a fraction of the time then come to an almost exclusively Tornado country (and a really big country at that!) and still do what he does...amazing to me. And don't forget that Inside Foos has made it easy to sit and study his game, piece by slow motion replay piece, so that by now you would think more players would have made a bigger dent in Rico's record, unless his foosball mastery is simply that far above the rest.
Again, I wish they both could have somehow met on their best table, both playing at their prime, etc. but alas, that can never happen. The closest comparison would be a Rico near his prime playing Horton who is long past his, played on Tornado.
Take care.......................................Tyler
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