They are breaking records that have been set by all the previous greats and are going way beyond them. Zidane was competing with the Brazilian generation, the italian generation (dP, totti, inzaghi, etc...) and the french generation (henry and co) for Ballod Dors. Even Argentina had crespo, ortega and lopez while the likes of schevshenko, rui costa, nedved, viera, owen, gerrard, lampard, scholes, and giggs were also around. The fact that zizou and Ronaldo were better than everyone around them does not make these players shit.
Similarly, the fact that messi and ronaldo are in a league of their own does not mean that the likes of suarez, Aguero, iniesta, bale,Ibra, falcao, robben, yaya, vidal and so on mediocre.