Surely the CA and PA of a player is just an indication of how talented the player is/ or could potentially become in comparison with all the other players within the database.
Therefore, it is not making any kind of statement about the abilities of these players compared to their predecessors. The players you suggest could have been 200 for both, and if they had been in the current game then the players such as Messi would have had a lower rating to show the comparison.
As I see it the 0-200 rating is just a yardstick by which to compare players and staff by, just as the 0-20 per attribute is just a yardstick to compare that attribute by.