Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi - Who is the better footballer?

[MenInG]

Virat Kohli's love for football, besides his passion for cricket, is now a well-known fact. The 30-year-old right-handed batsman has many records to his name and has his eyes firmly set on Sachin Tendulkar's astonishing record of 100 international centuries. Virat Kohli leads India from the front and inspires the players with his fitness and passion for the sport. However, India cricket team captain Virat Kohli is himself a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo's "energy and intensity" and doesn't shy away from rating the Portuguese footballer above Argentine star Lionel Messi.

When asked about his favourite footballer between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Virat Kohli told The Times Of India: "Tough question. But I would say Cristiano is the most complete player that I have seen. Whether it's the left foot, right foot, speed or dribbling skills, he's amazing. I have not seen a better goal scorer," Kohli said.

"He revolutionised the sport and everyone followed him. His place is special, but if I had to take only one in my team who will give energy and intensity, it's Cristiano," he added.

The Ronaldo vs Messi debate is an ever-trending topic for football fans across the globe. Kohli didn't outrightly write off Messi from the debate, saying: "It's a personal preference. Messi is a freak, absolute natural talent, and his ability is second to none."

"For me, what stands out is the ability or the will to put in the effort in every single minute of the game. Ronaldo's drive separates him from everyone else. Playing at the top level, everyone has talent, but I don't think anyone has the will that he has," the Indian skipper added.

Kohli is currently engaged in India's ongoing home series against South Africa. After the three-match T20 International series ended in a 1-1 draw, India will host South Africa for the first Test of the three-Test series in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday.

https://sports.ndtv.com/cricket/vir...onel-messi-debate-picks-his-favourite-2109373

 

[MenInG]

Spain - Lionel Messi has admitted he wanted to leave Barcelona when he was under investigation from the Spanish tax authorities but insists now he intends to finish his career at the club.

In an interview with Catalan radio station RAC1, Messi also said he had expected Neymar to sign for Real Madrid last summer after Barca failed to strike an agreement with Paris Saint-Germain.

Messi and his father Jorge were found guilty of defrauding Spain of 4.1 million euros in taxes between 2007 and 2009, for which they paid close to 10 million euros and Messi was handed a 21-month suspended prison sentence.

Asked on Tuesday night if he had ever wanted to leave Barcelona, Messi said: "In 2013-14, when I started having the tax problems, it was very difficult for me and my family."

"My children were young and we had a very bad time. At that time, I had it in mind to leave, not because I wanted to leave Barca but because I wanted to leave Spain. I felt mistreated and I didn't want to be here anymore."

The 32-year-old's current contract expires in 2021 and Messi believes extending his deal "will not be a problem".

"Today it is clearer that my idea is to finish here," Messi said. "For how I am at the club, for what I feel, and for the family and the children and how settled we are in this city. I would not like to disrupt that.

"Of course anything can happen but in principle, the idea is to stay here."

Messi began playing football aged six for Newell's Old Boys, the Rosario club he supports in Argentina.

"I always dreamed of being able to play again for Newell's and to have the experience of playing football in Argentina," he said.

"But I have already told them that sometimes you have to think about what is best for your family."

No rift with Griezmann

Messi was keen to be reunited with Neymar last summer but Barcelona were unable to agree a fee with PSG.

"I honestly thought at one time, especially in this market, that if he did not come here, he would go to Real Madrid Madrid because I thought he wanted to leave," Messi said.

"I wanted Ney to come because as a footballer, he is one of the best in the world. He is unpredictable, different and having him in our team would have given us more options."

Barcelona did sign Antoine Griezmann from Atletico Madrid, despite him rejecting the Catalans the year before. Messi denies suggestions of a rift between him and the Frenchman.

"The first year when we wanted to sign Griezmann, I said he was one of the best and that the best are always welcome," Messi said. "I have never had problem with him coming. So it's a lie."

Messi also offered his support to Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde, who has been under pressure after a bumpy start to the season followed the team's Champions League collapse against Liverpool in May.

"It was not the coach's fault but it was also not my decision for him to stay," Messi said. "The club decided Valverde would continue and for me that was a joy, good for stability and he is a coach we support and love.

"If another coach comes, we will be with him. To achieve success, we all have to be united."

Messi scored his first goal of the season in a 4-0 thrashing of Sevilla on Sunday, after two months spoiled by calf and thigh injuries.

"I'm still a bit short but I'm feeling better," Messi said. "My legs hurt against Sevilla but it's what happens when you come back. I'm getting closer."

https://www.sport24.co.za/Soccer/In...ems-made-him-want-to-leave-barcelona-20191009

 

[MenInG]

Having coached at some of the biggest clubs in the world, running the rule over some of the best players, Jose Mourinho feels that Ronaldo Nazario is the best player he has ever seen.

The former Barcelona and Real Madrid striker was a phenomenon at the turn of the century and when asked to name the best player of his lifetime, Mourinho overlooked both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

"Ronaldo, El Fenomeno, Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi have had longer careers," Mourinho told LiveScore, "they have remained at the top every day for 15 years."However, if we are talking strictly about talent and skill, nobody surpasses Ronaldo [Nazario].

"When he was at Barcelona with Bobby Robson, I realised that he was the best player I'd ever seen take to the field."

Injuries killed a career that could have been even more incredible, but the talent that that 19-year-old boy had was something incredible."In 1997, Barcelona played against PSG in Rotterdam and Ronaldo's goal, 1-0. Awesome."

https://www.marca.com/en/football/international-football/2019/10/11/5da0e21eca474177748b45d9.html

 

[PakLFC]

Messi for sure. The most skillful Footballer ever.

 

[Sir-fraz]

Messi wins third straight golden shoe as top league-goal scorer

BARCELONA - Barcelona captain Leo Messi received his sixth Golden Shoe as the top scorer in the European leagues on Wednesday.

Messi won the trophy for a third straight year after scoring 36 goals, three more than his closest challenger, Kylian Mbappe of Paris Saint-Germain.

Messi's sons Thiago and Mateo, presented their father with the trophy supervised by his wife, Antonella Rocuzzo and watched by team-mates, including Luis Suarez and Jordi Alba.

Messi dedicated the award "to my family, to my colleagues who are here. There are Luis and Jordi, who are two of the men to blame for this award."

"Without my team, I could not even have won the award once."

Messi now has two more Golden Shoes than his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo. Luis Suarez is one of nine players on two. The award was created in 1967 when it was won by Eusebio.

https://ewn.co.za/2019/10/16/messi-...-scorer?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

[MenInG]

Lionel Messi became the first player to score in 15 consecutive Champions League seasons as Barcelona claimed a narrow win at Slavia Prague.

Captain Messi gave Barca an early lead with a first-time finish after an exchange of passes with Arthur.

The Czech champions were deservedly level when Jan Boril poked home Lukas Masopust's pass from 16 yards.

But Messi's free-kick found Luis Suarez at the back post - and his cross-shot hit went in off Peter Olayinka.

Barcelona, who are top of La Liga, have now won six consecutive games in all competitions.

The result keeps Ernesto Valverde's side top of Group F on seven points from three games, three points above Inter Milan and Borussia Dortmund.

Those two sides met at the San Siro in the group's other game, with Inter winning 2-0. Lautaro Martinez scored and had a penalty saved before Antonio Candreva's late clinching goal.

Barcelona's top Champions League scorers since start of 2017-18
19 - Lionel Messi

7 - own goals

4 - Luis Suarez

4 - Ousmane Dembele

Barca were fortunate to go three points clear at the top - with Slavia deserving more from the game.

The Prague side had more shots - and efforts on target - than Barcelona, most notably a 60-second spell when Marc-Andre ter Stegen got down low to deny Lukas Masopust and then tipped Olayinka's curling effort over the bar.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/49874450

 

[Bilal Ahmad15]

Messi is better

 

[shebimalik]

.

 

[MenInG]

Lionel Messi has been included in Argentina's squad for friendlies against Brazil and Uruguay next month, after his three-month international football ban ended.

The Barcelona forward, 32, was sent-off in Argentina's Copa America third-place play-off win over Chile on 6 July.

He was later banned after claiming the Copa America was "corrupt".

Messi, who has scored five goals for Barcelona this season, missed four matches for Argentina during his ban.

Argentina face Brazil in Saudi Arabia on 15 November and Uruguay in Israel on 18 November.

Full squad
Goalkeepers: Agustin Marchesin, Juan Musso, Emiliano Martinez, Esteban Andrada

Defenders: Juan Foyth , Renzo Saravia, Nicolas Otamendi, German Pezzella, Marcos Rojo, Walter Kannemann, Nicolas Taglafico, Nehuen Perez, Guido Rodriguez

Midfielders: Giovani lo Celso, Leandro Paredes, Nicolas Dominguez, Rodrigo de Paul, Marcos Acuna, Roberto Pereyra, Lucas Ocampos

Forwards: Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero, Nicolas Gonzalez, Lucas Alario, Lautaro Martinez, Paulo Dybala

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/50256824

 

[MenInG]

Lionel Messi celebrated winning his sixth Ballon d'Or with a hat-trick as Barcelona beat Mallorca to move top of La Liga.

He scored two excellent finishes from outside the box before smashing in a third off the underside of the crossbar.

Spoiler

Antoine Griezmann had opened the scoring for Barca, with Luis Suarez netting an outrageous backheel.

Ante Budimir scored twice for struggling Mallorca.

Messi showed off his Ballon d'Or trophy - awarded to the best player in the world - to the Nou Camp crowd before kick-off, with his family on the pitch alongside him.

And he finished the match with his 35th La Liga hat-trick, breaking the record of Cristiano Ronaldo.

Barcelona were excellent at times, particularly in the first half, with some fantastic passing movement.

However their first goal came when Griezmann chased onto Marc-Andre ter Stegen's long goal-kick before clipping the ball over the goalkeeper.

The France international then set up Messi's first, a fine curling effort from 25 yards. Budimir scored a deflected strike for Mallorca, before Messi scored a similar goal to his first, this time from an Ivan Rakitic pass.

Suarez scored the best goal of the game, however. An excellent passing move ended with Frenkie de Jong finding Suarez, who backheeled the ball into the ground and over goalkeeper Manolo Reina.

Luis Suarez
Luis Suarez scoring his audacious backheel
Budimir headed in his second for Mallorca before Messi smashed in his third from Suarez's lay-off. He is now La Liga's top scorer with 12 goals - from only 10 games.

Barcelona go back to the top, above Real Madrid - who beat Espanyol 2-0 earlier on Saturday. The title rivals meet in El Clasico in 11 days' time.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/50692972

 

[Waleed93]

Messi is having a better season right now. However, Cristiano Ronaldo remains the GOAT.

 

[Aman]

Messi is having a better season right now. However, Cristiano Ronaldo remains the GOAT.

Yeah, there's only one compared to Maradona and Pele while the other is only compared to Messi. No one outside Ronaldo fan boys consider him the GOAT, he falls short everywhere.

If Messi had reliable team mates this discussion would have ended in 2014.

 

[Captain caveman]

Yeah, there's only one compared to Maradona and Pele while the other is only compared to Messi. No one outside Ronaldo fan boys consider him the GOAT, he falls short everywhere.

If Messi had reliable team mates this discussion would have ended in 2014.

Only people who never saw the '86 world cup live, would compare that club footballer messi to the GOAT DIEGO MARADONNA!

Maradonna ran the defence, he ran the midfield and he ran the attack.
Messi is just a forward and he can be a supplier to attackers sometimes, but he has no defensive skills like maradonna and his attacking skills have been shown to be inferior to maradonna in every world cup he has played!

 

[Waleed93]

Yeah, there's only one compared to Maradona and Pele while the other is only compared to Messi. No one outside Ronaldo fan boys consider him the GOAT, he falls short everywhere.

If Messi had reliable team mates this discussion would have ended in 2014.

I don't know why you had to bring in the likes of Pele and Maradona in this discussion. Both Ronaldo and Messi are better than them. I consider Maradona as one of the greatest ever, and the greatest ever to have played for Argentina, but Messi towers above him thanks to his exceptional achievements with Barcelona. That being said, I don't think he would have survived in this competitive era of football where 2 men have been dominating the stage of now more than 12 years. Pele is someone I will never put close to that category. The man literally played in an era completely different to this one, rules were totally different, offsides didn't exist back then.

Messi is only compared to Maradona because the latter's heroics gave a World Cup trophy to Argentina in 1986. You can admit it or not, Maradona remains the best ever to have played for the Argentine national team. Nobody compares Messi's Barcelona career with Maradona's Barcelona or Napoli career, as the former has achieved everything at club level.

Speaking about the 2014 WC, then you simply can't put the entire blame on Messi's team mates for bottling the final. Messi himself scored all of his goals in the group stages vs Iran and Nigeria. He didn't do anything special in the knockout stages of the WC.
Ronaldo, who is often trolled by Messi fan boys for not playing the Euro 2016 Final, atleast scored 3 goals and had 3 assists to his name in the Euros, including a match winning performance in the semi-final.
He has won everything with Manchester United, demolished everything with Real Madrid, won an International trophy with his national side, has almost 100 goals for Portugal, and now he is here, at Turin, at the age of almost 35, looking for a new challenge. Obviously, his performances will not be as good as back in 2010-2018 at this age, Messi will go through this phase as well, but if he somehow manages to win a CL trophy with this Juventus side, who are playing awful defensive football at the moment, and I really hope he achieves his goal yet again, then it might be the end of the discussion as well.

 

[Captain caveman]

I don't know why you had to bring in the likes of Pele and Maradona in this discussion. Both Ronaldo and Messi are better than them. I consider Maradona as one of the greatest ever, and the greatest ever to have played for Argentina, but Messi towers above him thanks to his exceptional achievements with Barcelona. That being said, I don't think he would have survived in this competitive era of football where 2 men have been dominating the stage of now more than 12 years. Pele is someone I will never put close to that category. The man literally played in an era completely different to this one, rules were totally different, offsides didn't exist back then.

Messi is only compared to Maradona because the latter's heroics gave a World Cup trophy to Argentina in 1986. You can admit it or not, Maradona remains the best ever to have played for the Argentine national team. Nobody compares Messi's Barcelona career with Maradona's Barcelona or Napoli career, as the former has achieved everything at club level.

Speaking about the 2014 WC, then you simply can't put the entire blame on Messi's team mates for bottling the final. Messi himself scored all of his goals in the group stages vs Iran and Nigeria. He didn't do anything special in the knockout stages of the WC.
Ronaldo, who is often trolled by Messi fan boys for not playing the Euro 2016 Final, atleast scored 3 goals and had 3 assists to his name in the Euros, including a match winning performance in the semi-final.
He has won everything with Manchester United, demolished everything with Real Madrid, won an International trophy with his national side, has almost 100 goals for Portugal, and now he is here, at Turin, at the age of almost 35, looking for a new challenge. Obviously, his performances will not be as good as back in 2010-2018 at this age, Messi will go through this phase as well, but if he somehow manages to win a CL trophy with this Juventus side, who are playing awful defensive football at the moment, and I really hope he achieves his goal yet again, then it might be the end of the discussion as well.

Very confusing post!
Let me help you out, messi is not even good enough to lace the boots of the GOAT Diego Maradonna!
But messi and ronaldo are the two last great footballers for the time being.
Just waiting for the next great footballer.
Oh yeah, by the way CR7 is not fit enough to lace the boots of the second GOAT Ronaldo(brazilian).
You guys keep comparing your club footballers with their club achievements to world cup winners lol!

 

[Aman]

I don't know why you had to bring in the likes of Pele and Maradona in this discussion. Both Ronaldo and Messi are better than them. I consider Maradona as one of the greatest ever, and the greatest ever to have played for Argentina, but Messi towers above him thanks to his exceptional achievements with Barcelona. That being said, I don't think he would have survived in this competitive era of football where 2 men have been dominating the stage of now more than 12 years. Pele is someone I will never put close to that category. The man literally played in an era completely different to this one, rules were totally different, offsides didn't exist back then.

Messi is only compared to Maradona because the latter's heroics gave a World Cup trophy to Argentina in 1986. You can admit it or not, Maradona remains the best ever to have played for the Argentine national team. Nobody compares Messi's Barcelona career with Maradona's Barcelona or Napoli career, as the former has achieved everything at club level.

Speaking about the 2014 WC, then you simply can't put the entire blame on Messi's team mates for bottling the final. Messi himself scored all of his goals in the group stages vs Iran and Nigeria. He didn't do anything special in the knockout stages of the WC.
Ronaldo, who is often trolled by Messi fan boys for not playing the Euro 2016 Final, atleast scored 3 goals and had 3 assists to his name in the Euros, including a match winning performance in the semi-final.
He has won everything with Manchester United, demolished everything with Real Madrid, won an International trophy with his national side, has almost 100 goals for Portugal, and now he is here, at Turin, at the age of almost 35, looking for a new challenge. Obviously, his performances will not be as good as back in 2010-2018 at this age, Messi will go through this phase as well, but if he somehow manages to win a CL trophy with this Juventus side, who are playing awful defensive football at the moment, and I really hope he achieves his goal yet again, then it might be the end of the discussion as well.

Nah, to most it's Pele, Maradona and Messi.

Eye test those 3 are the GOATs. R9 would have been in there if he had a longer career. I don't consider Ronaldo on their level, he's more Muller, hard work and dedication than genius.

 

[Aman]

Ronaldo's "international trophy" is a joke, he didn't even play the Final and the Nations league was nothing more than a friendly tournament which he only played 2 games in.

Both tournaments he wasn't even Portugal's best player, he did not make the tournament's XI nor was he the player of the tournament. Yet this is supposed to be proof of his greatness? Heck, yesterday USADA said neither were considered major by them whereas the Olympics were and banned Russia competing there.

His 100 goals? only a fraction of them have come against top 50 teams, with 1/4 of them coming against teams outside the top 100. Teams like Lithuania, Luxembourg, Andora, Facore Islands etc. in qualifiers - countries no one has heard of.

 

[Captain caveman]

Messi is only comparable to alfredo di stefano not to maradonna.
Maradonna is leagues above messi!

 

[Aman]

Messi is only comparable to alfredo di stefano not to maradonna.
Maradonna is leagues above messi!

Messi is leagues better as a player, what Maradona has over Messi is a WC.

If Messi won a WC in 2014, there would be no debate. He would be the Michael Jordan of football.

He didn't so he shares the crown with Pele and Maradona, the previous generation of GOATs.

 

[Captain caveman]

CR7 is only comparable with Eusébio not with Ronaldo(R9).
R9 is leagues above CR7.

 

[Aman]

CR7 is only comparable with Eusébio not with Ronaldo(R9).
R9 is leagues above CR7.

He's a fantastic goal scorer with dedication and strong drive, but he doesn't have the same magic of players like Maradona, Pele, Messi, R9, Ronaldinho etc.

You need that to be in the GOAT discussion IMO.

It would have been interesting to see how Muller would have gone done in history if he was playing now, he was another fantastic goalscorer who has won WCs IIRC and a better goal scoring record. His legacy probably would have improved immensely given how Ronaldo is being treated now by the media - but that's maybe because of Ronaldo's marketing.

 

[Captain caveman]

Messi is leagues better as a player, what Maradona has over Messi is a WC.

If Messi won a WC in 2014, there would be no debate. He would be the Michael Jordan of football.

He didn't so he shares the crown with Pele and Maradona, the previous generation of GOATs.

Do you know anything about football history.
When maradonna played opposition players would try to break his legs, and the ref would do nothing, today, you would get a red card for the first rough tackle.
Messi flows past defenders, but he wouldn't be able to do that in the 80s, they would have broke his legs. Now if maradonna was to play in this era, he be scoring hat tricks every game.
The other thing you fail to understand is that the champions league is kak. You have 2nd, 3rd and even 4th place teams in their leagues playing in it and you can lose games and not be knocked out. The old european cup had only champions of their leagues and if you lose one game you are knocked out!
Messi is more comparable to alfredo di stefano(do you know who he is?) than maradonna. Maradonna is leagues above messi.

 

[Captain caveman]

He's a fantastic goal scorer with dedication and strong drive, but he doesn't have the same magic of players like Maradona, Pele, Messi, R9, Ronaldinho etc.

You need that to be in the GOAT discussion IMO.

It would have been interesting to see how Muller would have gone done in history if he was playing now, he was another fantastic goalscorer who has won WCs IIRC and a better goal scoring record. His legacy probably would have improved immensely given how Ronaldo is being treated now by the media - but that's maybe because of Ronaldo's marketing.

Did you ever see ronaldo play at his peak 98' world cup?
Obviously not, you would know he is only behind maradonna in the greatest footballers of all time.

 

[Waleed93]

Very confusing post!
Let me help you out, messi is not even good enough to lace the boots of the GOAT Diego Maradonna!
But messi and ronaldo are the two last great footballers for the time being.
Just waiting for the next great footballer.
Oh yeah, by the way CR7 is not fit enough to lace the boots of the second GOAT Ronaldo(brazilian).
You guys keep comparing your club footballers with their club achievements to world cup winners lol!

A World Cup trophy is not the benchmark for a player to be classifies as a GOAT. A lot of other aspects needs to be taken into consideration as well. Messi and Ronaldo both are better than Maradona in many aspects of the game.
They not only have the stats showing their clear superiority over past greats, but their longevity gives them a huge advantage over the likes of Maradona, who was at the peak of his powers for some years of the 80s, and that's about it.
Ronaldo and Messi have been at the top of the football world for now 13 years, Maradona didn't even had half of their longevity at the top of the game.
He won the 1986 WC, which is why he is better than Messi with the national team. But when it comes club football, there is absolutely no comparison.

 

[Waleed93]

Ronaldo's "international trophy" is a joke, he didn't even play the Final and the Nations league was nothing more than a friendly tournament which he only played 2 games in.

Both tournaments he wasn't even Portugal's best player, he did not make the tournament's XI nor was he the player of the tournament. Yet this is supposed to be proof of his greatness? Heck, yesterday USADA said neither were considered major by them whereas the Olympics were and banned Russia competing there.

His 100 goals? only a fraction of them have come against top 50 teams, with 1/4 of them coming against teams outside the top 100. Teams like Lithuania, Luxembourg, Andora, Facore Islands etc. in qualifiers - countries no one has heard of.

You said that Ronaldo's Euro 2016 win was a joke because he didn't played the Final. According to your logic, Messi's 2006 CL win is a joke because he didn't played the Final and scored only 1 goal in 5-6 games.
Downplaying the Nations League is just disrespectful as it is an official tournament organised by the UEFA. But in this case, you are just trying to downgrade Cristiano Ronaldo's achievements.
You said he was not Portugal's best player in Euro 2016. Again, you are wrong. He was the tournament's 2nd best player behind only Griezmann, with 3 goals and 3 assists to his name. Also scored a match winning hattrick against Switzerland in the Nations League semi finals.

If scoring 100 national goals was that easy, then why is nobody even close to that mark besides Ronaldo ?
Out of his 99 goals, 80+ have come in competitive games, Messi only has 30 odd such goals.
Ronaldo has 14 competitive goals against teams ranked in the Top 15. Messi has 8 such goals.
Ronaldo has 27 competitive goals against teams ranked between 16 and 50. Messi has 20 such goals.

Coming to Pele, you are bringing him in the GOAT discussion when the fact is that you actually never saw him play, apart from a few YouTube black & white videos where players are barely recognisable.
Looking at your posts, it looks like only naturally talented players such as Messi, Maradona, Nazario and Ronaldinho can be classified as GOATs. That is not the case in any sport, be it football or cricket or any other sport.

 

[Captain caveman]

A World Cup trophy is not the benchmark for a player to be classifies as a GOAT. A lot of other aspects needs to be taken into consideration as well. Messi and Ronaldo both are better than Maradona in many aspects of the game.
They not only have the stats showing their clear superiority over past greats, but their longevity gives them a huge advantage over the likes of Maradona, who was at the peak of his powers for some years of the 80s, and that's about it.
Ronaldo and Messi have been at the top of the football world for now 13 years, Maradona didn't even had half of their longevity at the top of the game.
He won the 1986 WC, which is why he is better than Messi with the national team. But when it comes club football, there is absolutely no comparison.

I am not going to even waste my time arguing with someone who does not even know that winning the world cup is the ultimate achievement in football, nothing else matters!

 

[Waleed93]

I am not going to even waste my time arguing with someone who does not even know that winning the world cup is the ultimate achievement in football, nothing else matters!

Nobody is forcing you to argue with me. But there is one thing for sure, calling Maradona a better overall footballer than 2 players who have been dominating the world of football for close to a decade and a half just because the former has a WC win is calling Philipp Lahm a better defender than Paolo Maldini because the former won a WC in 2014.

I hope you will stay loyal to your logic.

 

[Captain caveman]

Nobody is forcing you to argue with me. But there is one thing for sure, calling Maradona a better overall footballer than 2 players who have been dominating the world of football for close to a decade and a half just because the former has a WC win is calling Philipp Lahm a better defender than Paolo Maldini because the former won a WC in 2014.

I hope you will stay loyal to your logic.

I have seen all these players play and maradona is on a different level.
Maradona ran the defence midfield and would attack when the chance arrived.
Messi is just an attacker
Maradona would set up goals, messi cant, unless its a pass in the box. Maradona was the greatest free kicker ever, scoring 3 free kick goals in one game whereas messi only scored 3 free kick goals inhis life.
Maradona won the greatest prize in football, the world cup, single handly, the rest of his team were substandard international players. Maradona almost repeated the fete in the following world cup with an even worse team , just missing out and being runners up.
Maradona took a low table serie a team and won 2 serie a leagues, the best league in the world.
Messi without xavi and iniesta is a less imposing figure.
Messi does not control games requires others to set him up.
Messi in his best world cup, the last one, did not control any ganlme, becsuse he is only a forward and spent majority of the games doing nothing until a chance came or he made for himself. Maradona was a attacking midfieider not a striker, he ran games from defence, to midfield to attack, scoring and creating(assists) goals, always commanding games, not like messi who has huge lulls in games, doing nothing.
Messi has far more club trophies than maradona including la ligas and champions trophies, but he played in a better team with better players(xavi, iniesta etc), when as a kid maradona played for barca, he did not have the players around him that messi had and more importantly he was kicked and fouled at every touch. This is not something messi has had to deal with, as players get red cards for committing such a foul once, not during maradona time.
So playing conditions were much rougher with much more dirty fouls and inferior pitches. But theres no doubt messi has a superior record at club level than maradona, but he played for the best team in the world whereas maradona took a medoicre serie a team in the best league in the world at the time and won two serie a titles. Messi as he has shown with argentina, cannot win titles in average teams, let alone poor teams, he needs other quality players around him.
Maradona won the argentine league in 1979 , he moved to barcelona in 1982 and won the copa del rey and copa la liga, he then moved to napoli in 1985 and won two seria titles and a league cup as well as winning the world cup in 1986 and being a runner up in the world cup in 1990. 11 years at the top of the game and being the best player in the world, not 4/5 years as you stated.
Yes messi has more club achievements, but the ultimate is world cups, just ask any argentinian fan whose better messi or maradona?
Ultimately, messi is a fantastic footballer and a good professional, maradona was the GOAT footballer, but a bad boy, hanging out with mafia bossez and doing drugs and god knows what. He underachieved at club level due to a different time where fouls went unpunished(in '86 WC maradona was fouled 50 times, still a record til today) and being in poor teams but also because of his bad boy personality. However, like everyone who knows anything about football, knows the world cups are the ultimate , the pinnacle of football and along with his patriotism, this is were he performed to his best winning one, almost two world cups single handly.
On the otherhand, messi has always played for one of the best clubs in the worl and been surrounded with world class players. When messi plays for a far far superior argentina side, but not the best side in the world, he ultimately fails and is a quitter, with his dad saying you are putting too much pressure on my son lol!
Ultimately, if you watch messi and maradonna play, messi may have similar skills in dribbling and shooting at goals, but maradona was a complete player running the midfield and defence.
Messi is comparable to fellow argentina and real madrid legend alfredo di stefano who also has a superior club record than maradona, with 5 in a row european cup wins(old champion league tournament) and 5 consectivela liga titles, but neither messi or stefano are anywhere as close as good as maradona the GOAT.
Really, anyone whose seen both messi and maradona playing would know maradona is the GOAT!

 

[PetroDollars]

CR7 is light years ahead of R9, do not embarrass yourself by comparing them.

 

[Waleed93]

I have seen all these players play and maradona is on a different level.
Maradona ran the defence midfield and would attack when the chance arrived.
Messi is just an attacker
Maradona would set up goals, messi cant, unless its a pass in the box. Maradona was the greatest free kicker ever, scoring 3 free kick goals in one game whereas messi only scored 3 free kick goals inhis life.
Maradona won the greatest prize in football, the world cup, single handly, the rest of his team were substandard international players. Maradona almost repeated the fete in the following world cup with an even worse team , just missing out and being runners up.
Maradona took a low table serie a team and won 2 serie a leagues, the best league in the world.
Messi without xavi and iniesta is a less imposing figure.
Messi does not control games requires others to set him up.
Messi in his best world cup, the last one, did not control any ganlme, becsuse he is only a forward and spent majority of the games doing nothing until a chance came or he made for himself. Maradona was a attacking midfieider not a striker, he ran games from defence, to midfield to attack, scoring and creating(assists) goals, always commanding games, not like messi who has huge lulls in games, doing nothing.
Messi has far more club trophies than maradona including la ligas and champions trophies, but he played in a better team with better players(xavi, iniesta etc), when as a kid maradona played for barca, he did not have the players around him that messi had and more importantly he was kicked and fouled at every touch. This is not something messi has had to deal with, as players get red cards for committing such a foul once, not during maradona time.
So playing conditions were much rougher with much more dirty fouls and inferior pitches. But theres no doubt messi has a superior record at club level than maradona, but he played for the best team in the world whereas maradona took a medoicre serie a team in the best league in the world at the time and won two serie a titles. Messi as he has shown with argentina, cannot win titles in average teams, let alone poor teams, he needs other quality players around him.
Maradona won the argentine league in 1979 , he moved to barcelona in 1982 and won the copa del rey and copa la liga, he then moved to napoli in 1985 and won two seria titles and a league cup as well as winning the world cup in 1986 and being a runner up in the world cup in 1990. 11 years at the top of the game and being the best player in the world, not 4/5 years as you stated.
Yes messi has more club achievements, but the ultimate is world cups, just ask any argentinian fan whose better messi or maradona?
Ultimately, messi is a fantastic footballer and a good professional, maradona was the GOAT footballer, but a bad boy, hanging out with mafia bossez and doing drugs and god knows what. He underachieved at club level due to a different time where fouls went unpunished(in '86 WC maradona was fouled 50 times, still a record til today) and being in poor teams but also because of his bad boy personality. However, like everyone who knows anything about football, knows the world cups are the ultimate , the pinnacle of football and along with his patriotism, this is were he performed to his best winning one, almost two world cups single handly.
On the otherhand, messi has always played for one of the best clubs in the worl and been surrounded with world class players. When messi plays for a far far superior argentina side, but not the best side in the world, he ultimately fails and is a quitter, with his dad saying you are putting too much pressure on my son lol!
Ultimately, if you watch messi and maradonna play, messi may have similar skills in dribbling and shooting at goals, but maradona was a complete player running the midfield and defence.
Messi is comparable to fellow argentina and real madrid legend alfredo di stefano who also has a superior club record than maradona, with 5 in a row european cup wins(old champion league tournament) and 5 consectivela liga titles, but neither messi or stefano are anywhere as close as good as maradona the GOAT.
Really, anyone whose seen both messi and maradona playing would know maradona is the GOAT!

Your whole argument is based on Maradona's WC win because you know that it is literally the only thing where he holds an advantage over Ronaldo or Messi. Some of your arguments are actually laughable and this is where I start doubting your football knowledge (ex: Maradona being a better freekick taker than Messi, R9 being better than CR7, Messi doesn't set up goals...).
I hope you do understand that according to your logic, Mbappé is already a better player than both CR7 and Messi, Lahm is better than Maldini, they are so many examples of good players winning the WC, and GOAT level players such as Ronaldo and Messi not winning it. But the fact remains, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are above all the eras, the stats speak for themselves, the impact they have had is unmatched, they both have a combined total of 11 ballon d'ors and 10 golden boots. Just let that sink in. Maradona or anyone else's achievements pale in front of these two GOATs.

Still, if I had to choose one, I would go for CR7.

 

[Waleed93]

CR7 is light years ahead of R9, do not embarrass yourself by comparing them.

The Brazilian Ronaldo, for all his achievements and talent, massively underachieved due to injuries and poor fitness.
This is where you have to admire CR7 even more.
The man was never a God gifted talent like Messi or Ronaldinho, he has achieved more than anybody else due to his hardwork and dedication, and he has conquered every challenge he has faced.
Above all, he is the ultimate match winner, and the man you have to put your last hope into in the biggest of moments. The hattrick vs Spain in the WC, the hattrick against Atletico in the UCL, 40+ goals in UCL knockout games, and so many other clutch performances no one can even dream about.
The. Greatest. Of. All. Time.

 

[Captain caveman]

Your whole argument is based on Maradona's WC win because you know that it is literally the only thing where he holds an advantage over Ronaldo or Messi. Some of your arguments are actually laughable and this is where I start doubting your football knowledge (ex: Maradona being a better freekick taker than Messi, R9 being better than CR7, Messi doesn't set up goals...).
I hope you do understand that according to your logic, Mbappé is already a better player than both CR7 and Messi, Lahm is better than Maldini, they are so many examples of good players winning the WC, and GOAT level players such as Ronaldo and Messi not winning it. But the fact remains, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are above all the eras, the stats speak for themselves, the impact they have had is unmatched, they both have a combined total of 11 ballon d'ors and 10 golden boots. Just let that sink in. Maradona or anyone else's achievements pale in front of these two GOATs.

Still, if I had to choose one, I would go for CR7.

I actually described maradona's footballing skill!
He ran the team, from defence to midfield to attack. I described how he was the greatest dribble of a football ever, but conceded that messi was on par with him on this. I described how maradona was the greatest free kick taker in history.And i described how maradona won 1 world cup single handly with a substandard team and almost won a second with aeven worse team. He also won two serie a titles with a substandard(lower table team) team and compared that to messi winning la ligas and champion trophies with the best team in the world, but when put in a good team like argentina, but not the best, he failed miserably!
I dont know when the baloon d'or award began....
Continues in next post

 

[Captain caveman]

I actually described maradona's footballing skill!
He ran the team, from defence to midfield to attack. I described how he was the greatest dribble of a football ever, but conceded that messi was on par with him on this. I described how maradona was the greatest free kick taker in history.And i described how maradona won 1 world cup single handly with a substandard team and almost won a second with aeven worse team. He also won two serie a titles with a substandard(lower table team) team and compared that to messi winning la ligas and champion trophies with the best team in the world, but when put in a good team like argentina, but not the best, he failed miserably!
I dont know when the baloon d'or award began....
Continues in next post

Continue...
but maradona was recognised as the best footballer in the world for most of the 80s.

My argument has been on maradonas superior skill set and mentality compared to messi.
YOU keep refering to the world cup win and saying thats all maradona has over messi. YOU are the one who had the inferior complex over messi's failure to win a world cup. As you know this is the greatest achievement in football.
Then you compare world cup winners to players who are believed to be better players but never won world cups. The problem here is that maradona won the won cup single handly, with a substandard team in an era of exceptional international football teams and he did it almost a second time - LET THAT SINK IN!
But again my main criteria in comparing the two is skillset and mentality in which maradona is vastly superior to messi!
Ironically, you keep ignoring this point and keep refering to the world cup win and saying this is my sole argument, which i have stated it is not, its skillset and mentality. YOU are obssessed with maradona's worl up win because you know it will always trump any achievement that messi has, unless he wins one!
Lastly and ironocally, you say my only argument that karadonabis better than messi is the world cup win& but your only argument for messi is his barcelona trophies won i.e. club level trophies compared to world trophies. Messi has won NOTHING in world football, forget about world cups, he has not even won the the copa america whereas his rival CR7 has won a euro championship with portugal.so messi is arguably not even the best player of his generation and you are comparing him to maradona the GOAT!
In summary, i am comparing messi and maradona's SKILL SET AND MENTALITY, having watched both and maradona wins hand down.
Titles and trophies in football are won by a team and not by a particular individual, and depend on how good the TEAM is and not just one individual, with the exceptionthe of DIEGO MARADONA, who won league titles and world cups single handly!
Now you can continue to disagree, thats your right, as bothmessi and maradona are of different eras, its unfortunately impossible to show you how maradona would have schooled messi if they had ever played against each other.
So that said, you keep your opinion and i will keep mine.
And i am finished with this topic, so dont bother replying as you will not recieve one back!

 

[Waleed93]

Continue...
but maradona was recognised as the best footballer in the world for most of the 80s.

My argument has been on maradonas superior skill set and mentality compared to messi.
YOU keep refering to the world cup win and saying thats all maradona has over messi. YOU are the one who had the inferior complex over messi's failure to win a world cup. As you know this is the greatest achievement in football.
Then you compare world cup winners to players who are believed to be better players but never won world cups. The problem here is that maradona won the won cup single handly, with a substandard team in an era of exceptional international football teams and he did it almost a second time - LET THAT SINK IN!
But again my main criteria in comparing the two is skillset and mentality in which maradona is vastly superior to messi!
Ironically, you keep ignoring this point and keep refering to the world cup win and saying this is my sole argument, which i have stated it is not, its skillset and mentality. YOU are obssessed with maradona's worl up win because you know it will always trump any achievement that messi has, unless he wins one!
Lastly and ironocally, you say my only argument that karadonabis better than messi is the world cup win& but your only argument for messi is his barcelona trophies won i.e. club level trophies compared to world trophies. Messi has won NOTHING in world football, forget about world cups, he has not even won the the copa america whereas his rival CR7 has won a euro championship with portugal.so messi is arguably not even the best player of his generation and you are comparing him to maradona the GOAT!
In summary, i am comparing messi and maradona's SKILL SET AND MENTALITY, having watched both and maradona wins hand down.
Titles and trophies in football are won by a team and not by a particular individual, and depend on how good the TEAM is and not just one individual, with the exceptionthe of DIEGO MARADONA, who won league titles and world cups single handly!
Now you can continue to disagree, thats your right, as bothmessi and maradona are of different eras, its unfortunately impossible to show you how maradona would have schooled messi if they had ever played against each other.
So that said, you keep your opinion and i will keep mine.
And i am finished with this topic, so dont bother replying as you will not recieve one back!

I have already said it in my previous posts, and I will repeat it for you. The greatest of all time, in my opinion, is not Leo Messi, but Cristiano Ronaldo.
I am repeating this so that you don't misunderstand me as someone who thinks Messi is the GOAT.

Anyways, you spoke about Maradona being a great freekick taker, but I hope you are aware of the fact that Ronaldo and Messi have both 50+ freekicks in their respective careers.

Cristiano Ronaldo won the UCL with 2 different teams, top scoring in each and every season he won. This is way bigger than winning 2 Serie A titles with Napoli.

You are right about Maradona being mentally superior to Messi, who doesn't looks like the best under pressure, and we have seen that on many occasions.

Winning the WC remains the biggest achievement in any sport, but as I said, Ronaldo and Messi are superior to the rest in so many aspects, that they don't even need a WC to confirm their legendary status. They have won 11 ballon d'ors without even winning a WC.

Again, nobody is forcing you to answer me, but the fact of the matter is, even if I consider Ronaldo as the GOAT, I am not ashamed to admit that Messi overall is miles ahead of Maradona, even if the latter remains better with the national side. Maradona's only notable club achievement remains those Serie A titles with Napoli.
In this aspect, there is absolutely no comparison with Cristiano, who has won everything in England, Spain, and is now trying in Italy. Messi, on the other hand, has won everything with Barcelona, and that's it. He never stepped out of his comfort zone, and that will be a huge difference between him and Ronaldo, the GOAT.

 

[Captain caveman]

I have already said it in my previous posts, and I will repeat it for you. The greatest of all time, in my opinion, is not Leo Messi, but Cristiano Ronaldo.
I am repeating this so that you don't misunderstand me as someone who thinks Messi is the GOAT.

Anyways, you spoke about Maradona being a great freekick taker, but I hope you are aware of the fact that Ronaldo and Messi have both 50+ freekicks in their respective careers.

Cristiano Ronaldo won the UCL with 2 different teams, top scoring in each and every season he won. This is way bigger than winning 2 Serie A titles with Napoli.

You are right about Maradona being mentally superior to Messi, who doesn't looks like the best under pressure, and we have seen that on many occasions.

Winning the WC remains the biggest achievement in any sport, but as I said, Ronaldo and Messi are superior to the rest in so many aspects, that they don't even need a WC to confirm their legendary status. They have won 11 ballon d'ors without even winning a WC.

Again, nobody is forcing you to answer me, but the fact of the matter is, even if I consider Ronaldo as the GOAT, I am not ashamed to admit that Messi overall is miles ahead of Maradona, even if the latter remains better with the national side. Maradona's only notable club achievement remains those Serie A titles with Napoli.
In this aspect, there is absolutely no comparison with Cristiano, who has won everything in England, Spain, and is now trying in Italy. Messi, on the other hand, has won everything with Barcelona, and that's it. He never stepped out of his comfort zone, and that will be a huge difference between him and Ronaldo, the GOAT.

Last short post, because you keep missing the point!
I am comparing skill sets and mentality, where maradona is superiot to both messi and ronaldo.
Winning trophies with the best team and winning trophies with a substandard teamis a huge difference, messi and ronaldo have only won trophies with the best teams, maradona won the titles and tophies with mediocre teams and players.
By the way maradona has won the league in argentina, in '79 as a kid; the year after argentina were crowned world champions and hence had some of the best players in the world playing in that league. Maradona won the uefa cup, super cup, copa del rey and copa la liga in spain, as well as serie a titles and world cups.
Maradona may not have won as many club titles, but he didnt choose to play for the best teams in the world like messi and ronaldo. Alfredo di stefano probably has more club achievements than ronaldo and similar to messi(5 european cups and 5 la ligas in a row) so with your arguments stefano is the GOAT!
You also ignored the changes in the rules concerning fouls, which allows messi and ronaldo to play football freely whereas maradona was kicked more than the football when he played.
And balloon d'or has no significance to me, michael owen has won it for crying out loud, its an award not a footballing title won on the pitch.
I cant be bothered to debate with you anymore , otherwise i would tell you why R9 is superior to CR7 and R9 is the second GOAT!

 

[Waleed93]

Last short post, because you keep missing the point!
I am comparing skill sets and mentality, where maradona is superiot to both messi and ronaldo.
Winning trophies with the best team and winning trophies with a substandard teamis a huge difference, messi and ronaldo have only won trophies with the best teams, maradona won the titles and tophies with mediocre teams and players.
By the way maradona has won the league in argentina, in '79 as a kid; the year after argentina were crowned world champions and hence had some of the best players in the world playing in that league. Maradona won the uefa cup, super cup, copa del rey and copa la liga in spain, as well as serie a titles and world cups.
Maradona may not have won as many club titles, but he didnt choose to play for the best teams in the world like messi and ronaldo. Alfredo di stefano probably has more club achievements than ronaldo and similar to messi(5 european cups and 5 la ligas in a row) so with your arguments stefano is the GOAT!
You also ignored the changes in the rules concerning fouls, which allows messi and ronaldo to play football freely whereas maradona was kicked more than the football when he played.
And balloon d'or has no significance to me, michael owen has won it for crying out loud, its an award not a footballing title won on the pitch.
I cant be bothered to debate with you anymore , otherwise i would tell you why R9 is superior to CR7 and R9 is the second GOAT!

Mentality wise, Maradona is definitely superior to Messi, but not superior to Ronaldo. Messi, for all his talent, has often dissapeared when the pressure was on (ex: WC 2018 vs Croatia, vs Roma, Liverpool...). Ronaldo, on the other hand, is the biggest big game player. He has single handedly won so many games when all hope was lost, and he has done it both with his clubs, and for his national team as well.
Skill wise, Maradona is not as naturally talented as Messi. He may be more talented than CR7 though, but the latter is a product of pure hardwork and dedication. Football has never seen and will never see someone more God gifted than Lionel Messi. And I say that being a huge CR7 fan.

You said Maradona has played only for small clubs. Again, it's not true. He had a short stint with Barcelona, but only survived for 2 years, because he was not dedicated enough to play according to Cruyff's football philosophy. Winning 2 Serie A titles with Napoli was a great achievement, but it doesn't mean anything if you compare it to Ronaldo's UCL stats, as he literally owns almost every UCL record a forward can hold. Similarly, Messi owns almost every record in La Liga, while Ronaldo also conquered the Premier League, also won the UCL with Manchester United.

Using Di Stefano's name is pointless, and once again, you are wrong. He won 5 UCLs, just like Ronaldo, who won it with 2 different teams. Messi has won 10 La Ligas. Change of rules have happened in every sport, but it doesn't matter to some players who are above all the eras. Ronaldo and Messi are those 2 players who would have dominated any football era without a problem. They have 700 goals each in today's era. Imagine them playing in Pele's era when the offside rule didn't even exist.
The ballon d'or having no significance to you doesn't matter at all. It's the biggest individual trophy, awarding the best football player of the year. They both have won it 11 times combined, it could have been 12 times combined, but Ronaldo was unfortunately robbed last year. Maradona, for all his greatness on the pitch, barely managed to dominate the sport for 8-9 years. Ronaldo and Messi have been doing it for 13+ years and nobody ever came close to them.

The fact is that Ronaldo and Messi would have probably been as good as they are today if they had played in Maradona's era, but the latter would not have survived in this era due to his poor fitness, and drug addiction. Had he played today, he would have finished just like Ronaldinho, who was exceptionnaly talented as well, but his poor work ethic meant he never did justice to his talent.

 

[Captain caveman]

Mentality wise, Maradona is definitely superior to Messi, but not superior to Ronaldo. Messi, for all his talent, has often dissapeared when the pressure was on (ex: WC 2018 vs Croatia, vs Roma, Liverpool...). Ronaldo, on the other hand, is the biggest big game player. He has single handedly won so many games when all hope was lost, and he has done it both with his clubs, and for his national team as well.
Skill wise, Maradona is not as naturally talented as Messi. He may be more talented than CR7 though, but the latter is a product of pure hardwork and dedication. Football has never seen and will never see someone more God gifted than Lionel Messi. And I say that being a huge CR7 fan.

You said Maradona has played only for small clubs. Again, it's not true. He had a short stint with Barcelona, but only survived for 2 years, because he was not dedicated enough to play according to Cruyff's football philosophy. Winning 2 Serie A titles with Napoli was a great achievement, but it doesn't mean anything if you compare it to Ronaldo's UCL stats, as he literally owns almost every UCL record a forward can hold. Similarly, Messi owns almost every record in La Liga, while Ronaldo also conquered the Premier League, also won the UCL with Manchester United.

Using Di Stefano's name is pointless, and once again, you are wrong. He won 5 UCLs, just like Ronaldo, who won it with 2 different teams. Messi has won 10 La Ligas. Change of rules have happened in every sport, but it doesn't matter to some players who are above all the eras. Ronaldo and Messi are those 2 players who would have dominated any football era without a problem. They have 700 goals each in today's era. Imagine them playing in Pele's era when the offside rule didn't even exist.
The ballon d'or having no significance to you doesn't matter at all. It's the biggest individual trophy, awarding the best football player of the year. They both have won it 11 times combined, it could have been 12 times combined, but Ronaldo was unfortunately robbed last year. Maradona, for all his greatness on the pitch, barely managed to dominate the sport for 8-9 years. Ronaldo and Messi have been doing it for 13+ years and nobody ever came close to them.

The fact is that Ronaldo and Messi would have probably been as good as they are today if they had played in Maradona's era, but the latter would not have survived in this era due to his poor fitness, and drug addiction. Had he played today, he would have finished just like Ronaldinho, who was exceptionnaly talented as well, but his poor work ethic meant he never did justice to his talent.

Like i said each to their own.
Maradona had more skill than messi and ronaldo combined in my opinion and i watched all 3.
I rate R9 and Zindine Zidane higher than CR7 and messi.
At the end of the day, its personal opinion, i doubt you even seen these older players actually play live in their day.
You keep to your opinions based on club results and i keep to mine on World Cup results lol!
Obviousily, you will never change my mind that your club footballers are better than my World Cup heroes and i will never change your mind, so lets leave it at that.

 

[Captain caveman]

Mentality wise, Maradona is definitely superior to Messi, but not superior to Ronaldo. Messi, for all his talent, has often dissapeared when the pressure was on (ex: WC 2018 vs Croatia, vs Roma, Liverpool...). Ronaldo, on the other hand, is the biggest big game player. He has single handedly won so many games when all hope was lost, and he has done it both with his clubs, and for his national team as well.
Skill wise, Maradona is not as naturally talented as Messi. He may be more talented than CR7 though, but the latter is a product of pure hardwork and dedication. Football has never seen and will never see someone more God gifted than Lionel Messi. And I say that being a huge CR7 fan.

You said Maradona has played only for small clubs. Again, it's not true. He had a short stint with Barcelona, but only survived for 2 years, because he was not dedicated enough to play according to Cruyff's football philosophy. Winning 2 Serie A titles with Napoli was a great achievement, but it doesn't mean anything if you compare it to Ronaldo's UCL stats, as he literally owns almost every UCL record a forward can hold. Similarly, Messi owns almost every record in La Liga, while Ronaldo also conquered the Premier League, also won the UCL with Manchester United.

Using Di Stefano's name is pointless, and once again, you are wrong. He won 5 UCLs, just like Ronaldo, who won it with 2 different teams. Messi has won 10 La Ligas. Change of rules have happened in every sport, but it doesn't matter to some players who are above all the eras. Ronaldo and Messi are those 2 players who would have dominated any football era without a problem. They have 700 goals each in today's era. Imagine them playing in Pele's era when the offside rule didn't even exist.
The ballon d'or having no significance to you doesn't matter at all. It's the biggest individual trophy, awarding the best football player of the year. They both have won it 11 times combined, it could have been 12 times combined, but Ronaldo was unfortunately robbed last year. Maradona, for all his greatness on the pitch, barely managed to dominate the sport for 8-9 years. Ronaldo and Messi have been doing it for 13+ years and nobody ever came close to them.

The fact is that Ronaldo and Messi would have probably been as good as they are today if they had played in Maradona's era, but the latter would not have survived in this era due to his poor fitness, and drug addiction. Had he played today, he would have finished just like Ronaldinho, who was exceptionnaly talented as well, but his poor work ethic meant he never did justice to his talent.

Messi has won 4 champions leagues
CR7 has won 4 champions leagues
GARETH BALE has won 4 champion leagues!

Going by your metric BALE has a claim to be the GOAT (lol!).

 

[MMHS]

Both are outstanding players, but I think on individual skills, Messi is far superior. CR has different qualities of leading from the front, raising game under pressure, but Messi for Barca is the best player I have seen in many years.

Though, none will make my all time XI. That’ll be with players performing in National colour. Club soccer is a bit different- you play in a system for years with selected players; it’s the international soccer that is more individualistic, needs lot more characters. My XI will be (4231)

1 GK: Buffon
2 RB: Cafu
3 LB: Maldini
4 CB: Kaizer (C)
5 CB: VVD (this one my choice, most probably will go for Moore, Passarella, Baresi or Canevaro)

6 CM: Zizu
8 CM: Mathus (Could have been Rijkaard, Xavi or Didi)

7 RW: Pele
10 AM: Maradona (Had France won 1986 WC, I would have taken Platini)
11 LW: Cruiff (The most complete attacking player that I have ever seen)

9 CF: The Phenom (the best centre forward game had ever seen. He had absolutely everything for a No. 9 - first touch, dribbling skills, close control, speed, sudden acceleration, size, power, aerial dominance, ambidextrous shooting skills, position sense, vision... what not. Fat Ro played the game when soccer was a contact sports - he could have scored 100+ goals in a season few times in modern era!!!)

Manager: Jargen Klopp

 

[Captain caveman]

Messi has won 4 champions leagues
CR7 has won 4 champions leagues
GARETH BALE has won 4 champion leagues!

Going by your metric BALE has a claim to be the GOAT (lol!).

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

Talk about desperation, you even have to refer to balloon d'or which are awards, and not trophies won on the pitch, because your guys have no world cups or copa americas or euros to talk about!
Ronaldo didn't even contribute to portugals euro final win, went off crying like a baby from a little tackle - in an international final!
Maradona took 50 of those tackles in the '86 world cup, a record even til today, didn't go off once, took the pain and won the world cup!
Ronaldo and messi could not survive in the 80s without all the protection from the referees they get now lol! Their careers wouldn't last 5 years, they would be kicked into retirement, both weak minded and physically weak players.
Maradona could not survive this era with all the protection he would get, you are having a laugh, he would be unstoppable.
I take it you were born in '93 from your username, stop being such an ignorant fan and watch maradona get the hell kick out of him when playing for barcelona or Pele getting the hell kicked out of him in the '66 world cup and then watch your hero leave the pitch after just ONE of these types of tackles and in a international final!
Ronaldo mentally stronger than maradona lol!

 

[Captain caveman]

Both are outstanding players, but I think on individual skills, Messi is far superior. CR has different qualities of leading from the front, raising game under pressure, but Messi for Barca is the best player I have seen in many years.

Though, none will make my all time XI. That’ll be with players performing in National colour. Club soccer is a bit different- you play in a system for years with selected players; it’s the international soccer that is more individualistic, needs lot more characters. My XI will be (4231)

1 GK: Buffon
2 RB: Cafu
3 LB: Maldini
4 CB: Kaizer (C)
5 CB: VVD (this one my choice, most probably will go for Moore, Passarella, Baresi or Canevaro)

6 CM: Zizu
8 CM: Mathus (Could have been Rijkaard, Xavi or Didi)

7 RW: Pele
10 AM: Maradona (Had France won 1986 WC, I would have taken Platini)
11 LW: Cruiff (The most complete attacking player that I have ever seen)

9 CF: The Phenom (the best centre forward game had ever seen. He had absolutely everything for a No. 9 - first touch, dribbling skills, close control, speed, sudden acceleration, size, power, aerial dominance, ambidextrous shooting skills, position sense, vision... what not. Fat Ro played the game when soccer was a contact sports - he could have scored 100+ goals in a season few times in modern era!!!)

Manager: Jargen Klopp

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]
[MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION]

Thank you sir!
You know i respect your cricketing knowledge, today you have gained by respect on your footballing knowledge!

Kids today don't know nothing about players of the past.

I rate purely on skill maradona as the GOAT and Ronaldo(R9) as the second GOAT.
both would wipe the floor with messi and CR7.

Maradona wold cup winner and world cup.runner up.
Ronaldo(R9) world cup winner and world cup runner up
Zindine zidan world cup winner and world cup runner up
Pele 2 times world cup winner, 3 times officially, but didnt play more than a couple of games in '62 wc due to injury, in the same instance you can argue that Ronaldo(R9) was a two time world cup winner as he was in the brazilian side that won the wc in '94 but didnt play a game.

Messi NO world cups runner up once
Ronaldo(CR7) NO world cups.

Messi and CR7 are fantastic club level footballers but they dont compare to the greats of the game.

 

[Captain caveman]

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

World cups are the ultimate, the pinnacle of footballing achievement, no number of domestic leagues or club european titles will ever measure up to one world cup.

Domestics leagues and ucl are like gcses and A levels but a world cup is like a degree from oxford university, theres no comparrison!

You compared lamhe a world cup winner with germany to paolo maldini who has won loads of domestic club titles etc but never the world cup for italy. I bet if you asked him and he was honest, maldini would give up ALL his trophies for one world cup victory!

 

[Captain caveman]

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

World cups are the ultimate, the pinnacle of footballing achievement, no number of domestic leagues or club european titles will ever measure up to one world cup.

Domestics leagues and ucl are like gcses and A levels but a world cup is like a degree from oxford university, theres no comparrison!

You compared lamhe a world cup winner with germany to paolo maldini who has won loads of domestic club titles etc but never the world cup for italy. I bet if you asked him and he was honest, maldini would give up ALL his trophies for one world cup victory!

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

To continue my analogy messi and ronaldo are like 2 kids who wanted to be doctors(read GOAT) and got 4 A grades at A level (read 4 UCL titles) and then went on to med school (read World Cup) and failed!
They will never be doctors(read GOAT), even if they go back to college and attain 10 A grades at A level(read 10 UCL titles)

 

[MMHS]

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

[MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION]

Thank you sir!
You know i respect your cricketing knowledge, today you have gained by respect on your footballing knowledge!

Kids today don't know nothing about players of the past.

I rate purely on skill maradona as the GOAT and Ronaldo(R9) as the second GOAT.
both would wipe the floor with messi and CR7.

Maradona wold cup winner and world cup.runner up.
Ronaldo(R9) world cup winner and world cup runner up
Zindine zidan world cup winner and world cup runner up
Pele 2 times world cup winner, 3 times officially, but didnt play more than a couple of games in '62 wc due to injury, in the same instance you can argue that Ronaldo(R9) was a two time world cup winner as he was in the brazilian side that won the wc in '94 but didnt play a game.

Messi NO world cups runner up once
Ronaldo(CR7) NO world cups.

Messi and CR7 are fantastic club level footballers but they dont compare to the greats of the game.

How do you like my team (You can take out VVD - in future, Varane might seal this spot with this French generation, winning may be couple more WC/EUROs).

Messi for Barca is almost unreal, but he plays with 10-12 outstanding players surrounding him always and he is the ultimate boss of that Barca team - that world class squad is assembled to fit him. Individually, Argentine squad has some of the best players, but somehow he failed to inspire them. CR is a brilliant scorer, but in that inside-out left winger's spot Cruiff was the best ever, while Fat Ro definitely and may be Gerd Muller & Van Basten are better scorers than him. And, Maradona was better than both in every aspect apart from scoring and shooting. However, this generation is playing with high-tech balls which runs faster, swerves more and probably a bit lighter as well, hence shooting skills of modern players looks better; but some of the free-kicks by Platini & Maradona with old Addidas leather made balls were unbelievable.

It'll always be a debate between cross generation, but I think these days, they have made it too easy for forwards - comparison isn't fair. Van Basten literally had both his legs pinned by metal clips for most part of his career in hard tackling Italian league and none of the defenders hardly got sent off for two footed sliding tackle with spikes targeting his knees, rather than ball. Similarly, we watch soccer these days on surface better than golf courses, but on heavy English summer grounds the ball skill that world had seen for few years from George Best.... it's just not comparable. I watched an old footage, in a Spanish league
- game was played on a mud bed with ball floating some places. Cruiff received a long ball in a part of ground with water floating over grass .. he trapped that ball while running on left foot, didn't allow it to drop on ground, juggled between two feet and in the process avoided the sliding Right Back, and then nut-megged the CB for an inch perfect cross - ball hardly touched ground.

 

[Captain caveman]

How do you like my team (You can take out VVD - in future, Varane might seal this spot with this French generation, winning may be couple more WC/EUROs).

Messi for Barca is almost unreal, but he plays with 10-12 outstanding players surrounding him always and he is the ultimate boss of that Barca team - that world class squad is assembled to fit him. Individually, Argentine squad has some of the best players, but somehow he failed to inspire them. CR is a brilliant scorer, but in that inside-out left winger's spot Cruiff was the best ever, while Fat Ro definitely and may be Gerd Muller & Van Basten are better scorers than him. And, Maradona was better than both in every aspect apart from scoring and shooting. However, this generation is playing with high-tech balls which runs faster, swerves more and probably a bit lighter as well, hence shooting skills of modern players looks better; but some of the free-kicks by Platini & Maradona with old Addidas leather made balls were unbelievable.

It'll always be a debate between cross generation, but I think these days, they have made it too easy for forwards - comparison isn't fair. Van Basten literally had both his legs pinned by metal clips for most part of his career in hard tackling Italian league and none of the defenders hardly got sent off for two footed sliding tackle with spikes targeting his knees, rather than ball. Similarly, we watch soccer these days on surface better than golf courses, but on heavy English summer grounds the ball skill that world had seen for few years from George Best.... it's just not comparable. I watched an old footage, in a Spanish league
- game was played on a mud bed with ball floating some places. Cruiff received a long ball in a part of ground with water floating over grass .. he trapped that ball while running on left foot, didn't allow it to drop on ground, juggled between two feet and in the process avoided the sliding Right Back, and then nut-megged the CB for an inch perfect cross - ball hardly touched ground.

POTW!
Sir you have just summarised everthing in one post that i have been trying to explain to [MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION] in 10 posts!

 

[Captain caveman]

POTW!
Sir you have just summarised everthing in one post that i have been trying to explain to [MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION] in 10 posts!

[MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION]

Sorry i cut myself off.

Anyway, sir i agree with everything you say 100% and i would not change a single player in your team.
Any team with maradona, ronaldo(R9), pele and zidan, is unbeatable in my humble opinion.
Sir you footballing knowledge is as great as your cricketing knowledge, i am truly amazed at how much in depth knowledge you have in both sports, just simply amazing, you should try out for a sporting journalist position, you have certainly got the knowledge and you certainly can educate some of these youngsters of today.
Fantastic team, fantastic knowledge from the most well informed poster on this forum!

 

[Captain caveman]

[MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] [MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

Kaiser
Pele
Maradona
Zizu
Ronaldo(R9)
Cruyff

Mmhs has just listed the greatest players to ever play football ever!
Waleed if you don't want to listen to me, then i suggest you talk to mmhs sir, he is the most well informed sports fan on this site!

 

[MMHS]

[MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] [MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

Kaiser
Pele
Maradona
Zizu
Ronaldo(R9)
Cruyff

Mmhs has just listed the greatest players to ever play football ever!
Waleed if you don't want to listen to me, then i suggest you talk to mmhs sir, he is the most well informed sports fan on this site!

Relax man .... my ears are already red!!!! Yes, I do follow few sports passionately.

 

[Captain caveman]

Relax man .... my ears are already red!!!! Yes, I do follow few sports passionately.

Yes i can tell, but your detailed knowledge in cricket and now in football is amazing. I wouldn't dream of trying to debate you in either. The only person on this site as knowledgeable in cricket is [MENTION=132916]Junaids[/MENTION] but he has some fantastical ideas at times, where you are more grounded and realistic in your views.
Always a pleasure to read your posts!

 

[Waleed93]

[MENTION=149691]Captain caveman[/MENTION]

Take it easy man. You have tagged me on 10 different posts in your frustration. It's a football debate, not a matter of life and death.

Anyways, as you said, everyone has his own opinion. I admire Maradona as a great player, one of the top 5 players to ever play the game. But in my view, he lacks too many things such as longevity, or more trophies to his name. But that's my opinion, and I still consider him as an all time great and just below CR7, Messi, R9, Cruyff and Zidane as a footballer.

Just to remind you, CR7 has won 5 UCLs, not 4. Messi has won 4 (3 if you don't count UCL 2006 as he basically didn't contribute to anything). Moreover, CR7 has been the top scorer in every UCL season he has won. I don't know why you had to bring in Bale to undermine him.

You keep ignoring and undermining the ballon d'or, an individual trophy awarding the best player of the year.

I have followed [MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] 's posts and I respect his opinions as he is the best poster on PP.
He has his genuine opinion and most of his posts are not biased.

However, you just need to ask yourself these questions :

1. Would Maradona survive in today's era ? No, he was too unfit and lacked the required professionalism to survive in today's competitive football.

2. Would CR7 survive in Maradona's era ? Yes, his professionalism remains unmatched.

3. Apart from a fantastic WC in 1986, is there any record that gives him any kind of superiority over Ronaldo ? No, there isn't. CR7 literally owns the biggest competition in club football, has a Euro Cup where he was his team's best player, has won the best player of the world 5 times.

You don't need to call me a kid or anything to show your frustration. I have watched Maradona, and I rate R9 and Zidane as better players than him, despite the former never winning the UCL.

 

[Waleed93]

[MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] , brillant post as usual. I may have some differences though but I admire your football knowledge.
Agree on that part though : Messi with Barca is unreal. However, he never left his comfort zone in comparison to his biggest rival who has faced and won multiple challenges across the world.
I really hope to see him lift the UCL trophy with Juve, but it will need a miracle.

 

[Captain caveman]

[MENTION=149691]Captain caveman[/MENTION]

Take it easy man. You have tagged me on 10 different posts in your frustration. It's a football debate, not a matter of life and death.

Anyways, as you said, everyone has his own opinion. I admire Maradona as a great player, one of the top 5 players to ever play the game. But in my view, he lacks too many things such as longevity, or more trophies to his name. But that's my opinion, and I still consider him as an all time great and just below CR7, Messi, R9, Cruyff and Zidane as a footballer.

Just to remind you, CR7 has won 5 UCLs, not 4. Messi has won 4 (3 if you don't count UCL 2006 as he basically didn't contribute to anything). Moreover, CR7 has been the top scorer in every UCL season he has won. I don't know why you had to bring in Bale to undermine him.

You keep ignoring and undermining the ballon d'or, an individual trophy awarding the best player of the year.

I have followed [MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] 's posts and I respect his opinions as he is the best poster on PP.
He has his genuine opinion and most of his posts are not biased.

However, you just need to ask yourself these questions :

1. Would Maradona survive in today's era ? No, he was too unfit and lacked the required professionalism to survive in today's competitive football.

2. Would CR7 survive in Maradona's era ? Yes, his professionalism remains unmatched.

3. Apart from a fantastic WC in 1986, is there any record that gives him any kind of superiority over Ronaldo ? No, there isn't. CR7 literally owns the biggest competition in club football, has a Euro Cup where he was his team's best player, has won the best player of the world 5 times.

You don't need to call me a kid or anything to show your frustration. I have watched Maradona, and I rate R9 and Zidane as better players than him, despite the former never winning the UCL.

Hi waleed, sorry if i over tagged you, it was not out of frustration but out of control with the points i had to share with you.
Also, apologies for calling you kid, if that offended you, it was not my intention, if you were born in '93 as per your username , thats the year i graduated from university, so compared to me you are a kid and i am old, but dont look it. I call all youngsters kid, not in a demeaning way but an affectionate way, like rocky does in the rocky/creed movies. Anyway apologies if i offended you, i wont say it again.

Anyway to the topic, we just have to agree to disagree.
You rate UCL equal to WCs,i dont, WC like i said are the ultimare the pinnacle in football and gave the analogy of UCL being A levels and WCs being Degrees.

Maradona was supremely fit before he went of the rails near the end of the 80s, i explained Maradona ran the defence, midfield and attack, literally! Messi only rans around the box and CR7 runs in the opposition area, not much in his own area, so i would say maradona was fitter than both.

Lastly, theres no chance CR7 Or messi would have had the success that they had or the length of the career they had in the 80s, with the dirty fouls and no referee protection.
And the quality of the pitches, ball and football boots were vastly inferior from today, which would of made it much harder for messi or CR7 to be successful but on the otherhand for maradona to play with no dirty fouls, ref protection, a vastly superior ball, boots and pitches would have made an unstoppable machine into something which can not be described in words, the closest thing to perfection as a footballer.

Anyway, we are going in circles, just repeating our views over and over again, so we might as well agree to disagree.
But i want to leave you with what the master had to say on this topic :

taken from [MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] post

"Messi for Barca is almost unreal, but he plays with 10-12 outstanding players surrounding him always and he is the ultimate boss of that Barca team - that world class squad is assembled to fit him. Individually, Argentine squad has some of the best players, but somehow he failed to inspire them. CR is a brilliant scorer, but in that inside-out left winger's spot Cruiff was the best ever, while Fat Ro definitely and may be Gerd Muller & Van Basten are better scorers than him. And, Maradona was better than both in every aspect apart from scoring and shooting. However, this generation is playing with high-tech balls which runs faster, swerves more and probably a bit lighter as well, hence shooting skills of modern players looks better; but some of the free-kicks by Platini & Maradona with old Addidas leather made balls were unbelievable.

It'll always be a debate between cross generation, but I think these days, they have made it too easy for forwards - comparison isn't fair. Van Basten literally had both his legs pinned by metal clips for most part of his career in hard tackling Italian league and none of the defenders hardly got sent off for two footed sliding tackle with spikes targeting his knees, rather than ball. Similarly, we watch soccer these days on surface better than golf courses, but on heavy English summer grounds the ball skill that world had seen for few years from George Best.... it's just not comparable. "

Cheers for the dehate Waleed, i enjoyed it and have much respect for you as a poster.
All the best!

 

[Captain caveman]

Hi waleed, sorry if i over tagged you, it was not out of frustration but out of control with the points i had to share with you.
Also, apologies for calling you kid, if that offended you, it was not my intention, if you were born in '93 as per your username , thats the year i graduated from university, so compared to me you are a kid and i am old, but dont look it. I call all youngsters kid, not in a demeaning way but an affectionate way, like rocky does in the rocky/creed movies. Anyway apologies if i offended you, i wont say it again.

Anyway to the topic, we just have to agree to disagree.
You rate UCL equal to WCs,i dont, WC like i said are the ultimare the pinnacle in football and gave the analogy of UCL being A levels and WCs being Degrees.

Maradona was supremely fit before he went of the rails near the end of the 80s, i explained Maradona ran the defence, midfield and attack, literally! Messi only rans around the box and CR7 runs in the opposition area, not much in his own area, so i would say maradona was fitter than both.

Lastly, theres no chance CR7 Or messi would have had the success that they had or the length of the career they had in the 80s, with the dirty fouls and no referee protection.
And the quality of the pitches, ball and football boots were vastly inferior from today, which would of made it much harder for messi or CR7 to be successful but on the otherhand for maradona to play with no dirty fouls, ref protection, a vastly superior ball, boots and pitches would have made an unstoppable machine into something which can not be described in words, the closest thing to perfection as a footballer.

Anyway, we are going in circles, just repeating our views over and over again, so we might as well agree to disagree.
But i want to leave you with what the master had to say on this topic :

taken from [MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] post

"Messi for Barca is almost unreal, but he plays with 10-12 outstanding players surrounding him always and he is the ultimate boss of that Barca team - that world class squad is assembled to fit him. Individually, Argentine squad has some of the best players, but somehow he failed to inspire them. CR is a brilliant scorer, but in that inside-out left winger's spot Cruiff was the best ever, while Fat Ro definitely and may be Gerd Muller & Van Basten are better scorers than him. And, Maradona was better than both in every aspect apart from scoring and shooting. However, this generation is playing with high-tech balls which runs faster, swerves more and probably a bit lighter as well, hence shooting skills of modern players looks better; but some of the free-kicks by Platini & Maradona with old Addidas leather made balls were unbelievable.

It'll always be a debate between cross generation, but I think these days, they have made it too easy for forwards - comparison isn't fair. Van Basten literally had both his legs pinned by metal clips for most part of his career in hard tackling Italian league and none of the defenders hardly got sent off for two footed sliding tackle with spikes targeting his knees, rather than ball. Similarly, we watch soccer these days on surface better than golf courses, but on heavy English summer grounds the ball skill that world had seen for few years from George Best.... it's just not comparable. "

Cheers for the dehate Waleed, i enjoyed it and have much respect for you as a poster.
All the best!

*debate

 

[Waleed93]

Hi waleed, sorry if i over tagged you, it was not out of frustration but out of control with the points i had to share with you.
Also, apologies for calling you kid, if that offended you, it was not my intention, if you were born in '93 as per your username , thats the year i graduated from university, so compared to me you are a kid and i am old, but dont look it. I call all youngsters kid, not in a demeaning way but an affectionate way, like rocky does in the rocky/creed movies. Anyway apologies if i offended you, i wont say it again.

Anyway to the topic, we just have to agree to disagree.
You rate UCL equal to WCs,i dont, WC like i said are the ultimare the pinnacle in football and gave the analogy of UCL being A levels and WCs being Degrees.

Maradona was supremely fit before he went of the rails near the end of the 80s, i explained Maradona ran the defence, midfield and attack, literally! Messi only rans around the box and CR7 runs in the opposition area, not much in his own area, so i would say maradona was fitter than both.

Lastly, theres no chance CR7 Or messi would have had the success that they had or the length of the career they had in the 80s, with the dirty fouls and no referee protection.
And the quality of the pitches, ball and football boots were vastly inferior from today, which would of made it much harder for messi or CR7 to be successful but on the otherhand for maradona to play with no dirty fouls, ref protection, a vastly superior ball, boots and pitches would have made an unstoppable machine into something which can not be described in words, the closest thing to perfection as a footballer.

Anyway, we are going in circles, just repeating our views over and over again, so we might as well agree to disagree.
But i want to leave you with what the master had to say on this topic :

taken from [MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] post

"Messi for Barca is almost unreal, but he plays with 10-12 outstanding players surrounding him always and he is the ultimate boss of that Barca team - that world class squad is assembled to fit him. Individually, Argentine squad has some of the best players, but somehow he failed to inspire them. CR is a brilliant scorer, but in that inside-out left winger's spot Cruiff was the best ever, while Fat Ro definitely and may be Gerd Muller & Van Basten are better scorers than him. And, Maradona was better than both in every aspect apart from scoring and shooting. However, this generation is playing with high-tech balls which runs faster, swerves more and probably a bit lighter as well, hence shooting skills of modern players looks better; but some of the free-kicks by Platini & Maradona with old Addidas leather made balls were unbelievable.

It'll always be a debate between cross generation, but I think these days, they have made it too easy for forwards - comparison isn't fair. Van Basten literally had both his legs pinned by metal clips for most part of his career in hard tackling Italian league and none of the defenders hardly got sent off for two footed sliding tackle with spikes targeting his knees, rather than ball. Similarly, we watch soccer these days on surface better than golf courses, but on heavy English summer grounds the ball skill that world had seen for few years from George Best.... it's just not comparable. "

Cheers for the dehate Waleed, i enjoyed it and have much respect for you as a poster.
All the best!

Don't worry, it didn't offend me. Don't look too much into my username, it doesn't have anything to do with my birth year. In fact, I told you I have seen Maradona play, who was on his last legs in the 90s.

Anyways, we can agree to disagree. However, I don't consider the UCL being a bigger achievement than the WC. I just gave my opinion on Maradona's biggest achievements (WC 82, Serie A with Napoli), to CR7's (UCL records, Ballon d'ors, 100 international goals, longevity...). That being said, I still consider Diego to be the greatest ever to have played for Argentina, always stood up for his nation when it mattered the most. This is where Messi remains inferior to him.
In fact, if we speak about their respective records with the national team, Maradona trumps even Ronaldo in this aspect, even if the latter has been excellent with Portugal as well, he just needs to win a WC, which is highly unlikely. He has some performances with Portugal that we will probably never see from coming from Messi (Hattrick in a WC vs Spain, Hattrick vs Sweden in a WC qualification, Euro 2016 Semi Final, etc...).

On the other hand, when it comes to their respective club careers, Maradona's Serie A titles pale in front of Ronaldo's incredible achievements with Manchester United and Real Madrid.
Messi is a special case. He has won everything with Barcelona, but we all know he is a completely different player with Argentina, this puts a question mark on his ability to perform outside his comfort zone where he doesn't have to adapt to anything different, and where he enjoys some favorable decisions from the referees as well. This is completely different from what his rival has done in his career. He is struggling with Juventus currently, but here he is searching for a 6th UCL title, with a 3rd different team, a team who won it's last UCL back in 1994. And he turning 35 next year.

This requires some mentality, doesn't it ?

 

[MenInG]

Lionel Messi believes the "special duel" between him and Cristiano Ronaldo when the pair were on opposite sides of the Clasico rivalry will leave a lasting impression.

The Barcelona superstar went head-to-head with Ronaldo for almost a decade in La Liga, where the two scored at an astonishing rate and practically assumed shared custody of the Ballon d'Or.

Debate rages over who the world's best player is, but a shortlist of two is almost universally accepted – it is either Messi or Ronaldo.

The Portugal forward has since departed for Juventus, but Messi ​– who won a record sixth Ballon d'Or in December – has fond memories of their long-running Spanish saga.

"The matches against Real always mean a lot, but when Cristiano was there they became much more special," said Messi.

"But it's a time that has passed now, that we have experienced. Now, we have to look ahead to the future.

"It was a special duel and it will remain [in people's minds] forever, because it lasted for many years and it is not easy to maintain such levels for a long time.

"Plus, the teams we played in were also very demanding, both Real Madrid and Barca, the two best teams in the world.

"The sporting duel between us was very nice on a personal level and I think people had fun too, whether they were fans of Madrid or Barca, or even only football fans in general."

Barca this week appointed a new head coach, with Quique Setien replacing Ernesto Valverde, despite the club sitting joint-top of the table with Madrid.

The last Clasico clash ended 0-0 at Camp Nou in December, with Barca set to head to the Santiago Bernabeu in March.

https://sportstar.thehindu.com/foot...special-duel-with-ronaldo/article30572777.ece

 

[TrentDevil]

Cristiano and Real Madrid is a bond that never should have broken until Cristiano would have called it a day. This breakup has brought devastation to both the parties. Really sad sight last night watching Cristiano this frustrated and Madrid despite doing everything right for 75 mins messed up everything in the dying moments of the game.

Needs some Zizou and Cristiano magic if Madrid or Juve are to qualify for QFs

 

[Mueez]

Cristiano and Real Madrid is a bond that never should have broken until Cristiano would have called it a day. This breakup has brought devastation to both the parties. Really sad sight last night watching Cristiano this frustrated and Madrid despite doing everything right for 75 mins messed up everything in the dying moments of the game.

Needs some Zizou and Cristiano magic if Madrid or Juve are to qualify for QFs

True.

I really miss Cristiano at Real Madrid, where he actually belongs...

 

[TrentDevil]

True.

I really miss Cristiano at Real Madrid, where he actually belongs...

Cristiano at Madrid was magic!

Cristiano in UCL with Madrid, well that cannot be described in words, it was a superhuman kinda thing, humans don't do such things...

 

[Mamoon]

Ronaldo deserves this humiliation. There is no glory in being a selfish prima donna, and trying to prove yourself in every league means absolutely nothing.

Ronaldo is a legend and he had absolutely no reason to prove himself in Serie A at this stage of his career. He has nothing to prove and he should have stayed at Madrid.

When it comes to loyalty, he needs to learn a thing or two from the real GOAT.

Juventus have not gained anything by signing him, and it is only a matter of time before they force him to stop taking free-kicks.

He is the worst free kick-taker in the world these days but still lines up every single time as if he is Messi. Sums up what a selfish narcissist he actually is. He knows Dybala and Pjanic are miles better but his ego is also miles bigger.

There is a reason why no one apart from his fans rate him higher than Messi.

A great, great player but a small, small man.

 

[Mueez]

Cristiano at Madrid was magic!

Cristiano in UCL with Madrid, well that cannot be described in words, it was a superhuman kinda thing, humans don't do such things...

Those freekicks. Those hattricks. Those memories.

All Madridista’s miss them.

 

[Waleed93]

Ronaldo deserves this humiliation. There is no glory in being a selfish prima donna, and trying to prove yourself in every league means absolutely nothing.

Ronaldo is a legend and he had absolutely no reason to prove himself in Serie A at this stage of his career. He has nothing to prove and he should have stayed at Madrid.

When it comes to loyalty, he needs to learn a thing or two from the real GOAT.

Juventus have not gained anything by signing him, and it is only a matter of time before they force him to stop taking free-kicks.

He is the worst free kick-taker in the world these days but still lines up every single time as if he is Messi. Sums up what a selfish narcissist he actually is. He knows Dybala and Pjanic are miles better but his ego is also miles bigger.

There is a reason why no one apart from his fans rate him higher than Messi.

A great, great player but a small, small man.

Why talk when you don't have enough knowledge about the context ?

Do you actually believe that Ronaldo moved to Juventus to prove himself in the Serie A, especially after winning everything a player can win in the EPL and La Liga ?

His challenge was never about winning the Serie A, a title that has been Juve's property for the last 8-9 seasons. In fact, this season is the first time since almost a decade when the Italian championship is actually competitive, thanks to some really good football played by Lazio and Inter, with some poor football played by Juventus.

As he has said multiple times already, his goal revolves around winning a UCL trophy with a 3rd different team, a team that has not been able to win the UCL since more than 2 decades now.

What loyalty are you even talking about ? The "real GOAT" gets a contract renewal every season with a raise in his already huge salary. Moreover, he is allowed to take decisions that no player is allowed to take in any other club. Why would he even think about leaving Barcelona, which has been his comfort zone for the last 17 years, where he doesn't need to adapt to anything new, where he just has to keep playing the same way he has been playing since his debut, with the same team mates.

It is true that today's Ronaldo is not as good as 2014's Ronaldo when it comes to taking free-kicks, and there is a reason why doesn't take long range free-kicks since a long time now. He only takes short range free-kicks now, and sometimes even those are taken by Dybala or Pjanic.

You were probably one of those guys doing bhangra when Juventus lost the first leg against Atletico las year, only to find yourself ashamed and humiliated when Ronaldo roared back with a hat-trick in the second leg. This time, again, people are trying to write him off and spewing their hate just because he didn't score in an away UCL game.

Again, you will dissapear if he come up with a similar performance in a couple of weeks in the second leg.

 

[Mamoon]

Why talk when you don't have enough knowledge about the context ?

Do you actually believe that Ronaldo moved to Juventus to prove himself in the Serie A, especially after winning everything a player can win in the EPL and La Liga ?

His challenge was never about winning the Serie A, a title that has been Juve's property for the last 8-9 seasons. In fact, this season is the first time since almost a decade when the Italian championship is actually competitive, thanks to some really good football played by Lazio and Inter, with some poor football played by Juventus.

As he has said multiple times already, his goal revolves around winning a UCL trophy with a 3rd different team, a team that has not been able to win the UCL since more than 2 decades now.

What loyalty are you even talking about ? The "real GOAT" gets a contract renewal every season with a raise in his already huge salary. Moreover, he is allowed to take decisions that no player is allowed to take in any other club. Why would he even think about leaving Barcelona, which has been his comfort zone for the last 17 years, where he doesn't need to adapt to anything new, where he just has to keep playing the same way he has been playing since his debut, with the same team mates.

It is true that today's Ronaldo is not as good as 2014's Ronaldo when it comes to taking free-kicks, and there is a reason why doesn't take long range free-kicks since a long time now. He only takes short range free-kicks now, and sometimes even those are taken by Dybala or Pjanic.

You were probably one of those guys doing bhangra when Juventus lost the first leg against Atletico las year, only to find yourself ashamed and humiliated when Ronaldo roared back with a hat-trick in the second leg. This time, again, people are trying to write him off and spewing their hate just because he didn't score in an away UCL game.

Again, you will dissapear if he come up with a similar performance in a couple of weeks in the second leg.

I know that Ronaldo is obsessed with the Champions League because he is not good enough to win league titles (2 La Liga titles in 9 seasons at Madrid was embarrassing to say the least), but let’s not pretend that the obsession of winning the Champions League with the third team was the driving force behind the stupid decision of going to Juventus at this stage of his career.

If that really was the prime motive, he would have left Madrid after Ramos won the 2014 Champions League Final for him. The real reason why he left Madrid for Juventus was because of money. He threw his toys out of the pram and left Madrid out of sheer contempt.

At the age of 33-34, Madrid did not think that he was worth the money especially with Madrid eyeing the likes of Mbappe, Neymar and Hazard as the next Galacticos. He is used to being worshipped so he was offended and ended up at Juventus, who thought he could spur them to European glory.

The move was doomed from the start because:

(1) he ended up earning less at Juventus than he did at Madrid

(2) he cannot win the Champions League with Juventus

(3) the stupid move cost him the 2018 Ballon d’Or, which means he will always have less Ballon d’Ors than Messi.

Much like Neymar regrets his move to PSG, it is very clear that Ronaldo regrets leaving Madrid. He should have embraced the fact that at some point, Madrid would not value him at the same level as they did when he was in his prime.

I don’t need to do bhangra over Juventus losing in Lyon. They should still be strong enough to win at home. However, I do know that they will not win the Champions League. I am sure you will do bhangra after the second leg just like you did bhangra last year, only for Juventus to get eliminated by Ajax.

The same Ronaldo fans were doing bhangra when Ajax eliminated Madrid in the R16 and claimed that it was the absence of Ronaldo that cost them, only for Ronaldo to get eliminated by the same team in the next round. )

Besides, even if a miracle happens and Juventus win the Champions League this season, what next? Will the prima donna retire, stay put or move to another European club to win a Champions League with a fourth club? Why stop at three? Why is that a magic number?

As far as free-kicks concerned, he is rubbish at them from every distance these days. He cannot find the back of the net even to save his life, and should never be taking them. I cannot wait for his tantrum when Juventus bans him from taking them altogether.

Messi is of course loyal. He is the greatest of all time and he deserves to be the highest paid player. He is loyal because he can earn the same amount of money (and more) at Man City or PSG, but unlike Ronaldo, he is not insecure and is not obsessed with the self-made construct of “proving” himself in XYZ leagues, and neither does he care about the laughable assertions of Ronaldo fans who think that Messi cannot be the GOAT because he has not played in the “competitive” Premier League (where Liverpool are winning the league by 30 points) or elsewhere.

It is better to stay in your comfort zone than to embarrass yourself in the twilight of your career like the GOAT of Madrid and Man United fans.

 

[Waleed93]

I know that Ronaldo is obsessed with the Champions League because he is not good enough to win league titles (2 La Liga titles in 9 seasons at Madrid was embarrassing to say the least), but let’s not pretend that the obsession of winning the Champions League with the third team was the driving force behind the stupid decision of going to Juventus at this stage of his career.

If that really was the prime motive, he would have left Madrid after Ramos won the 2014 Champions League Final for him. The real reason why he left Madrid for Juventus was because of money. He threw his toys out of the pram and left Madrid out of sheer contempt.

At the age of 33-34, Madrid did not think that he was worth the money especially with Madrid eyeing the likes of Mbappe, Neymar and Hazard as the next Galacticos. He is used to being worshipped so he was offended and ended up at Juventus, who thought he could spur them to European glory.

The move was doomed from the start because:

(1) he ended up earning less at Juventus than he did at Madrid

(2) he cannot win the Champions League with Juventus

(3) the stupid move cost him the 2018 Ballon d’Or, which means he will always have less Ballon d’Ors than Messi.

Much like Neymar regrets his move to PSG, it is very clear that Ronaldo regrets leaving Madrid. He should have embraced the fact that at some point, Madrid would not value him at the same level as they did when he was in his prime.

I don’t need to do bhangra over Juventus losing in Lyon. They should still be strong enough to win at home. However, I do know that they will not win the Champions League. I am sure you will do bhangra after the second leg just like you did bhangra last year, only for Juventus to get eliminated by Ajax.

The same Ronaldo fans were doing bhangra when Ajax eliminated Madrid in the R16 and claimed that it was the absence of Ronaldo that cost them, only for Ronaldo to get eliminated by the same team in the next round. )

Besides, even if a miracle happens and Juventus win the Champions League this season, what next? Will the prima donna retire, stay put or move to another European club to win a Champions League with a fourth club? Why stop at three? Why is that a magic number?

As far as free-kicks concerned, he is rubbish at them from every distance these days. He cannot find the back of the net even to save his life, and should never be taking them. I cannot wait for his tantrum when Juventus bans him from taking them altogether.

Messi is of course loyal. He is the greatest of all time and he deserves to be the highest paid player. He is loyal because he can earn the same amount of money (and more) at Man City or PSG, but unlike Ronaldo, he is not insecure and is not obsessed with the self-made construct of “proving” himself in XYZ leagues, and neither does he care about the laughable assertions of Ronaldo fans who think that Messi cannot be the GOAT because he has not played in the “competitive” Premier League (where Liverpool are winning the league by 30 points) or elsewhere.

It is better to stay in your comfort zone than to embarrass yourself in the twilight of your career like the GOAT of Madrid and Man United fans.

It actually tells a lot about your football knowledge if you rate league titles more than UCL titles. Winning the UCL with Juventus was his motive, and it doesn't matter what your opinion is on that fact. Nobody has been able to replace him at Manchester United, even after 12 years, and nobody will be able to replace him at Madrid either, no matter if you are Neymar, Hazard, or even Mbappé who is going to rule the football world once Ronaldo and Messi retire.

If he already knew that he was going to end up with less money at Juve before going there, why did he actually agreed to move there ? I don't know how logics work for you, but certainly not the same way it does for the rest of the world.

Anyways, it is a known fact that it is not going to be easy for him to win the UCL with this Juventus side, who basically have no creativity in their midfield, with the likes of Matuidi and Rabiot playing awful football and creating absolutely no goal-scoring chances, which means that Juve heavily rely on Ronaldo and Dybala when it comes to offensive play.

The 2018 Ballon d'Or was there for the taking for him. Individually or collectively, he was better than any other player, and the fact that he lost it to Modric is a matter of shame, especially you keep in mind the fact that the likes of Mané or VVD could not win it in 2019, despite being atleast 5 times better than Modric's 2018.

Neymar's move to PSG and Ronaldo's move to Juventus are not even comparable. At 35 years of age, he is still putting up better numbers than the rest, and that too despite playing in a team not suited to play attacking football that Ronaldo has been playing since joining Manchester United.

Again, I do know that Juventus are not going to win the UCL this season, they are simply not good enough with too many useless players occupying important positions. I am not going to do any bhangra even if Ronaldo comes up with another hat-trick in the second leg, as he has done it multiple times at the biggest of stages.

Irony died a thousand death when you mentioned the Ajax defeat in the quarter finals. You are basically trolling Ronaldo for not winning a 4th consecutive UCL title, while your "real GOAT" was nowhere to be found against Atletico in 2016, against Juventus in 2017, against Roma of all teams in 2018, and then at Anfield last year, which explains the hate you have against Liverpool. )

If he somehow manages to win a UCL title with Juventus, and if his age allows him to do so, he might even have a go at PSG or Bayern. So what ?

He is not taking long range free-kicks because he knows his strengths perfectly. He knows he is the best header of the ball, so he positions himself for a cross and lets Dybala or Pjanic take long distance free-kicks. Messi can't win a Copa America to save his life, should he stop playing for Argentina ?

LOL at his loyalty. You talked about Ronaldo being obsessed with money, and now you are advocating for Messi's yearly contract renewals. It is not only about proving himself in the EPL, it's about being the same player in different environments. Ronaldo has been as good as ever with United, Madrid, Portugal, and now is putting up better numbers than the likes of Neymar at the age of 35, in a defensive league like Serie A.

Imagine Messi losing 2-0 against Atletico in the first leg of UCL knockout, then coming back with a hat-trick against the same team a couple of weeks later to save his team. He can't do this despite staying in his comfort zone fir the last 17 years, and you have Ronaldo who has done it with Madrid so many times, with Portugal (vs Sweden 2013, vs Spain 2018), and now with Juventus as well.

P.S : The only argument you have to downplay the EPL is Liverpool's unbelievable run this season. You are acting as if these kind of one-team shows happen every season in the EPL.

 

[Mamoon]

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

Let’s not talk about football knowledge. Any person who thinks Ronaldo is a better footballer than Messi clearly doesn’t have a clue about football. Messi is by far the most complete individual player in history.

Ronaldo is equal when it comes to goal-scoring, but he is not 10% the player Messi is when it comes to playmaking and creativity. That is why it is beyond stupid to consider Ronaldo a better player than Messi.

Furthermore, to win the league, you have to be the best team in your country. It requires consistency throughout the season. To win the Champions League, you do not have to be the best team in your country let alone Europe.

Chelsea won the 2011-12 Champions League after finishing 7th in the league. Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005 after finishing 5th and won last year when they were inferior to Man City in the league. Arsenal finished 4th in league in 2006 but made the Champions League final. I can, of course, go on and on and on.

The fact that Madrid won only two league titles in the last decade simply proves that Barcelona were and are the best team in Spain, and also the fact that Ronaldo couldn’t end Messi’s La Liga dominance.

In league football, you play every team in the league twice, but in the Champions League, you can avoid plenty of top sides who could have beaten you.

The only reason Madrid won 4 UCLs in 5 seasons is because they avoided playing Barcelona every time. With or without Ronaldo, Madrid is Barcelona’s bunny and that is why they only have two league titles in the last decade.

The only time they met in the Champions League in the last decade was in the 2010-11 semifinal, where Messi dribbled past Madrid’s defense at the Bernabeu with Ronaldo watching from the other end with hands on his hips.

He was simply lucky to avoid playing Barcelona in the UCL later on, with other sides doing the job for him by eliminating his worst nightmare.

The reason why Ronaldo fans completely dismiss the importance of winning league titles is because their hero has not proved himself good enough while competing directly with Messi in Spain.

During his time in La Liga, Messi finished the top scorer 5 times while Ronaldo was the top scorer only 3 times.

Messi won the league 6 times while Ronaldo won the league 2 times.

Messi topped the assists charts multiple times and Ronaldo not even once.

Messi won the La Liga player of the season award far more times than Ronaldo.

No wonder Ronaldo fans think leagues don’t matter.

Ask Liverpool fans the value of league titles. They have won two UCLs in this millennium but are desperate to win the league, and someone like Salah explicitly stated that he would have preferred to win the league over the UCL last season.

Moreover, Ronaldo joined Juventus because other teams were not willing to pay him the money he demanded at the age of 33-34, and he had already burned his bridges at Madrid. That is why it was a dumb move even from a financial perspective. He whined because Madrid did not think he was worth the money he was earning, but he failed to realize that other teams still valued him less than Madrid.

To save face, he came up with a cringeworthy story of wanting to move to Juventus after their fans gave him a standing ovation after his overhead kick at the Juventus Stadium.

You can live in the “CR7 World” where Ronaldo left Madrid purely for footballing reasons and took a pay-cut to join Juventus when other clubs had made a beeline to pay him as much as he wished.

Comparing Messi playing in the Copa America to Ronaldo taking crap free-kicks for Juventus is beyond stupid even for a Ronaldo fan. Messi has not won the Copa America but he still Argentina’s best player by a country mile and his presence maximizes Argentina’s chances of winning it eventually.

Ronaldo taking nonsense free-kicks from close range does not maximize anything. If he was a team player he would swallow his pride and step aside because he is not good enough at them anymore.

Ronaldo cannot even take his country to a World Cup final. Should he not play for Portugal in 2022?

Besides, Messi has also been far better than Ronaldo at international level. He has a World Cup Golden Ball, and you can predictably call it undeserved, but Ronaldo hasn’t even come close to winning an “undeserved” Golden Ball.

Moreover, Messi has far more goals against the top 50 FIFA ranked teams. Ronaldo’s goalscoring record against the top teams is a joke, and most of his goals have come against sides like Lithuania, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Estonia, Armenia, Latvia etc. etc.

He won the Euro 2016 but he contribution in the final as much as you did. He was injured after 10 mins, and had Eder not scored that fluke goal, he wouldn’t have won the final. Had Higuain not missed the countless chances in finals, Messi would have won international trophies as well.

Are you really blaming Messi for the Liverpool comeback last season? He destroyed Liverpool 3-0 at Camp Nou, and squared up the ball to Dembele who should have made it 4-0 but missed a sitter. What more should he have done? Barcelona were destroyed at Anfield because the midfield and defense couldn’t cope with Liverpool’s intensity. Messi was still their best player.

Do you think Messi doesn’t perform in crucial moments? Is that why he has consistently denied Ronaldo the chance to win the league, regularly outclassed him in El Classicos and owned him the only time they faced each other in the Champions League?

Who said you have prove yourself in different environments? Who makes these rules? Let’s face it - Ronaldo can play in 10 different leagues, but he will never be a better player than Messi or leave a greater legacy.

This notion that you have prove yourself in different leagues is the only argument that Ronaldo fans have to desperately try and prove that he is better than Messi when he clearly is not.

Messi does not have to leave Barcelona to appease Ronaldo fans. It is particularly funny when Man United fans claim that Messi has not proven himself in other leagues, when the “greatest British manager” Sir Alex never proved himself outside his “comfort zone” in Britain.

As far as the competitiveness of Premier League is concerned, there is a different between competitiveness and quality. When the best teams in the league are not extremely strong, the league is obviously going to look competitive.

Over the last decade or so, the best Premier League teams have not been stronger than Barcelona and Madrid. However, Man City and Liverpool have raised the bar over the last 2-3 seasons and we have seen how “competitive” English football has been.

All the Premier League hipsters whose footballing world starts and ends with English football, who called other leagues “farmer leagues” and mocked La Liga for being a two league team have been left red-faced lately.

Man City won the 2017-18 title by 19 points.

Man City and Liverpool had 98 and 97 points in 2018-2019, while the third team had 72.

This season, Liverpool is on course to winning the league by 20+ points.

The reason why Premier League appeared to be more competitive is because the previous champions were rarely strong enough to accumulate 90+ points.

Usually, 84-87 points were enough to win the Premier League, and it wasn’t because the league was too competitive; it was because the champions were not strong enough.

Let me sum it up in one sentence: anyone who thinks Ronaldo is better than Messi and Premier League is the strongest league in the world does not have the first clue about football.

 

[Waleed93]

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

Let’s not talk about football knowledge. Any person who thinks Ronaldo is a better footballer than Messi clearly doesn’t have a clue about football. Messi is by far the most complete individual player in history.

Ronaldo is equal when it comes to goal-scoring, but he is not 10% the player Messi is when it comes to playmaking and creativity. That is why it is beyond stupid to consider Ronaldo a better player than Messi.

Furthermore, to win the league, you have to be the best team in your country. It requires consistency throughout the season. To win the Champions League, you do not have to be the best team in your country let alone Europe.

Chelsea won the 2011-12 Champions League after finishing 7th in the league. Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005 after finishing 5th and won last year when they were inferior to Man City in the league. Arsenal finished 4th in league in 2006 but made the Champions League final. I can, of course, go on and on and on.

The fact that Madrid won only two league titles in the last decade simply proves that Barcelona were and are the best team in Spain, and also the fact that Ronaldo couldn’t end Messi’s La Liga dominance.

In league football, you play every team in the league twice, but in the Champions League, you can avoid plenty of top sides who could have beaten you.

The only reason Madrid won 4 UCLs in 5 seasons is because they avoided playing Barcelona every time. With or without Ronaldo, Madrid is Barcelona’s bunny and that is why they only have two league titles in the last decade.

The only time they met in the Champions League in the last decade was in the 2010-11 semifinal, where Messi dribbled past Madrid’s defense at the Bernabeu with Ronaldo watching from the other end with hands on his hips.

He was simply lucky to avoid playing Barcelona in the UCL later on, with other sides doing the job for him by eliminating his worst nightmare.

The reason why Ronaldo fans completely dismiss the importance of winning league titles is because their hero has not proved himself good enough while competing directly with Messi in Spain.

During his time in La Liga, Messi finished the top scorer 5 times while Ronaldo was the top scorer only 3 times.

Messi won the league 6 times while Ronaldo won the league 2 times.

Messi topped the assists charts multiple times and Ronaldo not even once.

Messi won the La Liga player of the season award far more times than Ronaldo.

No wonder Ronaldo fans think leagues don’t matter.

Ask Liverpool fans the value of league titles. They have won two UCLs in this millennium but are desperate to win the league, and someone like Salah explicitly stated that he would have preferred to win the league over the UCL last season.

Moreover, Ronaldo joined Juventus because other teams were not willing to pay him the money he demanded at the age of 33-34, and he had already burned his bridges at Madrid. That is why it was a dumb move even from a financial perspective. He whined because Madrid did not think he was worth the money he was earning, but he failed to realize that other teams still valued him less than Madrid.

To save face, he came up with a cringeworthy story of wanting to move to Juventus after their fans gave him a standing ovation after his overhead kick at the Juventus Stadium.

You can live in the “CR7 World” where Ronaldo left Madrid purely for footballing reasons and took a pay-cut to join Juventus when other clubs had made a beeline to pay him as much as he wished.

Comparing Messi playing in the Copa America to Ronaldo taking crap free-kicks for Juventus is beyond stupid even for a Ronaldo fan. Messi has not won the Copa America but he still Argentina’s best player by a country mile and his presence maximizes Argentina’s chances of winning it eventually.

Ronaldo taking nonsense free-kicks from close range does not maximize anything. If he was a team player he would swallow his pride and step aside because he is not good enough at them anymore.

Ronaldo cannot even take his country to a World Cup final. Should he not play for Portugal in 2022?

Besides, Messi has also been far better than Ronaldo at international level. He has a World Cup Golden Ball, and you can predictably call it undeserved, but Ronaldo hasn’t even come close to winning an “undeserved” Golden Ball.

Moreover, Messi has far more goals against the top 50 FIFA ranked teams. Ronaldo’s goalscoring record against the top teams is a joke, and most of his goals have come against sides like Lithuania, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Estonia, Armenia, Latvia etc. etc.

He won the Euro 2016 but he contribution in the final as much as you did. He was injured after 10 mins, and had Eder not scored that fluke goal, he wouldn’t have won the final. Had Higuain not missed the countless chances in finals, Messi would have won international trophies as well.

Are you really blaming Messi for the Liverpool comeback last season? He destroyed Liverpool 3-0 at Camp Nou, and squared up the ball to Dembele who should have made it 4-0 but missed a sitter. What more should he have done? Barcelona were destroyed at Anfield because the midfield and defense couldn’t cope with Liverpool’s intensity. Messi was still their best player.

Do you think Messi doesn’t perform in crucial moments? Is that why he has consistently denied Ronaldo the chance to win the league, regularly outclassed him in El Classicos and owned him the only time they faced each other in the Champions League?

Who said you have prove yourself in different environments? Who makes these rules? Let’s face it - Ronaldo can play in 10 different leagues, but he will never be a better player than Messi or leave a greater legacy.

This notion that you have prove yourself in different leagues is the only argument that Ronaldo fans have to desperately try and prove that he is better than Messi when he clearly is not.

Messi does not have to leave Barcelona to appease Ronaldo fans. It is particularly funny when Man United fans claim that Messi has not proven himself in other leagues, when the “greatest British manager” Sir Alex never proved himself outside his “comfort zone” in Britain.

As far as the competitiveness of Premier League is concerned, there is a different between competitiveness and quality. When the best teams in the league are not extremely strong, the league is obviously going to look competitive.

Over the last decade or so, the best Premier League teams have not been stronger than Barcelona and Madrid. However, Man City and Liverpool have raised the bar over the last 2-3 seasons and we have seen how “competitive” English football has been.

All the Premier League hipsters whose footballing world starts and ends with English football, who called other leagues “farmer leagues” and mocked La Liga for being a two league team have been left red-faced lately.

Man City won the 2017-18 title by 19 points.

Man City and Liverpool had 98 and 97 points in 2018-2019, while the third team had 72.

This season, Liverpool is on course to winning the league by 20+ points.

The reason why Premier League appeared to be more competitive is because the previous champions were rarely strong enough to accumulate 90+ points.

Usually, 84-87 points were enough to win the Premier League, and it wasn’t because the league was too competitive; it was because the champions were not strong enough.

Let me sum it up in one sentence: anyone who thinks Ronaldo is better than Messi and Premier League is the strongest league in the world does not have the first clue about football.

[MENTION=145946]Waleed93[/MENTION]

Let’s not talk about football knowledge. Any person who thinks Ronaldo is a better footballer than Messi clearly doesn’t have a clue about football. Messi is by far the most complete individual player in history.

Ronaldo is equal when it comes to goal-scoring, but he is not 10% the player Messi is when it comes to playmaking and creativity. That is why it is beyond stupid to consider Ronaldo a better player than Messi.

Furthermore, to win the league, you have to be the best team in your country. It requires consistency throughout the season. To win the Champions League, you do not have to be the best team in your country let alone Europe.

Chelsea won the 2011-12 Champions League after finishing 7th in the league. Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005 after finishing 5th and won last year when they were inferior to Man City in the league. Arsenal finished 4th in league in 2006 but made the Champions League final. I can, of course, go on and on and on.

The fact that Madrid won only two league titles in the last decade simply proves that Barcelona were and are the best team in Spain, and also the fact that Ronaldo couldn’t end Messi’s La Liga dominance.

In league football, you play every team in the league twice, but in the Champions League, you can avoid plenty of top sides who could have beaten you.

The only reason Madrid won 4 UCLs in 5 seasons is because they avoided playing Barcelona every time. With or without Ronaldo, Madrid is Barcelona’s bunny and that is why they only have two league titles in the last decade.

The only time they met in the Champions League in the last decade was in the 2010-11 semifinal, where Messi dribbled past Madrid’s defense at the Bernabeu with Ronaldo watching from the other end with hands on his hips.

He was simply lucky to avoid playing Barcelona in the UCL later on, with other sides doing the job for him by eliminating his worst nightmare.

The reason why Ronaldo fans completely dismiss the importance of winning league titles is because their hero has not proved himself good enough while competing directly with Messi in Spain.

During his time in La Liga, Messi finished the top scorer 5 times while Ronaldo was the top scorer only 3 times.

Messi won the league 6 times while Ronaldo won the league 2 times.

Messi topped the assists charts multiple times and Ronaldo not even once.

Messi won the La Liga player of the season award far more times than Ronaldo.

No wonder Ronaldo fans think leagues don’t matter.

Ask Liverpool fans the value of league titles. They have won two UCLs in this millennium but are desperate to win the league, and someone like Salah explicitly stated that he would have preferred to win the league over the UCL last season.

Moreover, Ronaldo joined Juventus because other teams were not willing to pay him the money he demanded at the age of 33-34, and he had already burned his bridges at Madrid. That is why it was a dumb move even from a financial perspective. He whined because Madrid did not think he was worth the money he was earning, but he failed to realize that other teams still valued him less than Madrid.

To save face, he came up with a cringeworthy story of wanting to move to Juventus after their fans gave him a standing ovation after his overhead kick at the Juventus Stadium.

You can live in the “CR7 World” where Ronaldo left Madrid purely for footballing reasons and took a pay-cut to join Juventus when other clubs had made a beeline to pay him as much as he wished.

Comparing Messi playing in the Copa America to Ronaldo taking crap free-kicks for Juventus is beyond stupid even for a Ronaldo fan. Messi has not won the Copa America but he still Argentina’s best player by a country mile and his presence maximizes Argentina’s chances of winning it eventually.

Ronaldo taking nonsense free-kicks from close range does not maximize anything. If he was a team player he would swallow his pride and step aside because he is not good enough at them anymore.

Ronaldo cannot even take his country to a World Cup final. Should he not play for Portugal in 2022?

Besides, Messi has also been far better than Ronaldo at international level. He has a World Cup Golden Ball, and you can predictably call it undeserved, but Ronaldo hasn’t even come close to winning an “undeserved” Golden Ball.

Moreover, Messi has far more goals against the top 50 FIFA ranked teams. Ronaldo’s goalscoring record against the top teams is a joke, and most of his goals have come against sides like Lithuania, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Estonia, Armenia, Latvia etc. etc.

He won the Euro 2016 but he contribution in the final as much as you did. He was injured after 10 mins, and had Eder not scored that fluke goal, he wouldn’t have won the final. Had Higuain not missed the countless chances in finals, Messi would have won international trophies as well.

Are you really blaming Messi for the Liverpool comeback last season? He destroyed Liverpool 3-0 at Camp Nou, and squared up the ball to Dembele who should have made it 4-0 but missed a sitter. What more should he have done? Barcelona were destroyed at Anfield because the midfield and defense couldn’t cope with Liverpool’s intensity. Messi was still their best player.

Do you think Messi doesn’t perform in crucial moments? Is that why he has consistently denied Ronaldo the chance to win the league, regularly outclassed him in El Classicos and owned him the only time they faced each other in the Champions League?

Who said you have prove yourself in different environments? Who makes these rules? Let’s face it - Ronaldo can play in 10 different leagues, but he will never be a better player than Messi or leave a greater legacy.

This notion that you have prove yourself in different leagues is the only argument that Ronaldo fans have to desperately try and prove that he is better than Messi when he clearly is not.

Messi does not have to leave Barcelona to appease Ronaldo fans. It is particularly funny when Man United fans claim that Messi has not proven himself in other leagues, when the “greatest British manager” Sir Alex never proved himself outside his “comfort zone” in Britain.

As far as the competitiveness of Premier League is concerned, there is a different between competitiveness and quality. When the best teams in the league are not extremely strong, the league is obviously going to look competitive.

Over the last decade or so, the best Premier League teams have not been stronger than Barcelona and Madrid. However, Man City and Liverpool have raised the bar over the last 2-3 seasons and we have seen how “competitive” English football has been.

All the Premier League hipsters whose footballing world starts and ends with English football, who called other leagues “farmer leagues” and mocked La Liga for being a two league team have been left red-faced lately.

Man City won the 2017-18 title by 19 points.

Man City and Liverpool had 98 and 97 points in 2018-2019, while the third team had 72.

This season, Liverpool is on course to winning the league by 20+ points.

The reason why Premier League appeared to be more competitive is because the previous champions were rarely strong enough to accumulate 90+ points.

Usually, 84-87 points were enough to win the Premier League, and it wasn’t because the league was too competitive; it was because the champions were not strong enough.

Let me sum it up in one sentence: anyone who thinks Ronaldo is better than Messi and Premier League is the strongest league in the world does not have the first clue about football.

So anybody who thinks Ronaldo is better than Messi doesn't know anything about football and someone who thinks winning league titles is much more difficult than winning UCL titles is the second coming of Johan Cruyff. )

Yes, Messi is a better play-maker. Ronaldo as a goal-scorer is more complete. He can score headers, penalties, can score from long distances, has a very good weak foot, etc... He has proven to be the best player in the history of the biggest club competition in the world, where he literally owns almost every record a forward can have. He even has more assists than anybody else in the UCL.

If you really believe that winning the UCL doesn't make you the best team in Europe, you really need to stop watching football. The UCL is a competition played between the best teams of every league. Logically, any team that wins the UCL would be the best team in Europe, but again, I don't know from which part of the body your logic comes from.

No, the fact that Real Madrid won only 2 league titles during Ronaldo's time in Spain doesn't prove Barcelona or Messi's dominance or superiority, it just proves that they are the biggest bottlers when it comes to performing at the biggest stage of club football. They got smashed by teams like Roma, Juventus and Atletico Madrid, these same teams were getting mauled by Ronaldo and Real Madrid at every UCL campaign.

The fact of the matter is that Pep's Barca was vastly superior to Madrid, with players like Pique, Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Pedro, Villa complementing Messi. These 7 players turned out be the pillars of Spain's domination of international football between 2010-2012, when they won the WC, as well as the Euros.

Since the departure of these big names, Messi or Barcelona have never come close to that period when they were clearly superior. They have been blown away everytime they stepped in the knockout stages of the UCL, with Messi nowhere to be found. Imagine believing that a team that could not get past Atletico or Roma would have somehow managed to not bottle against Real Madrid in a UCL knockout.
If they were so good, then how did the likes of Roma and Juventus managed to smash them, keeping in mind the fact that these same teams were getting humiliated by Ronaldo everytime they faced each other ?

Winning the league doesn't make anyone better than the other, especially if the former is bound to bottle it at the biggest club competition of football, and this is what Messi has been doing at almost every UCL since 2015.

Ronaldo has scored 311 league goals in just about 290 games in La Liga, scoring more than 1 goal per game on average, for a period of 9 years in Spain. If these stats make you think that he was not good in La Liga, again, you should keep watching highlights of Messi "dominating" Ronaldo with world class Spanish players on his side.

Comparing Ronaldo with Portugal to Messi with Argentina is useless. Ronaldo has scored 80+ of his 99 international goals in competitive games, while Messi just about has 35 competitive goals. Moreover, Ronaldo has won 2 international trophies for his country, and you can cry over his Euro 2016 Final injury as much as you want, but let me teach you a fact that you will surely ignore : Messi didn't play the final of the 2006 UCL, scored 1 goal in the 6 games he played in that tournament. Should we remove that UCL win from Messi's record, so that his fans understand that he just contributed in 3 UCL campaigns and has actually 2 less UCL trophies than Ronaldo, who has been the top scorer of the tournament everytime his team won the UCL. Also, Ronaldo scored 3 goals and had 3 assists during the Euro 2016, he was the biggest contributor in Portugal's triumph.

Yes, Messi has a WC golden ball. Please, do not forget to remind me Messi's contribution in that WC 2014 campaign after the group stages. You were mocking Ronaldo for scoring against small teams in Euro qualifiers, while forgetting the fact that Messi scored all of his 4 goals against Nigeria and Iran. ) As always, he dissapeared when things started to get tough, as he managed just 1 assist in the RO 16 and nothing else in the next games. He was literally carried by the likes of Di Maria and Higuain in the knockout stages.

Ronaldo's performance in the WC 2018 against Spain remains bigger than any of Messi's performances in any WC. Obviously, you can brag about that WC golden ball that Messi won, even if there were 3 players who scored more than him and 8 players who had more assists than him in the tournament.

I am not blaming only Messi for what happened at Anfield. The whole team, including Messi is responsible for that. Even Ronaldo lost against Ajax last year, but did he dissapear like Messi ? He scored Juventus' every single goal in the knockout stages of the UCL, including the one in the game they lost against Ajax.

Barcelona suffered a comeback against Atletico in 2016, Messi didn't score. They were kept silent against Juventus in 2017. Messi didn't score in any of the two legs. They were mauled by Roma in 2018, he didn't score in any of the two legs again.

Do you think that Messi could have done what Ronaldo did against Spain at the WC, or against Atletico last year ? Or even what he did at the Juventus stadium in his last UCL campaign for Madrid ?

Be it with Portugal, Madrid or any other team, he has performed the same way. Messi has been the GOAT for Barcelona, and even then he has gone missing in some of the most clutch moments.

I personally don't care if Messi leaves or stays at Barcelona. He could do it when he was younger, but he didn't. Now, at the age of 33, I couldn't care less if he stays at Barcelona for the rest of his career. There is a difference between playing in different environments, and dominating different leagues. Ronaldo did the latter. He not only played for Manchester and Madrid, he absolutely proved himself as the best, winning every individual and collective trophy a player can win in both teams. Today, he is 35, playing at Juventus, clearly an inferior side to his 20008's United side and 2014-2018's Madrid side, and yet, he is fighting in the race for the golden boot.

Nobody has made these rules. It's just an advantage, a plus that Ronaldo holds against Messi, who has not been able to win any big tournament for Barcelona since the retirements of some big players, so to think that he would be able to do as well as Ronaldo is doing in different teams is nothing less than a joke.

 

[Mamoon]

So anybody who thinks Ronaldo is better than Messi doesn't know anything about football and someone who thinks winning league titles is much more difficult than winning UCL titles is the second coming of Johan Cruyff. )

You don’t need to be Cruyff. Anyone who watches football and whose world does not revolve around Ronaldo will come to that conclusion.

Yes, Messi is a better play-maker. Ronaldo as a goal-scorer is more complete. He can score headers, penalties, can score from long distances, has a very good weak foot, etc... He has proven to be the best player in the history of the biggest club competition in the world, where he literally owns almost every record a forward can have. He even has more assists than anybody else in the UCL.

In spite of being a more “complete” goal-scorer, he scores less goals than Messi.

Messi is not as good in the air, not as reliable with penalties and not as prolific with his right foot (which is actually very underrated), but he has still managed to consistently out-score Ronaldo.

Since Ronaldo moved to Madrid, he has scored more goals than Messi across three seasons only. Now before you gloat over his record in UCL, his goal per game ratio in the Champions League is still inferior compared to Messi.

Similarly, he has the most assists in UCL history, but Messi provides the most assists per game.

What is the point of being better in the air, being better at penalties, having a stronger weak foot if you still cannot score more goals than Messi? Perhaps if he wasn’t unbelievably crap at free-kicks over the last few years, he would be out-scoring Messi.

If you really believe that winning the UCL doesn't make you the best team in Europe, you really need to stop watching football. The UCL is a competition played between the best teams of every league. Logically, any team that wins the UCL would be the best team in Europe, but again, I don't know from which part of the body your logic comes from.

Yes, winning the UCL does not make you the best team in Europe. If you think Madrid were the best team in Europe between 2014 and 2018 by winning 4 UCLs, can you explain why they only won a single La Liga during this period?

How come the “best team in Europe” failed to prove itself as the best team in Spain?

UCL is a knockout competition. It does not reward consistency, it rewards better performances on a given day. An inferior team can beat a superior team on a given day, and a team might make it to the final or even win the competition by avoiding certain teams that could have beaten them.

Hence, you cannot gauge who the best team in Europe is by looking at who wins the Champions League. The only way you can prove a certain team to be the best in Europe is if there is a hypothetical super league where all the top teams in Europe play in a league format against each other, i.e. Barcelona, Madrid, Juventus, PSG, Bayern, City, Liverpool, PSG etc. playing in one league with each team playing against each other.

That is why the league format is the most reliable measure of the strength of a team. You can win the Champions League by finishing 7th in the league but to win the league you have to be the best team in the league. It is possible to win the Champions League without being the best team in the competition, but it is not possible to win the league without being the best team in the league.

No, the fact that Real Madrid won only 2 league titles during Ronaldo's time in Spain doesn't prove Barcelona or Messi's dominance or superiority, it just proves that they are the biggest bottlers when it comes to performing at the biggest stage of club football. They got smashed by teams like Roma, Juventus and Atletico Madrid, these same teams were getting mauled by Ronaldo and Real Madrid at every UCL campaign.

So losing to Roma, Juventus and Atletico in the Champions League makes you a bottler, but dropping points to teams like Celta Vigo, Sporting Gijon, Getafe, Espanyol, Levante, Rayo Vallecano etc. and conceding league title after league title to Barcelona does not make you a bottler?

Do you think Madrid and Ronaldo are (were) happy with Barcelona’s embarrassing La Liga dominance in the last decade?

The fact of the matter is that Pep's Barca was vastly superior to Madrid, with players like Pique, Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Pedro, Villa complementing Messi. These 7 players turned out be the pillars of Spain's domination of international football between 2010-2012, when they won the WC, as well as the Euros.

Since the departure of these big names, Messi or Barcelona have never come close to that period when they were clearly superior. They have been blown away everytime they stepped in the knockout stages of the UCL, with Messi nowhere to be found. Imagine believing that a team that could not get past Atletico or Roma would have somehow managed to not bottle against Real Madrid in a UCL knockout.

Well duh. Barcelona and Messi won more when they had Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets compared to when they had or have Messi, Rakitic, Arthur and a past it Busquets. Every player needs great teammates to win trophies.

Ronaldo is no different. He wanted to leave Man United when they were the best team in England and UCL winners, because he knew Man United were not strong enough for his ambitions and he had to go to Madrid. When his Man United team got owned by Messi in the 2009 UCL final, he knew it was time to go.

Ronaldo wouldn’t have won 4 UCLs at Madrid without having quality teammates. That is why he couldn’t win the UCL with Juventus last season, because that Juventus side was inferior to Madrid. That is why he went from winning the UCL to getting dumped out by Ajax in the space of 12 months.

As far as bottling against Madrid is concerned, imagine burying your head in the sand to the point where you have completely ignored the dominance of Barcelona over Madrid in the Messi-Ronaldo era.

Ronaldo played Barcelona 30 times and only won 8 matches. The only time he faced them in the UCL, he got owned by Messi at Bernabeu.

I will repeat: Madrid and Ronaldo were extremely lucky to avoid Messi and Barcelona in the UCL during their 2014-2018 run.

Barcelona might “bottle” it against Roma and Atletico, but they know how to beat Ronaldo and Madrid in their sleep.

If they were so good, then how did the likes of Roma and Juventus managed to smash them, keeping in mind the fact that these same teams were getting humiliated by Ronaldo everytime they faced each other ?

If Madrid were so good, how did they manage to drop points to the likes of Celta Vigo, Sporting Gijon, Getafe, Espanyol, Levante, Rayo Vallecano etc. in Spain, who kept getting shamed by Barcelona all the time?

Do you realize how stupid your logic is?

Winning the league doesn't make anyone better than the other, especially if the former is bound to bottle it at the biggest club competition of football, and this is what Messi has been doing at almost every UCL since 2015.

That is exactly what winning the league does. It is the most accurate estimation of the relative strength of a team. It is a direct competition where you play against every opponent in the competition. It is not possible for an inferior team to finish above a superior team in the league, but it is very much possible in the UCL.

Ronaldo has scored 311 league goals in just about 290 games in La Liga, scoring more than 1 goal per game on average, for a period of 9 years in Spain. If these stats make you think that he was not good in La Liga, again, you should keep watching highlights of Messi "dominating" Ronaldo with world class Spanish players on his side.

Ronaldo was brilliant in Spain, but Messi was even better. That is why Messi scored more goals, provided more assists, and won more La Liga Player of the Year Awards.

World class Spanish players? You are making it sound as if Ronaldo was playing with Sunday League footballers. He won only two La Liga titles from 2009 to 2018 while playing with players like Modric, Kroos, Bale, Benzema, Kaka, di Maria, Ozil, Casemiro, Ramos, Marcelona, Varane, Isco, Xabi Alonso Casillas etc. etc.

Do you think 2 league titles in 9 years is all that a player like Ronaldo can achieve with the above set of players?

Comparing Ronaldo with Portugal to Messi with Argentina is useless. Ronaldo has scored 80+ of his 99 international goals in competitive games, while Messi just about has 35 competitive goals. Moreover, Ronaldo has won 2 international trophies for his country, and you can cry over his Euro 2016 Final injury as much as you want, but let me teach you a fact that you will surely ignore : Messi didn't play the final of the 2006 UCL, scored 1 goal in the 6 games he played in that tournament. Should we remove that UCL win from Messi's record, so that his fans understand that he just contributed in 3 UCL campaigns and has actually 2 less UCL trophies than Ronaldo, who has been the top scorer of the tournament everytime his team won the UCL. Also, Ronaldo scored 3 goals and had 3 assists during the Euro 2016, he was the biggest contributor in Portugal's triumph.

Messi was only 18-19 in 2006 and just about establishing himself as a first-team player. Of course no one associates that UCL with him. Not sure why you had to bring that one up. Everyone associates the 2005-2006 Barcelona with the likes of Ronaldinho, Deco, Eto’o, Puyol etc. You did not “teach” me any fact; you came up with an irrelevant example that added nothing to the discourse.

Comparing Messi’s international record to Ronaldo’s is only useless to those who cannot admit the fact that Messi trumps Ronaldo in international football as well. Messi has less competitive goals because he has a different role for Argentina.

Unlike Ronaldo, he has the talent to be a world class playmaker, and because Argentina has a lot of forwards but weak midfield, he plays in a more deeper role for Argentina. That is why his goal-scoring record for Argentina is quite misleading.

Yes, Messi has a WC golden ball. Please, do not forget to remind me Messi's contribution in that WC 2014 campaign after the group stages. You were mocking Ronaldo for scoring against small teams in Euro qualifiers, while forgetting the fact that Messi scored all of his 4 goals against Nigeria and Iran. ) As always, he dissapeared when things started to get tough, as he managed just 1 assist in the RO 16 and nothing else in the next games. He was literally carried by the likes of Di Maria and Higuain in the knockout stages.

Ronaldo's performance in the WC 2018 against Spain remains bigger than any of Messi's performances in any WC. Obviously, you can brag about that WC golden ball that Messi won, even if there were 3 players who scored more than him and 8 players who had more assists than him in the tournament.

Messi scored against weak sides in the 2014 World Cup, but I am talking about their overall goal-scoring records. You cannot sidestep your way around the following facts:

- Messi has far more goals against the top 50 FIFA teams

- Messi’s favorite international opponents: Brazil and Uruguay

- Ronaldo’s favorite international opponents: Lithuania and Andorra )

- Messi also has more World Cup goals

Messi did not score in the knockouts, but he was still the best player for his team. You may not know this, but the World Cup Golden Ball is not based on goals/assists only. That is why there is another award called the Golden Boot, which goes to the player with the most goals.

Messi won the Golden Ball because he was the sole reason Argentina qualified for the World Cup final. He was by far the most influential individual player at the World Cup and thus, was the rightful winner of the Golden Ball.

Ronaldo fan’s can celebrate his performance in the 3-3 draw vs Spain. Congratulations on winning the “Ronaldo’s performance against Spain was better than Messi’s 2014 Golden Ball” award.

I am not blaming only Messi for what happened at Anfield. The whole team, including Messi is responsible for that. Even Ronaldo lost against Ajax last year, but did he dissapear like Messi ? He scored Juventus' every single goal in the knockout stages of the UCL, including the one in the game they lost against Ajax.

Ronaldo disappears more often than Messi, and that is because he does not have the talent to be a playmaker and create things. Messi doesn’t disappear because when he is not getting the goals, he tries to create goals for his teammates. On the other hand, Ronaldo cries when someone else scores a goal.

Barcelona suffered a comeback against Atletico in 2016, Messi didn't score. They were kept silent against Juventus in 2017. Messi didn't score in any of the two legs. They were mauled by Roma in 2018, he didn't score in any of the two legs again.

Do you want me to draw a list of matches where Ronaldo failed to score? Again, why does your world revolve around UCL only? Why do you keep ignoring Ronaldo’s embarrassing trophy cabinet when it comes to La Liga? Well because it doesn’t suit your narrative?

Do you think that Messi could have done what Ronaldo did against Spain at the WC, or against Atletico last year ? Or even what he did at the Juventus stadium in his last UCL campaign for Madrid ?

Be it with Portugal, Madrid or any other team, he has performed the same way. Messi has been the GOAT for Barcelona, and even then he has gone missing in some of the most clutch moments.

Yes, Messi has done more than Ronaldo. He has owned him in head to head matches, he has owned him they only time they played each other in the UCL and he has scored more goals than him in Spain and more goals/per game in UCL. He has also scored against tougher opponents in international football, scored more World Cup goals and won a Golden Ball which Ronaldo has not come close to achieving.

I personally don't care if Messi leaves or stays at Barcelona. He could do it when he was younger, but he didn't. Now, at the age of 33, I couldn't care less if he stays at Barcelona for the rest of his career. There is a difference between playing in different environments, and dominating different leagues. Ronaldo did the latter. He not only played for Manchester and Madrid, he absolutely proved himself as the best, winning every individual and collective trophy a player can win in both teams. Today, he is 35, playing at Juventus, clearly an inferior side to his 20008's United side and 2014-2018's Madrid side, and yet, he is fighting in the race for the golden boot.

You are deluded if you think that Messi will not dominate another league even at the age of 33-34. He can join City this summer and still be the best player in England. The difference between him and Ronaldo is clear, especially at this age. Ronaldo without goals brings nothing to the table today; Messi without goals is still the best playmaker in the world, and by some distance.

Nobody has made these rules. It's just an advantage, a plus that Ronaldo holds against Messi, who has not been able to win any big tournament for Barcelona since the retirements of some big players, so to think that he would be able to do as well as Ronaldo is doing in different teams is nothing less than a joke.

If you want to bury your head in the sand you will think it is a joke, but Messi is the most complete player in history and will dominate every league in every era. Playing in different leagues is an advantage only constructed by CR7 mafia who run out of ammunition while trying to prove something that cannot be provided simply because it is not true, i.e. the notion that Ronaldo is better than Messi which he clearly is not.

Messi is better than Ronaldo and the ultimate GOAT. If you want to live in denial, it is your choice. If he goes to Serie A today, he will dominate and prove himself better than Ronaldo. If he goes to England today, he will dominate and prove himself better than Salah, Mane, Aguero, De Bruyne etc.

If he goes to France, he will prove himself to be better than Neymar and Mbappe, if he goes to Germany, he will prove himself to be better than Lewandowski, Sancho, Haaland etc.

If you want to have the last word, you can have the last word. I don’t have anything more to add because I have debunked all your claims. You can claim my silence as your victory if it pleases you, but I do not wish to go in circles.

 

[AdamM97]

Ronaldo deserves this humiliation. There is no glory in being a selfish prima donna, and trying to prove yourself in every league means absolutely nothing.

Ronaldo is a legend and he had absolutely no reason to prove himself in Serie A at this stage of his career. He has nothing to prove and he should have stayed at Madrid.

When it comes to loyalty, he needs to learn a thing or two from the real GOAT.

Juventus have not gained anything by signing him, and it is only a matter of time before they force him to stop taking free-kicks.

He is the worst free kick-taker in the world these days but still lines up every single time as if he is Messi. Sums up what a selfish narcissist he actually is. He knows Dybala and Pjanic are miles better but his ego is also miles bigger.

There is a reason why no one apart from his fans rate him higher than Messi.

A great, great player but a small, small man.

Why is it so bad that he’s trying different leagues? What a ridiculous thing to criticize Cristiano for.

Legends like Ronaldo Nazeiro Da Lima not only played in different leagues but also for rival teams(Barcelona, Real Madrid, Inter and AC Milan).

If anything, it’s great that Ronaldo is setting new goals for himself instead of staying in Madrid, there’s nothing ”selfish” about it.

Yes Messi is better than Ronaldo, however Ronaldo’s ambitious attitude and ’greed’ to be the best is admirable. If anything, Messi should do the same thing.

 

[PetroDollars]

Trying different challenges and new leagues is great and only a fool will criticise it, but also Ronaldos day at RM came to end due to internal conflicts and he had to leave, otherwise it was his boyhood club, those arguing against it are those who watch 2 matches a season on MOTD and become arm chair pundits on forums. Messi should take a leaf out of Ronaldos book and come out of his comfort zone, but he wont, because he will be exposed in the EPL.

 

[Mamoon]

“Cristiano is a great player, but those who say he is better than Messi know nothing about football, or they are saying it in bad faith.”

- Marco van Basten

https://www.foxsportsasia.com/footb...han-lionel-messi-know-nothing-about-football/

We said sir, well said.

There are two types of people who think Ronaldo is better than Messi. Those who don’t understand football, and those who lack integrity.

 

[Waleed93]

You don’t need to be Cruyff. Anyone who watches football and whose world does not revolve around Ronaldo will come to that conclusion.



In spite of being a more “complete” goal-scorer, he scores less goals than Messi.

Messi is not as good in the air, not as reliable with penalties and not as prolific with his right foot (which is actually very underrated), but he has still managed to consistently out-score Ronaldo.

Since Ronaldo moved to Madrid, he has scored more goals than Messi across three seasons only. Now before you gloat over his record in UCL, his goal per game ratio in the Champions League is still inferior compared to Messi.

Similarly, he has the most assists in UCL history, but Messi provides the most assists per game.

What is the point of being better in the air, being better at penalties, having a stronger weak foot if you still cannot score more goals than Messi? Perhaps if he wasn’t unbelievably crap at free-kicks over the last few years, he would be out-scoring Messi.



Yes, winning the UCL does not make you the best team in Europe. If you think Madrid were the best team in Europe between 2014 and 2018 by winning 4 UCLs, can you explain why they only won a single La Liga during this period?

How come the “best team in Europe” failed to prove itself as the best team in Spain?

UCL is a knockout competition. It does not reward consistency, it rewards better performances on a given day. An inferior team can beat a superior team on a given day, and a team might make it to the final or even win the competition by avoiding certain teams that could have beaten them.

Hence, you cannot gauge who the best team in Europe is by looking at who wins the Champions League. The only way you can prove a certain team to be the best in Europe is if there is a hypothetical super league where all the top teams in Europe play in a league format against each other, i.e. Barcelona, Madrid, Juventus, PSG, Bayern, City, Liverpool, PSG etc. playing in one league with each team playing against each other.

That is why the league format is the most reliable measure of the strength of a team. You can win the Champions League by finishing 7th in the league but to win the league you have to be the best team in the league. It is possible to win the Champions League without being the best team in the competition, but it is not possible to win the league without being the best team in the league.



So losing to Roma, Juventus and Atletico in the Champions League makes you a bottler, but dropping points to teams like Celta Vigo, Sporting Gijon, Getafe, Espanyol, Levante, Rayo Vallecano etc. and conceding league title after league title to Barcelona does not make you a bottler?

Do you think Madrid and Ronaldo are (were) happy with Barcelona’s embarrassing La Liga dominance in the last decade?



Well duh. Barcelona and Messi won more when they had Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets compared to when they had or have Messi, Rakitic, Arthur and a past it Busquets. Every player needs great teammates to win trophies.

Ronaldo is no different. He wanted to leave Man United when they were the best team in England and UCL winners, because he knew Man United were not strong enough for his ambitions and he had to go to Madrid. When his Man United team got owned by Messi in the 2009 UCL final, he knew it was time to go.

Ronaldo wouldn’t have won 4 UCLs at Madrid without having quality teammates. That is why he couldn’t win the UCL with Juventus last season, because that Juventus side was inferior to Madrid. That is why he went from winning the UCL to getting dumped out by Ajax in the space of 12 months.

As far as bottling against Madrid is concerned, imagine burying your head in the sand to the point where you have completely ignored the dominance of Barcelona over Madrid in the Messi-Ronaldo era.

Ronaldo played Barcelona 30 times and only won 8 matches. The only time he faced them in the UCL, he got owned by Messi at Bernabeu.

I will repeat: Madrid and Ronaldo were extremely lucky to avoid Messi and Barcelona in the UCL during their 2014-2018 run.

Barcelona might “bottle” it against Roma and Atletico, but they know how to beat Ronaldo and Madrid in their sleep.

If they were so good, then how did the likes of Roma and Juventus managed to smash them, keeping in mind the fact that these same teams were getting humiliated by Ronaldo everytime they faced each other ?

If Madrid were so good, how did they manage to drop points to the likes of Celta Vigo, Sporting Gijon, Getafe, Espanyol, Levante, Rayo Vallecano etc. in Spain, who kept getting shamed by Barcelona all the time?

Do you realize how stupid your logic is?



That is exactly what winning the league does. It is the most accurate estimation of the relative strength of a team. It is a direct competition where you play against every opponent in the competition. It is not possible for an inferior team to finish above a superior team in the league, but it is very much possible in the UCL.



Ronaldo was brilliant in Spain, but Messi was even better. That is why Messi scored more goals, provided more assists, and won more La Liga Player of the Year Awards.

World class Spanish players? You are making it sound as if Ronaldo was playing with Sunday League footballers. He won only two La Liga titles from 2009 to 2018 while playing with players like Modric, Kroos, Bale, Benzema, Kaka, di Maria, Ozil, Casemiro, Ramos, Marcelona, Varane, Isco, Xabi Alonso Casillas etc. etc.

Do you think 2 league titles in 9 years is all that a player like Ronaldo can achieve with the above set of players?



Messi was only 18-19 in 2006 and just about establishing himself as a first-team player. Of course no one associates that UCL with him. Not sure why you had to bring that one up. Everyone associates the 2005-2006 Barcelona with the likes of Ronaldinho, Deco, Eto’o, Puyol etc. You did not “teach” me any fact; you came up with an irrelevant example that added nothing to the discourse.

Comparing Messi’s international record to Ronaldo’s is only useless to those who cannot admit the fact that Messi trumps Ronaldo in international football as well. Messi has less competitive goals because he has a different role for Argentina.

Unlike Ronaldo, he has the talent to be a world class playmaker, and because Argentina has a lot of forwards but weak midfield, he plays in a more deeper role for Argentina. That is why his goal-scoring record for Argentina is quite misleading.



Messi scored against weak sides in the 2014 World Cup, but I am talking about their overall goal-scoring records. You cannot sidestep your way around the following facts:

- Messi has far more goals against the top 50 FIFA teams

- Messi’s favorite international opponents: Brazil and Uruguay

- Ronaldo’s favorite international opponents: Lithuania and Andorra )

- Messi also has more World Cup goals

Messi did not score in the knockouts, but he was still the best player for his team. You may not know this, but the World Cup Golden Ball is not based on goals/assists only. That is why there is another award called the Golden Boot, which goes to the player with the most goals.

Messi won the Golden Ball because he was the sole reason Argentina qualified for the World Cup final. He was by far the most influential individual player at the World Cup and thus, was the rightful winner of the Golden Ball.

Ronaldo fan’s can celebrate his performance in the 3-3 draw vs Spain. Congratulations on winning the “Ronaldo’s performance against Spain was better than Messi’s 2014 Golden Ball” award.



Ronaldo disappears more often than Messi, and that is because he does not have the talent to be a playmaker and create things. Messi doesn’t disappear because when he is not getting the goals, he tries to create goals for his teammates. On the other hand, Ronaldo cries when someone else scores a goal.



Do you want me to draw a list of matches where Ronaldo failed to score? Again, why does your world revolve around UCL only? Why do you keep ignoring Ronaldo’s embarrassing trophy cabinet when it comes to La Liga? Well because it doesn’t suit your narrative?



Yes, Messi has done more than Ronaldo. He has owned him in head to head matches, he has owned him they only time they played each other in the UCL and he has scored more goals than him in Spain and more goals/per game in UCL. He has also scored against tougher opponents in international football, scored more World Cup goals and won a Golden Ball which Ronaldo has not come close to achieving.



You are deluded if you think that Messi will not dominate another league even at the age of 33-34. He can join City this summer and still be the best player in England. The difference between him and Ronaldo is clear, especially at this age. Ronaldo without goals brings nothing to the table today; Messi without goals is still the best playmaker in the world, and by some distance.



If you want to bury your head in the sand you will think it is a joke, but Messi is the most complete player in history and will dominate every league in every era. Playing in different leagues is an advantage only constructed by CR7 mafia who run out of ammunition while trying to prove something that cannot be provided simply because it is not true, i.e. the notion that Ronaldo is better than Messi which he clearly is not.

Messi is better than Ronaldo and the ultimate GOAT. If you want to live in denial, it is your choice. If he goes to Serie A today, he will dominate and prove himself better than Ronaldo. If he goes to England today, he will dominate and prove himself better than Salah, Mane, Aguero, De Bruyne etc.

If he goes to France, he will prove himself to be better than Neymar and Mbappe, if he goes to Germany, he will prove himself to be better than Lewandowski, Sancho, Haaland etc.

If you want to have the last word, you can have the last word. I don’t have anything more to add because I have debunked all your claims. You can claim my silence as your victory if it pleases you, but I do not wish to go in circles.

The notion that is used by Messi fan boys that anyone who watches football knows that Messi is better than Ronaldo is nothing but a sentence where their hate towards Ronaldo is clearly visible. Whenever Ronaldo delivers a performance that has not been yet delivered by Messi, the latter's fan boys will bring up this dumb sentence.

Comparing their goal ratios in the UCL is not going to prove that Messi dominates Ronaldo in this competition. Ronaldo literally owns almost every single record a forward can own in the UCL and it's not even close. Just look at the number of goals both of them have scored in UCL knockout rounds, you will get the definition of a big game player. Yes, Messi has played less UCL games than Ronaldo. Whose fault is it ? Who told him to bottle and dissapear in back to back UCL knockouts ?

You are claiming that league titles are more important when it comes to showing who is the best team in Europe only to somehow make Barcelona look better than 2014-2018 Madrid, and you welcome to do so as this is the only way to actually make them look better, as during that period, they kept winning La Liga with Madrid coming a close 2nd every season, while Madrid kept becoming the Champions of Europe, with Barcelona not even managing to go past the quarter finals.

Losing to Celta Vigo or Espanyol is not bottling, it is called an upset. Bottling is losing under pressure at the biggest stage, and Messi and Barca are experts in that regard. You could lose to Espanyol by 1-0 despite playing well throughout the game, but losing against any team despite getting a healthy lead in the first leg of a UCL match is called bottling, and it shows the capabilities of immensely talented players, not capable of performing when it matters the most.

Yes, every player needs quality team mates to win. However, Real Madrid had not won a single UCL title since 2002 and were struggling to go past the R0 16 at a stage. Then Ronaldo happened, they started to reach the semi-finals every season, Ronaldo started to take his game to another level and they won 4 UCLs in 5 years. The same Real Madrid that had Zidane, Ronaldo Nazario, Beckham, Figo, Casillas, Carlos, etc... had not won 1 in 12 years. Messi had the GOAT team during Pep's era, they won 2 UCLs, and as soon as he started to lose legendary players, all he has been doing is bottling it, the same way he has been doing it with Argentina, who have won 14 Copa Americas and 2 WC before his debut, nothing since then.

You can keep dreaming about Barcelona defeating that 2014-18 Real Madrid side to satisfy yourself, but this stupid logic of comparing upsets against Celta Vigo and Betis to dissapearing at the biggest stage against different opponents every year is not going to take you far.

The UCL puts players and teams in two different categories, those who always take their game to a higher level at the biggest stage, and those who are meant to keep dominating the likes of Eibar and Betis, and then celebrating a semi final spot in the UCL after 4 years.

You keep boasting about their respective La Liga records while ignoring who has been much, much superior between the two in the biggest competition. Yes, Ronaldo had world class playerd at his disposal. Were they as good as Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Puyol, Etoo, Suarez, Neymar, Villa, Alves, etc.. ? Making fun of Ronaldo winning the league only twice in 9 years will just embarass you even more when I will tell you about Messi winning the UCL only twice in those 9 years. Obviously, if you think that dominating unknown Betis and Eibar players should be rated as high as scoring dozens of goals against the likes of Buffon, Neuer and Oblak in European Championship, then you can still call Messi a better big game player than Ronaldo.

For once, you are being quite honest by admitting that Messi didn't even contribute to that UCL 2006. Usually, his fan boys boast about him winning 4 UCLs to make his UCL record look as good as Ronaldo's.

Do you think that Portugal have been as good as Brazil for all these years ? They have just started to become a world class team, thanks to the likes of Silva, Fernandes and Felix coming in and supporting Ronaldo. Before the 2018 WC, they were a crap team fully dependent on Ronaldo.
As far as play making is concerned, yes, Messi is currently a better play maker than Ronaldo. However, to say that the latter doesn't have the talent to become a great play maker just shows your lack of knowledge when it comes to football history. Ronaldo at Manchester United was one kind of a play maker, so it is just plain stupidity to claim what you said. Even today, he has more career assists than the likes of Xavi and Iniesta.

You initially boasted about Messi being better at the international level because of his WC golden ball. I showed you simple facts. He was far from being the top scorer, had a grand total of 1 assist, flopped as always in the knockouts, and won the golden ball. If Ronaldo wins a golden ball like this, Messi fans would be crying over Ronaldo using his popularity and marketing to win awards. ������

Allow me to complete your "facts" :

- Yes, Messi has scored more against Top 50 ranked teams, I would say 90% of those came in friendly games.

- Messi's career best performance with Argentina : a hattrick against Brazil in some unknown friendly match in 2012. Ronaldo's best performance with Portugal : you can choose between his hattrick against Spain at the WC, his hattrick against Switzerland at the UNL semi final, his hattrick against Zlatan's Sweden back in 2013 in a WC qualifier, or even that match winning performance against Bale's Wales in the Euro semi final.

- Get your facts right, Ronaldo has more WC goals.

That performance against Spain is a performance you will never see coming from Messi with Argentina, so keep crying about it.

It's not about who scored more or who assisted more during the WC. The likes of Muller, James had a better WC than Messi and it is a fact. Moreover, you somehow managed to look stupid again, claming that the golden boot is won by the best scorer and the golden ball is won by the best player. For some reason though, Messi won the golden boot back in 2016 and 2017, while Ronaldo won the golden ball. So according to your own logic, Ronaldo was a better player than Messi during those times as he won the golden ball. Think wisely before writing in frustration.

So Ronaldo dissapears more often than Messi now ?������ We should not even talk about the UCL here as it is not worth the effort, but if repeatedly smashing teams like Juventus, Bayern, PSG, Atletico, Milan is called "dissapearing" then I wonder what is the definition of a big game player. Yes, the one who scores and assists against Eibar and Betis, of course.

You can draw any list you want, you can't change the fact that he was the top scorer in every UCL season for 8 consecutive seasons. He was the top scorer in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 as well. He has more than twice as many UCL knockout goals than Messi. He has an insane La Liga goal ratio as well. Moreover, he scored 34 La Liga hattricks in hust 9 years, and Messi just managed to go past his record a few months ago, a year and a half after Ronaldo's move to Juventus.

I don't need to be deluded. You just have to look at Ronaldo's record during his 32nd and 33rd birthday and then compare it to Messi's. Ronaldo without goals doesn't exist at the moment. At the age of 35, he is the 3rd top scorer across Europe. Messi will not be able to sustain these kind of performances at that age. You have a typical Messi fan delusion in your mind if you actually believe that Messi is BY FAR the best play maker in the world, as if the likes of De Bruyne play cricket.

You can assume anything you want, but your sentences are always going to start with IF, so they don't matter at all. However, I don't need to use IFs and BUTs to show Messi's bottling record against different clubs, without high quality players, at the highest level.

Criticising Ronaldo for moving and proving himself in different leagues.������ You know you could criticise him for hundreds of other reasons.

 

[Waleed93]

The notion that is used by Messi fan boys that anyone who watches football knows that Messi is better than Ronaldo is nothing but a sentence where their hate towards Ronaldo is clearly visible. Whenever Ronaldo delivers a performance that has not been yet delivered by Messi, the latter's fan boys will bring up this dumb sentence.

Comparing their goal ratios in the UCL is not going to prove that Messi dominates Ronaldo in this competition. Ronaldo literally owns almost every single record a forward can own in the UCL and it's not even close. Just look at the number of goals both of them have scored in UCL knockout rounds, you will get the definition of a big game player. Yes, Messi has played less UCL games than Ronaldo. Whose fault is it ? Who told him to bottle and dissapear in back to back UCL knockouts ?

You are claiming that league titles are more important when it comes to showing who is the best team in Europe only to somehow make Barcelona look better than 2014-2018 Madrid, and you welcome to do so as this is the only way to actually make them look better, as during that period, they kept winning La Liga with Madrid coming a close 2nd every season, while Madrid kept becoming the Champions of Europe, with Barcelona not even managing to go past the quarter finals.

Losing to Celta Vigo or Espanyol is not bottling, it is called an upset. Bottling is losing under pressure at the biggest stage, and Messi and Barca are experts in that regard. You could lose to Espanyol by 1-0 despite playing well throughout the game, but losing against any team despite getting a healthy lead in the first leg of a UCL match is called bottling, and it shows the capabilities of immensely talented players, not capable of performing when it matters the most.

Yes, every player needs quality team mates to win. However, Real Madrid had not won a single UCL title since 2002 and were struggling to go past the R0 16 at a stage. Then Ronaldo happened, they started to reach the semi-finals every season, Ronaldo started to take his game to another level and they won 4 UCLs in 5 years. The same Real Madrid that had Zidane, Ronaldo Nazario, Beckham, Figo, Casillas, Carlos, etc... had not won 1 in 12 years. Messi had the GOAT team during Pep's era, they won 2 UCLs, and as soon as he started to lose legendary players, all he has been doing is bottling it, the same way he has been doing it with Argentina, who have won 14 Copa Americas and 2 WC before his debut, nothing since then.

You can keep dreaming about Barcelona defeating that 2014-18 Real Madrid side to satisfy yourself, but this stupid logic of comparing upsets against Celta Vigo and Betis to dissapearing at the biggest stage against different opponents every year is not going to take you far.

The UCL puts players and teams in two different categories, those who always take their game to a higher level at the biggest stage, and those who are meant to keep dominating the likes of Eibar and Betis, and then celebrating a semi final spot in the UCL after 4 years.

You keep boasting about their respective La Liga records while ignoring who has been much, much superior between the two in the biggest competition. Yes, Ronaldo had world class playerd at his disposal. Were they as good as Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Puyol, Etoo, Suarez, Neymar, Villa, Alves, etc.. ? Making fun of Ronaldo winning the league only twice in 9 years will just embarass you even more when I will tell you about Messi winning the UCL only twice in those 9 years. Obviously, if you think that dominating unknown Betis and Eibar players should be rated as high as scoring dozens of goals against the likes of Buffon, Neuer and Oblak in European Championship, then you can still call Messi a better big game player than Ronaldo.

For once, you are being quite honest by admitting that Messi didn't even contribute to that UCL 2006. Usually, his fan boys boast about him winning 4 UCLs to make his UCL record look as good as Ronaldo's.

Do you think that Portugal have been as good as Brazil for all these years ? They have just started to become a world class team, thanks to the likes of Silva, Fernandes and Felix coming in and supporting Ronaldo. Before the 2018 WC, they were a crap team fully dependent on Ronaldo.
As far as play making is concerned, yes, Messi is currently a better play maker than Ronaldo. However, to say that the latter doesn't have the talent to become a great play maker just shows your lack of knowledge when it comes to football history. Ronaldo at Manchester United was one kind of a play maker, so it is just plain stupidity to claim what you said. Even today, he has more career assists than the likes of Xavi and Iniesta.

You initially boasted about Messi being better at the international level because of his WC golden ball. I showed you simple facts. He was far from being the top scorer, had a grand total of 1 assist, flopped as always in the knockouts, and won the golden ball. If Ronaldo wins a golden ball like this, Messi fans would be crying over Ronaldo using his popularity and marketing to win awards. ������

Allow me to complete your "facts" :

- Yes, Messi has scored more against Top 50 ranked teams, I would say 90% of those came in friendly games.

- Messi's career best performance with Argentina : a hattrick against Brazil in some unknown friendly match in 2012. Ronaldo's best performance with Portugal : you can choose between his hattrick against Spain at the WC, his hattrick against Switzerland at the UNL semi final, his hattrick against Zlatan's Sweden back in 2013 in a WC qualifier, or even that match winning performance against Bale's Wales in the Euro semi final.

- Get your facts right, Ronaldo has more WC goals.

That performance against Spain is a performance you will never see coming from Messi with Argentina, so keep crying about it.

It's not about who scored more or who assisted more during the WC. The likes of Muller, James had a better WC than Messi and it is a fact. Moreover, you somehow managed to look stupid again, claming that the golden boot is won by the best scorer and the golden ball is won by the best player. For some reason though, Messi won the golden boot back in 2016 and 2017, while Ronaldo won the golden ball. So according to your own logic, Ronaldo was a better player than Messi during those times as he won the golden ball. Think wisely before writing in frustration.

So Ronaldo dissapears more often than Messi now ?������ We should not even talk about the UCL here as it is not worth the effort, but if repeatedly smashing teams like Juventus, Bayern, PSG, Atletico, Milan is called "dissapearing" then I wonder what is the definition of a big game player. Yes, the one who scores and assists against Eibar and Betis, of course.

You can draw any list you want, you can't change the fact that he was the top scorer in every UCL season for 8 consecutive seasons. He was the top scorer in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 as well. He has more than twice as many UCL knockout goals than Messi. He has an insane La Liga goal ratio as well. Moreover, he scored 34 La Liga hattricks in hust 9 years, and Messi just managed to go past his record a few months ago, a year and a half after Ronaldo's move to Juventus.

I don't need to be deluded. You just have to look at Ronaldo's record during his 32nd and 33rd birthday and then compare it to Messi's. Ronaldo without goals doesn't exist at the moment. At the age of 35, he is the 3rd top scorer across Europe. Messi will not be able to sustain these kind of performances at that age. You have a typical Messi fan delusion in your mind if you actually believe that Messi is BY FAR the best play maker in the world, as if the likes of De Bruyne play cricket.

You can assume anything you want, but your sentences are always going to start with IF, so they don't matter at all. However, I don't need to use IFs and BUTs to show Messi's bottling record against different clubs, without high quality players, at the highest level.

Criticising Ronaldo for moving and proving himself in different leagues.������ You know you could criticise him for hundreds of other reasons.

[MENTION=149383]Ronaldo7[/MENTION] [MENTION=130076]PetroDollars[/MENTION] [MENTION=145503]Mueez[/MENTION]

Thoughts ?

 

[Aman]

Another delusional Ronaldo fan boy

There's a reason majority of the world including top managers and players consider Messi better and why Ronaldo stays up late at night thinking about Messi.

Ronaldo is a fantastic goal scorer but the way things are going Halaand could erase him from the books and make him the Muller of this generation.

 

[Aman]

Why is it so bad that he’s trying different leagues? What a ridiculous thing to criticize Cristiano for.

Legends like Ronaldo Nazeiro Da Lima not only played in different leagues but also for rival teams(Barcelona, Real Madrid, Inter and AC Milan).

If anything, it’s great that Ronaldo is setting new goals for himself instead of staying in Madrid, there’s nothing ”selfish” about it.

Yes Messi is better than Ronaldo, however Ronaldo’s ambitious attitude and ’greed’ to be the best is admirable. If anything, Messi should do the same thing.

Ronaldos "ambition" is driven by the desire to be considered better than Messi. He's clearly obsessed with him, you can tell by his embarrassing social media posts and his own team Giggs said he moved to Juve so the whole ****** arguement of doing it in multiple leagues. Fortunately he has good PR team because he wasn't the best player in serie A last season and he certainly isn't this season. The man was outscored by some 36 year old and a third of his goals this season have been penalties.

 

[Waleed93]

Another delusional Ronaldo fan boy

There's a reason majority of the world including top managers and players consider Messi better and why Ronaldo stays up late at night thinking about Messi.

Ronaldo is a fantastic goal scorer but the way things are going Halaand could erase him from the books and make him the Muller of this generation.

You are going to run away the same way you did on the "Is Cristiano Ronaldo the GOAT ?" thread, so no need to show your frustration by comparing Haaland to Ronaldo.

"Ronaldo stays up late night thinking about Messi", yes Ronaldo himself told you this. )

 

[Mueez]

[MENTION=149383]Ronaldo7[/MENTION] [MENTION=130076]PetroDollars[/MENTION] [MENTION=145503]Mueez[/MENTION]

Thoughts ?

Spot on brother, great read!

Here are my thoughts:

(The following stats are copied from the Internet

Messi La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 34 goals, 35 games.
2010/11 - 31 goals, 33 games.
2011/12 - 50 goals, 37 games.
2012/13 - 46 goals, 32 games.
2013/14 - 28 goals, 31 games.
2014/15 - 43 goals, 38 games.
2015/16 - 26 goals, 33 games.
2016/17 - 37 goals, 34 games.
2017/18 - 34 goals, 36 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 329 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 309 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0647

Ronaldo La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 26 goals, 29 games.
2010/11 - 40 goals, 34 games.
2011/12 - 46 goals, 38 games.
2012/13- 34 goals, 34 games.
2013/14 - 31 goals, 30 games.
2014/15 -48 goals, 35 games.
2015/16 - 35 goals, 36 games.
2016/17 - 25 goals, 29 games.
2017/18 - 26 goals, 27 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 311 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 292 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0650

As we can see I’ve taken the stats of the period when Ronaldo joined the La Liga and left the La Liga.

The difference between the Goal-Games Ratio of Ronaldo and Messi is 0.0003.

Messi has had/haves the privilege to play with world-class, once in a generation kind of players, whilst on the other end Ronaldo had to carry Real Madrid all alone with Benzema.

And do not say that Isco, Modric, Bale and Benzema for example are better than Iniesta, Xavi, Neymar and Suarez.

So this might explain the gulf of quality between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona and why Barca has won more league titles.

However how many times have we seen Ronaldo step up for his team when it needed him the most?

And how many times have seen Messi disappear when his team needed him the most?

Messi lost three finals in a row with his national team and he wanted to retire from International Football. I think this says enough about how much courage Messi has...

As we are talking about making it happen when it matters, let’s have a look at how both of the players do during the knockout stages of the club football most prestigious price, the Champions League.

Ronaldo has scored 64 goals and Messi 42 goals in the knockout stages which includes Round of 16, QF, SF and Final.

Now let’s specify this more, let’s exclude the stats of Round of 16.

Ronaldo has scored 41 goals and Messi 16 goals.

This shows us who performs better when it matters the most.

Ronaldo has played 15 finals with Real Madrid and he lost only three of them.

Failure percentage: 20%

Whilst on the other hand Messi has played 23 finals with FC Barcelona when Cristiano Ronaldo used to play in Spain and he has lost 5 with them.

Failure percentage: 21.74%

And let’s not talk about winning finales with country at all

I’d like to add that at the end of the day, football isn’t all about scoring goals and winning games, you have to look at the bigger picture too.

How many youngsters do you think have taken up the sport because of having watched Ronaldo bringing joy to his fans and country?

Who do you think is more inspiring? Ronaldo or Messi?

I think I know my answer.

No offence to Messi, who is also a once in a generation type of player, but there will come a lot of players with the caliber of Messi in the future, however there will be only one Cristiano Ronaldo.

Whose number 7 will never be the same when he calls it a day and he hangs his boots up.

 

[shebimalik]

Spot on brother, great read!

Here are my thoughts:

(The following stats are copied from the Internet

Messi La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 34 goals, 35 games.
2010/11 - 31 goals, 33 games.
2011/12 - 50 goals, 37 games.
2012/13 - 46 goals, 32 games.
2013/14 - 28 goals, 31 games.
2014/15 - 43 goals, 38 games.
2015/16 - 26 goals, 33 games.
2016/17 - 37 goals, 34 games.
2017/18 - 34 goals, 36 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 329 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 309 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0647

Ronaldo La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 26 goals, 29 games.
2010/11 - 40 goals, 34 games.
2011/12 - 46 goals, 38 games.
2012/13- 34 goals, 34 games.
2013/14 - 31 goals, 30 games.
2014/15 -48 goals, 35 games.
2015/16 - 35 goals, 36 games.
2016/17 - 25 goals, 29 games.
2017/18 - 26 goals, 27 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 311 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 292 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0650

As we can see I’ve taken the stats of the period when Ronaldo joined the La Liga and left the La Liga.

The difference between the Goal-Games Ratio of Ronaldo and Messi is 0.0003.

Messi has had/haves the privilege to play with world-class, once in a generation kind of players, whilst on the other end Ronaldo had to carry Real Madrid all alone with Benzema.

And do not say that Isco, Modric, Bale and Benzema for example are better than Iniesta, Xavi, Neymar and Suarez.

So this might explain the gulf of quality between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona and why Barca has won more league titles.

However how many times have we seen Ronaldo step up for his team when it needed him the most?

And how many times have seen Messi disappear when his team needed him the most?

Messi lost three finals in a row with his national team and he wanted to retire from International Football. I think this says enough about how much courage Messi has...

As we are talking about making it happen when it matters, let’s have a look at how both of the players do during the knockout stages of the club football most prestigious price, the Champions League.

Ronaldo has scored 64 goals and Messi 42 goals in the knockout stages which includes Round of 16, QF, SF and Final.

Now let’s specify this more, let’s exclude the stats of Round of 16.

Ronaldo has scored 41 goals and Messi 16 goals.

This shows us who performs better when it matters the most.

Ronaldo has played 15 finals with Real Madrid and he lost only three of them.

Failure percentage: 20%

Whilst on the other hand Messi has played 23 finals with FC Barcelona when Cristiano Ronaldo used to play in Spain and he has lost 5 with them.

Failure percentage: 21.74%

And let’s not talk about winning finales with country at all

I’d like to add that at the end of the day, football isn’t all about scoring goals and winning games, you have to look at the bigger picture too.

How many youngsters do you think have taken up the sport because of having watched Ronaldo bringing joy to his fans and country?

Who do you think is more inspiring? Ronaldo or Messi?

I think I know my answer.

No offence to Messi, who is also a once in a generation type of player, but there will come a lot of players with the caliber of Messi in the future, however there will be only one Cristiano Ronaldo.

Whose number 7 will never be the same when he calls it a day and he hangs his boots up.

Messi has won last two la liga titles without neymar xavi and iniesta and 3 golden boots and one ballon d'or without them.Xavi and iniesta are generational players no doubt but ronaldo is not plaing with kids either kroos is world cup winner and modrid a finalist and only player to won ballon d'or in Messi Ronaldo era.Not to mention players like Ramos varane and marcelo. we all know how ronaldo is doing at juventus.

 

[Waleed93]

Spot on brother, great read!

Here are my thoughts:

(The following stats are copied from the Internet

Messi La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 34 goals, 35 games.
2010/11 - 31 goals, 33 games.
2011/12 - 50 goals, 37 games.
2012/13 - 46 goals, 32 games.
2013/14 - 28 goals, 31 games.
2014/15 - 43 goals, 38 games.
2015/16 - 26 goals, 33 games.
2016/17 - 37 goals, 34 games.
2017/18 - 34 goals, 36 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 329 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 309 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0647

Ronaldo La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 26 goals, 29 games.
2010/11 - 40 goals, 34 games.
2011/12 - 46 goals, 38 games.
2012/13- 34 goals, 34 games.
2013/14 - 31 goals, 30 games.
2014/15 -48 goals, 35 games.
2015/16 - 35 goals, 36 games.
2016/17 - 25 goals, 29 games.
2017/18 - 26 goals, 27 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 311 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 292 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0650

As we can see I’ve taken the stats of the period when Ronaldo joined the La Liga and left the La Liga.

The difference between the Goal-Games Ratio of Ronaldo and Messi is 0.0003.

Messi has had/haves the privilege to play with world-class, once in a generation kind of players, whilst on the other end Ronaldo had to carry Real Madrid all alone with Benzema.

And do not say that Isco, Modric, Bale and Benzema for example are better than Iniesta, Xavi, Neymar and Suarez.

So this might explain the gulf of quality between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona and why Barca has won more league titles.

However how many times have we seen Ronaldo step up for his team when it needed him the most?

And how many times have seen Messi disappear when his team needed him the most?

Messi lost three finals in a row with his national team and he wanted to retire from International Football. I think this says enough about how much courage Messi has...

As we are talking about making it happen when it matters, let’s have a look at how both of the players do during the knockout stages of the club football most prestigious price, the Champions League.

Ronaldo has scored 64 goals and Messi 42 goals in the knockout stages which includes Round of 16, QF, SF and Final.

Now let’s specify this more, let’s exclude the stats of Round of 16.

Ronaldo has scored 41 goals and Messi 16 goals.

This shows us who performs better when it matters the most.

Ronaldo has played 15 finals with Real Madrid and he lost only three of them.

Failure percentage: 20%

Whilst on the other hand Messi has played 23 finals with FC Barcelona when Cristiano Ronaldo used to play in Spain and he has lost 5 with them.

Failure percentage: 21.74%

And let’s not talk about winning finales with country at all

I’d like to add that at the end of the day, football isn’t all about scoring goals and winning games, you have to look at the bigger picture too.

How many youngsters do you think have taken up the sport because of having watched Ronaldo bringing joy to his fans and country?

Who do you think is more inspiring? Ronaldo or Messi?

I think I know my answer.

No offence to Messi, who is also a once in a generation type of player, but there will come a lot of players with the caliber of Messi in the future, however there will be only one Cristiano Ronaldo.

Whose number 7 will never be the same when he calls it a day and he hangs his boots up.

Well said.

All facts, provided with reliable stats.

Nothing more to add.

 

[Aman]

Well said.

All facts, provided with reliable stats.

Nothing more to add.

Here's a fact - Messi won two golden boots without Iniesta and Xavi while Ronaldo was getting outscored by half of Italy.

The man has scored a dozen non penalty goals this season.

 

[Aman]

Spot on brother, great read!

Here are my thoughts:

(The following stats are copied from the Internet

Messi La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 34 goals, 35 games.
2010/11 - 31 goals, 33 games.
2011/12 - 50 goals, 37 games.
2012/13 - 46 goals, 32 games.
2013/14 - 28 goals, 31 games.
2014/15 - 43 goals, 38 games.
2015/16 - 26 goals, 33 games.
2016/17 - 37 goals, 34 games.
2017/18 - 34 goals, 36 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 329 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 309 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0647

Ronaldo La Liga Goals Season wise Breakdown:

2009/10 - 26 goals, 29 games.
2010/11 - 40 goals, 34 games.
2011/12 - 46 goals, 38 games.
2012/13- 34 goals, 34 games.
2013/14 - 31 goals, 30 games.
2014/15 -48 goals, 35 games.
2015/16 - 35 goals, 36 games.
2016/17 - 25 goals, 29 games.
2017/18 - 26 goals, 27 games.

Total La Liga goals since 2009 = 311 goals,
Number of La Liga games played = 292 games,
Goal-Games Ratio post 2009 = 1.0650

As we can see I’ve taken the stats of the period when Ronaldo joined the La Liga and left the La Liga.

The difference between the Goal-Games Ratio of Ronaldo and Messi is 0.0003.

Messi has had/haves the privilege to play with world-class, once in a generation kind of players, whilst on the other end Ronaldo had to carry Real Madrid all alone with Benzema.

And do not say that Isco, Modric, Bale and Benzema for example are better than Iniesta, Xavi, Neymar and Suarez.

So this might explain the gulf of quality between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona and why Barca has won more league titles.

However how many times have we seen Ronaldo step up for his team when it needed him the most?

And how many times have seen Messi disappear when his team needed him the most?

Messi lost three finals in a row with his national team and he wanted to retire from International Football. I think this says enough about how much courage Messi has...

As we are talking about making it happen when it matters, let’s have a look at how both of the players do during the knockout stages of the club football most prestigious price, the Champions League.

Ronaldo has scored 64 goals and Messi 42 goals in the knockout stages which includes Round of 16, QF, SF and Final.

Now let’s specify this more, let’s exclude the stats of Round of 16.

Ronaldo has scored 41 goals and Messi 16 goals.

This shows us who performs better when it matters the most.

Ronaldo has played 15 finals with Real Madrid and he lost only three of them.

Failure percentage: 20%

Whilst on the other hand Messi has played 23 finals with FC Barcelona when Cristiano Ronaldo used to play in Spain and he has lost 5 with them.

Failure percentage: 21.74%

And let’s not talk about winning finales with country at all

I’d like to add that at the end of the day, football isn’t all about scoring goals and winning games, you have to look at the bigger picture too.

How many youngsters do you think have taken up the sport because of having watched Ronaldo bringing joy to his fans and country?

Who do you think is more inspiring? Ronaldo or Messi?

I think I know my answer.

No offence to Messi, who is also a once in a generation type of player, but there will come a lot of players with the caliber of Messi in the future, however there will be only one Cristiano Ronaldo.

Whose number 7 will never be the same when he calls it a day and he hangs his boots up.

Great where are the assists, pre assists and dribbles? I imagine that gap only gets bigger once you remove penalties from penaldorks tally.

Yeah, talk nah ��*

 

[Aman]

Ronaldo is without a doubt the most overrated player I've seen any sport.

Nothing but a PR hype job. His ******* go on about team trophies when he's individually won squat and use that as proof of him being the GOAT. What a great joke. Pele wrecks him when it comes to that so does Maradona, this is why it's always been Messi vs Pele vs Maradona and despite playing for the three biggest teams in the world, the majority of the world still considers Messi the best.