Cristiano Ronaldo - Countdown to 1k | 959 currently

KingEric04 said:
I am aware that Brazil was struggling in the qualifiers but that doesn't mean that they weren't favorites to win. They probably ran out of energy or hunger similar to France in 2002 World Cup. It all clicked once they started playing the World Cup.

They weren't consistently sheite like modern Brazil has been for 10 years and then you could make this kind of argument. Again, they had the likes of Cafu, Roberto Carlos, Dida, Lucio, Gilberto Silva, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho in their squad. The whole point was that R9 always played in stacked Brazilian teams, while CR7 never did in international competitions.

"But the game changes so much, with superclubs being more dominant, players getting fitter and rules changing favouring attacking players, number aren't always the best metric."

That's somewhat true but there are some genuine questions about R9's peak. While he was the best player in the world, he wasn't
a top scorer in Uefa Cup or Cup Winners Cup nor was he in Serie A. It's still a valid question to ask why he didn't win more domestic league titles while playing for top clubs in Europe.

Remember a lot of people will say that CR7 can't be among the GOATs because he didn't win the World Cup and I always point out that Portugal was never a football powerhouse. And they'll say it's all "excuses".

I would say that it was much more of an excuse for someone like R9 to not win more bigger titles with his top clubs than with Cristiano to not win the World Cup with Portugal.
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The dude literally told you. They weren't favourite.
France and Argentina were 4/1ish, Italy were next and Brazil 4th favourites albeit much closer in odds to France than 5th faves England.
The expected final was France v Argentina who were like 20 games unbeaten. Brazil were seen as a dark horse who were past their best.
 
Steffa Barnesa said:
Why would Brazil be favourites ahead of the reigning world and European champions France? You mention some good players, but Gilberto Silva, Luucio and Ronaldinho weren't househould names yet. I don't think it had much to do with hunger, they were a shambles and their star striker (Ronaldo himself) was half-expected to fall apart injured again. But I won't mention more on this because this isn't even an opinion, it's historic fact that they weren't favourites.

'It's still a valid question to ask why he didn't win more domestic league titles while playing for top clubs in Europe.'

It is valid, but why haven't you considered the managers he had? None were long-serving and few were very top managers. Why would he win a league title under Hodgson, Queiroz, Juan Caro? Not to mention some of the other average managers he had.

Why are you still asking why he wasn't top scorer in Serie A when he was only able to play one full season when he was there? He played 17 Serie A games in his final three years at Inter! 17! And you call these his best years?? He had one of his best years in his first year at Inter, where he was second in the goalscoring charts in both Serie A and the UEFA Cup, where he destroyed a Lazio featuring Nesta in the final. Bear in mind that Serie A in the 90s is one of the absolute strongest football leagues there's ever been, I don't think any of this is a mark against him to be honest. He had one peak year at Inter then the decline started, before a rebirth of sorts five years later when he was still amazing, but not the same. And wasn't it a bit of a surprise that he went to Inter, anyway? They weren't top dogs at the time, having only won Serie A about once in the previous 15-20 years, and up against several of the best teams in Europe at the time in Serie A.
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When I say "favorites" it doesn't mean you have to be a no.1 favorite to win but rather top 3 or top 5 teams who are most likely to win something and Brazil was definitely there.

And I am talking about his R9's Ballon D'or years aka his peak. You may say in Serie A he you had a lot of great strikers but I am looking at the names of the strikers in Uefa Cup 1997-98 and I am seeing only one top striker and that's Christian Vieri. He got outscored by a French guy whose name I can't even pronounce and the guys who scored the same amount of goals as R9, I've never even heard of their names. In the Cup Winners Cup 96-97 he got outscored by Robbie Fowler and he was definitely a top striker. Still, I believe that he should've been the top scorer given that they were Uefa's lower tier competitions. And in 1998/99 he only scored 1 goal in 6 matches in the UCL.

"It is valid, but why haven't you considered the managers he had? None were long-serving and few were very top managers". Well, Bobby Robson in Barcelona certainly wasn't a bad manager. And he had the likes of Marcello Lippi in Inter. Let's not forget that Madrid in 2003-04 was on the route of winning the treble and they somehow managed to lose so many games in the last couple of months. And about PSV I have no idea why he didn't manage to win the League title but still, they are the Dutch giants and he didn't manage to win there as well.
Fobal said:
Brazil always is a candidate, even today in struggling times, this doesn't mean to be the ultimate candidate. Prior to that 2002, years were passing, results weren't coming and they needed a win. The pressure was high even if the team wasn't playing as such because of the weight of that tshirt, yet they clearly weren't the main candidate and everyone in Brazil wanted to kill them.

As a side note, Portugal it's not a country with an ocasional Gen neither, to play the Cinderella card time and again. They have had excellent players since almost day one, they should have done better multiple times, yet ONLY ONE wins.
This happened to even countries with even more Gens historically like France, Holland, Argentina etc or even Brazil pre 50's...

R9 in 2002 did what he had to do, he was even quite wastefull for his standard because of his fitness at that precise moment, yet he delivered.
The final it's the best example, he was having plays uncharacteristic from him: bad controls, bad finsihing, yet he never surrender, went for that rebound and the rest is history.
Rivaldo overall was their best player and Felipao did what he had to do, create a very solid, pragmatic, with lots of malice team that didn't had their best players in their best moment and took advantage of their know how and used that lack of main candidate tag to fuel his players and at the same time play with a bit less of pression (at least in the style or way to achive the Cup, teh extreme example of this is Dunga in Copa 2007) that Brazil would always had.

In general, it's tiring to read time and again reducing everything to stats. In my view looks like that it's the only path to even try to consider CR a better dribbler than R9, or a better player than Messi, etc.
Also that stuff of Messi needing a WC to be ahead of him? it's silly, Messi could still be considererd better than Cristiano without a WC, even if millions of people would not agree with this or not, yet always since the Spanish media started to create that Duel, that reductionism of CLs, stats, WCs, (or silly stuff read here like one Euro its worth 3 Copas) it's sthg. that serves quite a lot more the type of player Cris was/and is. Even if lots of people like and agree such approach, it's far from being the only one and as taxative as the ones that like such approach would like it to be.
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Look, I'm not the biggest stat merchant myself but it really depends on the position. For strikers and wingers G/a is very important and other stats like the dribbling stats. For midfielders, fullbacks and goalkeepers the stats aren't as important as for the wingers and strikers. Zidane or Iniesta won't have the best G/A and younger people will scream "overrated" but that's just ridiculous.

I remember seeing some stats about Ederson being better than Alisson and there was a debate between Ederson and Alisson and I thought it was ridiculous. Alisson is obviously better than Ederson and Ederson has to be one of the most overrated goalkeepers of modern era imo. But if we are comparing R9 vs CR7 these stats make more sense because they were players of similar calibre and they often had similar strengths and characteristics when playing. Mainly, they were both elite dribbles, had a lot of pace, were prolific goal scorers, played in big clubs etc.

So yea, obviously you can't just randomly throw stats without context but comparing peak R9 vs CR7, these stats are definitely very useful in my opinion.
 
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I recall that there was a guy trying to do the same thing to Maradona's resume a while back, in the top 10 greatest players thread, saying stuff like 'Why didn't he win the European Cup? Why did Napoli get knocked out in the first round that one time? Not good enough.' If you weren't there, you don't know. Just looking up records and statistics through the lens of the current day doesn't work.

It would be exactly the same as me saying 'why did Pele waste his club career in South America? He didn't play at the highest level, so he can't be the best'
 
adexkola said:
My post was just to draw parallels between the "debate" (it's not a debate for me at this point anymore) on the last few pages, and the classic Messi v Ronaldo debates on here a few years back. In terms of ferocity that is. It was so relentless that a separate thread was created precisely for that debate.

And I remember @Cal? was the guy in the C Ronaldo corner. I just can't remember the guy in the Messi corner... And stan does not apply to you, but it DEFINITELY applied to him :lol:
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@Cal was one big stubborn Cristiano fan. King eric is the reincarnation until he grows out of
Brazilian_Ronaldo_9 said:
I’m not a Ronaldo fanboy but let’s not rewrite history. Ronaldo was a powerhouse in the forward position, striker and winger. He had the attributes to play in them positions which was why he was effective in different leagues.

I agree Messi had cleaner tight control style dribbling and was a brilliant playmaker with his creativity. Ronaldo was there, less talented than Messi but still effective and winning games by himself.

Football isn’t a simple game when comparing players as we all come in different sizes, blessed with different attributes in a team game. If you want to say Messi is your GOAT or overall better than Ronaldo, I won’t disagree with that.
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Nah. Messi is the better footballer, no question. The only aspect of the game they are comparable is goalscoring. At everything else Messi always has been streets ahead.
 
KingEric04 said:
And Messi doesn't have the heading abilities of Ronaldo, the shooting abilities of Ronaldo or the weak foot of Ronaldo. He doesn't have the athleticism or pace of Ronaldo. He's an inferior penatly taker etc. It's only if you pick and choose strengths of Messi and weakness of Ronaldo that you could create this kind of image.
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imagine equating major categories like playmaking, dribbling with sub (micro) categories like heading, weak foot.. There're tons of sub-categories Messi or any other top playmaker, dribbler dominates Ronaldo, and it's not even close.. Even in goalscoring that's Ronaldo's strongest area, Messi is a better goalscorer.

Maradona, Messi, Cruyff, Zidane, Platini etc. are all in the GOAT list primarily due to their playmaking + dribbling abilities. There are three major categories as far as attackers are concerned: playmaking + dribbling + goalscoring.

Now list the players who made it to the GOAT list primarily due to their "weak foot" or "heading" abilities or the "athleticism", waiting for your list.
 
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mertens said:
Now list the players who made it to the GOAT list primarily due to their "weak foot" or "heading" abilities or the "athleticism", waiting for your list.
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Pelé untill CR7 became the new GOAT.
 
Gehrman said:
Pelé untill CR7 became the new GOAT.
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Terrible post. Pele was great in the air and great with his weak foot (as well as being a superb athlete), but that is not the primary reason he is in the GOAT discussion. Please be serious.
 
Damnit @Kwabs. I had a whole joke about you not visiting enough other threads to know if that were true before your edit
 
Kwabs said:
Terrible post. Pele was great in the air and great with his weak foot (as well as being a superb athlete), but that is not the primary reason he is in the GOAT discussion. Please be serious.
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You must have been aware I was wumming.
 


Come on Ronaldo. Please sign Rashford, Shaw, Casemiro, Hojlund and Garnacho. We will throw in Onana for free.
 
Surely he will just sign the biggest divers, guaranteed penalties.
 
mertens said:
imagine equating major categories like playmaking, dribbling with sub (micro) categories like heading, weak foot.. There're tons of sub-categories Messi or any other top playmaker, dribbler dominates Ronaldo, and it's not even close.. Even in goalscoring that's Ronaldo's strongest area, Messi is a better goalscorer.

Maradona, Messi, Cruyff, Zidane, Platini etc. are all in the GOAT list primarily due to their playmaking + dribbling abilities. There are three major categories as far as attackers are concerned: playmaking + dribbling + goalscoring.

Now list the players who made it to the GOAT list primarily due to their "weak foot" or "heading" abilities or the "athleticism", waiting for your list.
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Imagine calling the heading abilities a micro category. The GOAT category isn't just about dribbling and playmaking (?!). It's mostly about performances, records, individual and team success (trophies), longetivity and consistency, individual abilities, stats, legacy, impact on the game etc.

And Cristiano is way above the likes of Zidane and Platini in the GOAT category. The only people who can be argued to be above him are Pele, Messi and Maradona. Everything else is revisionism and bias.
 
KingEric04 said:
When I say "favorites" it doesn't mean you have to be a no.1 favorite to win but rather top 3 or top 5 teams who are most likely to win something and Brazil was definitely there.

And I am talking about his R9's Ballon D'or years aka his peak. You may say in Serie A he you had a lot of great strikers but I am looking at the names of the strikers in Uefa Cup 1997-98 and I am seeing only one top striker and that's Christian Vieri. He got outscored by a French guy whose name I can't even pronounce and the guys who scored the same amount of goals as R9, I've never even heard of their names. In the Cup Winners Cup 96-97 he got outscored by Robbie Fowler and he was definitely a top striker. Still, I believe that he should've been the top scorer given that they were Uefa's lower tier competitions. And in 1998/99 he only scored 1 goal in 6 matches in the UCL.

"It is valid, but why haven't you considered the managers he had? None were long-serving and few were very top managers". Well, Bobby Robson in Barcelona certainly wasn't a bad manager. And he had the likes of Marcello Lippi in Inter. Let's not forget that Madrid in 2003-04 was on the route of winning the treble and they somehow managed to lose so many games in the last couple of months. And about PSV I have no idea why he didn't manage to win the League title but still, they are the Dutch giants and he didn't manage to win there as well.

So yea, obviously you can't just randomly throw stats without context but comparing peak R9 vs CR7, these stats are definitely very useful in my opinion.
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Bobby Robson was certainly not a bad manager but he won league titles in the Netherlands and Portugal, never in England or Spain. His record is good but he was what you would now maybe call an elite manager, and his record is hardly comparable with Mourinho Ferguson Pep and Ancelotti. Ronaldo had Lippi for one mediocre year, before Lippi was sacked as Inter got knocked out of the Champions League playoffs by Swedes Helsingborgs (Ronaldo didn't play here btw). So he had Lippi for one year, and del Bosque for one year (the 2003 year when Real should have won the lot). That's two seasons of being under very top managers, compared to about 15 for Cristiano.

Being at the right club helps. Ronaldo leaving Barca for Inter was a surprise at the time because Inter were way off the pace in Serie A terms.

'And about PSV I have no idea why he didn't manage to win the League title but still, they are the Dutch giants and he didn't manage to win there as well.'

Might have something to do with them not being the best team in the Netherlands - in his two years at PSV, Ajax both won the Champions League and were runners up in the final too ;)

'He got outscored by a French guy whose name I can't even pronounce'

That'll be World Cup winner Stephane Guivarc'h. He did in 1998 for France what Giroud did in 2018.

'And in 1998/99 he only scored 1 goal in 6 matches in the UCL.'

Yep, he was never the same after the first year at Inter and after the 1998 World Cup final as I have said before. He had peaked and this season is when the injuries started. That explosiveness had gone a bit and the goals harder to come by, unfortuatnely. That's why it's all well and good to look at the numbers and say he only scored this many then, but it's not that simple, this was the start of the decline.

Going back to your first point, you could definitely argue Portugal too have been in the top 3 or 5 favourites to win tournaments, especially the Euros in Cristiano's time. Certainly near the start of his career they had a lot of top players, and in the last few tournaments they've had very strong squads, although you wouldn't have thought so given how poor a team they've looked 98% of the time in recent years.

Been an interesting debate though, I'm out now. But there's been some good posts, I look forward to checking back in on this thread...
 
That was a titanic battle for his signature. Great to get it done.
 
Red Star One said:
I think his legacy would be much greater if he left earlier.
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In the large squeme of things (beyond United) his legacy it's not affected. And with every new year United will be more proud of having him among the best ever players that used the t-shirt, than the shenanigans of his last days
 
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He's signed until 2027! Barring serious injuries he should comfortably reach 1000.
 
SirAF said:


He's signed until 2027! Barring serious injuries he should comfortably reach 1000.
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I know he’s a bit of a freak of nature but there’s no way he lives to a thousand.
 
660m people who follow him on instagram is mind boggling. I know some of those will be bots but thats still mad. Then again, I don't really understand the allure of following people on social media simply because they are rich and famous.
 
mctrials23 said:
660m people who follow him on instagram is mind boggling. I know some of those will be bots but thats still mad. Then again, I don't really understand the allure of following people on social media simply because they are rich and famous.
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In case they accidentally post a picture of their nut sack.
 
rimaldo said:
I know he’s a bit of a freak of nature but there’s no way he lives to a thousand.
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He needs 62 more goals in 2 seasons. He scored 35 goals this season for Al Nassr plus 8 for Portugal. I think that's it's more than possible.
 
SirAF said:


He's signed until 2027! Barring serious injuries he should comfortably reach 1000.
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I love it how he's put that post on his Instagram saying that this chapter is over i.e. he was clearly expecting to leave the club.

But now he's had to backpedal with this post by saying that a new chapter begins - in the same place :lol:
 
DarkLord1984 said:
I love it how he's put that post on his Instagram saying that this chapter is over i.e. he was clearly expecting to leave the club.

But now he's had to backpedal with this post by saying that a new chapter begins - in the same place :lol:
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Nobody wanted him again :lol:
 
DarkLord1984 said:
I love it how he's put that post on his Instagram saying that this chapter is over i.e. he was clearly expecting to leave the club.

But now he's had to backpedal with this post by saying that a new chapter begins - in the same place :lol:
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Probably adding a few more millions to his wage and more deciding power with that post. Not bad for a few minutes work.
 
KingEric04 said:
He needs 62 more goals in 2 seasons. He scored 35 goals this season for Al Nassr plus 8 for Portugal. I think that's it's more than possible.
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You defending Cristiano is such a reflex for you that you didn't realise @rimaldo was making a joke about Cristiano living to 1000 years old.
 
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