That's the worst photo of Messi I've ever seenThis is Ronaldo sitting down chilling out maxing relaxing all cool after doing something wildly impressive
This is Messi in tears because the shop ran out of his favourite ice cream flavour
Spot the difference
Cristiano Ronaldo - Much Ado About Al Nassr
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Nik (@Rood), Jamie (@Vault Dweller) and Ed (@That'sHernandez) give their end of season awards out! They celebrate the best players, goals and moments of the season (there were some, honestly) and also give out awards for the worst and most disappointing players/moments of the season.
They then discuss all the latest transfer rumours and get into the potential ins and outs this summer at Old Trafford.
It is because you are using this kind of terminology that I bolded. Assuming that somehow international matches are more important than the UCL.
And I have used the Gonzalo Ramos example because you are using those kind of exaples all the time. "
"Did you know Ronaldo has never scored with his feet in the KO stages of the Euros and the World Cup?".
"Cristiano Ronaldo was never that good in international competitions".
"International competititions are much bigger and more important than the club football".
"Cristiano Ronaldo is not really a big game player".
I am paraphrasing you a bit (not your literal quotes) but that's what you all said about Cris on this thread. I will say this. Cristiano Ronaldo is not a failure for not winning the World Cup with Portugal. Portugal went from reaching 0 finals before CR7's Portugal debut to reaching 4 international finals (2 Euro finals).
R9 played in a stacked and star studded Brazil team and he was expected to win trophies with Brazil. Messi was also expected to win trophies with Argentina. It was much bigger of a failure for R9 to not win a single UCL title with the likes of Inter, Madrid and Barcelona than for CR7 to fail to win a World Cup with Portugal.
R9 has won only 1 league title and 0 UCLs in his entire career. Messi also failed to progress past the last 16 stage of the UCL with the PSG superteam and he failed to reach a single UCL final since 2015.
CR7's biggest "failure" was probably not winning the UCL with Juventus but even that is debatable. CR7 may not have the best record in combined WC/EUROs knockout stages but he has the best KO record in the UCL history. R9 has a better KO record on international stage but he also has only 3 goals in UCL knockout stages and has only 14 UCL goals. Bear in mind, UCL has a much bigger sample size than the World Cup.
So saying that CR7 is not a big game player is insane. You won't find many players who have succeded in all competitions and that's the reality.
They are. Not random qualifiers or friendlies, but the big competitions are. Winning the World Cup is the dream of every player, in a way that the Champions League is not.
It's a poor example, as I established
some exaggerations, but basically correct.
I never actually said this.
By the standards of the greatest ever players, he is a failure in the World Cup. That is my opinion, and nothing you can say will change that opinion, You can continue thinking that he was a success in that arena if you want to
You clearly did not see R9 play, so any opinion you have on him is second hand, and based on misunderstanding the differences in eras
Ronaldo's biggest failure is his repeated flopping at the World Cup. Oh, and scoring 3 goals and registering 2 assists in 21 games in the KO rounds of the major international competitions. This does not mean that he has not been wildly successful in other areas of his career, obviously he has.
Again, I never said that.
Also, I'm not asking for success in every competition. I'm asking for success in the World Cup. Which he doesn't have in terms of winning it, in terms of scoring goals, or in terms of performances.
You can have him at Madrid.
This thread it's getting worse and worse.
PD: Just as a side note and in general, leaving any of the genius and phenom alike players recently named.
I know that KO stages goals can shine a tad better, yet lots of goals in prior stages are/were more vital and clutch than lots of KO ones on any competition, I think that there is an extra value that not few times goes way over the top in its consideration just for being in KO stages.
PD: Just as a side note and in general, leaving any of the genius and phenom alike players recently named.
I know that KO stages goals can shine a tad better, yet lots of goals in prior stages are/were more vital and clutch than lots of KO ones on any competition, I think that there is an extra value that not few times goes way over the top in its consideration just for being in KO stages.
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@Kwabs and @KingEric04 could do this for another 6 months I reckon
Fine, OK! I will stop. No more posts in the Cristiano Ronaldo thread!
If he wasn't writing such idiotic and dumb things about Cristiano, this conversation would have ended a long time ago. I'll stop it if he does. There's nothing more to add...
Serenity now!
Admit it, you both have feelings for each other. This is just tension between you both.
My goodness. This is the post of a 12 year old.
Christ you don’t do irony do you. You’re even more guilty of doing what you’re accusing him of, only for the opposite side of the argument. You’ve spent the last 10 pages obsessively arguing about how Cristiano measures up against a player you never even saw play
The new @Cal? vs... who was the Messi stan back in the day?
I'm not a Messi stan, I think you've got your wires crossed there, bud. Obviously he's Barca's greatest ever player by a wide margin, and obviously he's a better player than C. Ronaldo (which I think everyone on here acknowledges now), but that doesn't make me a stan.
Just recently I got accused of not liking him enough because I dared to suggest that aspects of Yamal's game were better at 17 than Lionel's at the same age. I've also barely watched him since he left Europe. This CWC was the first proper time.
I've always maintained that the GOAT crown belongs to Messi, Pele or Maradona, and no one else has a truly legitimate claim. But as for which of those 3 is the best, it is difficult to determine.
Having both of them on ignore makes this thread such strange read.
Would make the thread much shorter, I'm sure!
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
Fine, OK! I will stop. No more posts in the Cristiano Ronaldo thread!
You managed less than five hours ffs
It's getting bumped constantly and I wonder what happen to Ronaldo but there's just nothing there.
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
Fair enough
You managed less than five hours ffs
Couldn't help myself. @Lay will be very disappointed in me, I'm sure
Totally unfair and inaccurate. He hardly had a CL run with Inter. You have to remember that between the '98 and '02 World Cups, he only played one full season's worth of football because he had terrible injuries.
One season's worth of football in four years. He hardly played in the CL for Inter, and didn't at all for Barcelona (but he won the UEFA Cup and the Cup Winners' Cup with them when he did have full seasons of football). Not winning with Real Madrid in the Galactico era was understandable too - 2003 was their best shot, they should have won it then, and I think if Zidane had taken the penalty against Juventus that Figo missed they would have. But after that, his first year, the team wasn't the same - that's when they sold Makelele and bought Beckham, the shift to celebrity meant the team wasn't good enough despite the superstars. You wouldn't say Messi is a failure for not winning the CL with PSG would you, with their cult of celebrity?
The fact that Ronaldo came back in 2002 after such terrible injuries and was the best player around again was testament to just how good he was. But the fact was that no matter how much he still achieved post-2002, he was never as good again as he was prior to that 1998 World Cup final. And Brazil weren't favourites in 2002 btw, far from it, they barely qualified. And he wasn't expected to shine simply because he'd missed so much football. The fact he rose to the top again was thrilling for football fans at the time. A part of me hopes that's also why Old Trafford gave him a standing ovation in 2003 - not just for his hattrick, but because of his story, his comeback. I for one have never been so honoured for United lose to players as much as Zidane and Ronaldo over those two legs.
So that's why a comparison is unfair. Cristiano has had the better career and looked better for longer, but at their absolute best, Brazilian Ronaldo was a better player. I haven't seen anyone like him - the skill, pace and power were unmatched. I'm not sure all three have been combined so emphatically in a player, certainly not in the modern era.
Maybe this isn't the best comparison, but Giggs vs Best? Giggs has the career and the longevity, and is incredibly talented himself, but at his absolute best, was he ever better than George Best?
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He was right though hahahaYou managed less than five hours ffs
It's true that he had a lot of injuries but I still think he underachieved in club football despite having injuries. Even if you exclude the UCL, he had at least 10 full seasons in Europe and only won 1 League title. For a player of his calibre, that's not really good.
While did Brazil struggle to qualify for the World Cup, their previous results suggest that they were favorites to win the World Cup. They were the Copa America champions of 1997 and 99, and the WC finalists of 1998 (and 94 as well). Not to mention that their squad was star studded and one of the best squads of all time.
Peak R9 was unplayable and brilliant no doubt, but I don't think that he was better than peak Cristiano, especially numbers wise. R9 had more pace and speed, but peak Cristiano had better numbers and was a more complete player than R9.
If anything, people tend to underestimate Cristiano's peak a lot of times, especially his dribbling. To conclude, I think that R9 had a great international career with Brazil and he was brilliant in his club career but in terms of team success and trophies he underachieved there.
Fella it’s a United forum, Cristiano will be underrated especially the way he left leaving a sour taste plus with the mix of people forgetting his peak.
Remember Ronaldo was up there with Messi in his peak years but suddenly isn’t top 5 whilst Messi is, makes no sense. People are just downplaying him, he was lethal force in his prime.
He was never up there with Messi other than goal numbers.
You can't be "up there" with Messi when you have always been way inferior in terms of creativity, playmaking, dribbling etc. He was not even up there with Ronaldinho for ex. in terms of creativity.
They were absolutely not the favourites. I distinctly remember it because it was the first time I ever bet on a tournament. Argentina and France were heavy favourites but both crashed out early. Next were Italy. All three had incredibly strong squads. Brazil's has come to be known as a strong squad subsequently, but they very nearly didn't qualify, there were questions over Ronaldo's fitness, contoversy over Romario being left out, and players like Ronaldinho weren't the proven stars they would become. Even the achievements you just listed wouldn't put them above France, who were reigning World and European champions. Starting players too like Kleberson and Roque Junior wouldn't have got near the squads of some of the other top teams. They're also elevated a bit subsequently because they won the tournament relatively easily, with not much in the way of competition because so many teams underachieved.
It's hard to compare peaks because Brazilian Ronaldo's was early. Like Mike Tyson or Michael Owen, something about the story is still one of potential. Compare the two at 18, 19, 20, and they were worlds apart. Cristiano was obviously talented but Ronaldo was already the most dangerous player on the planet at those ages. Cristiano had such good coaching, such amazing discipline, he made himself into such a great footballer, whereas Ronaldo declined after the age of 22.
"Peak R9 was unplayable and brilliant no doubt, but I don't think that he was better than peak Cristiano, especially numbers wise"
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. Ronaldo never played in an all-conquering club side like Cristiano, only for 2002-03 would I say he was a part of arguably the strongest team in Europe in Real Madrid. And Cristiano was been managed by greats in his best years - Ferguson, Mourinho, Ancelotti, Zidane. Ronaldo was managed by a revolving door of managers at both Inter and Real including Roy Hodgson, Vanderlei Luxemburgo and Carlos Queiroz. Sometimes they had three managers a year, ones way worse than those I've mentioned, most of whom I can't even remember the names of.
I remember everyone thought Ronaldo was done at that time in 2002. We had a top scorer poll at school and someone picked fecking El Hadji Diouf to score more than him
That Brazil team was a shambles before Ronaldo came back into the team. They had to beat Venezuela in the last game to qualify.
That Brazil team was a shambles before Ronaldo came back into the team. They had to beat Venezuela in the last game to qualify.
Probably. It’s certainly nailed the relentless tedium of that godforsaken thread.
Mike Tyson is a great comp actually. Like R9, he's someone where you really had to be there to understand the aura that he had. Tyson's prime (like George Best's, who you previously mentioned) was cut short by extraneous factors rather than serious injury, but it's still similar in the sense that the best years were early.
I think the Giggs v Best comparison you made is also interesting. Giggs played almost double the games at the top level and obviously has 5 times as many trophies as Best. But Best still scored more goals for Manchester United than Giggs (despite playing half the games) and also was a Ballon D'Or winner, which I don't think Giggs was ever close to being.
One similar comparison might be Dalglish v Best. On paper, Dalglish has almost everything over Best. He scored over a hundred more goals , won almost 30 more trophies (including 10 league titles to Best's 2 and 3 European Cups to Best's 1), had a much longer, more prolific and more successful international career, and won the FWA player of the year in the First Division on more occasions.
The only thing slightly in Best's favour is the Ballon D'Or. Dalglish was second In the voting In 1983, behind Platini. That's it. Everything else seems to suggest Dalglish was better. And that's not much of a factor in Best's favour, because it's a subjective award (originally) given by a magazine. Owen has a Ballon D'Or and Thierry Henry doesn't, and no one in their right mind would suggest that Owen was better, even Owen himself.
However, you talk to people who were around at the time, and I'd wager that very few would say that Dalglish was a better footballer than George Best. Because watching them in action gives you the true story.
Now I'm not saying that everyone who saw R9 play thinks that he's better than CR7, far from it - I'm sure there are loads of people who saw both who think the opposite. But it is probably easier to understand why people might think R9 is better (despite the numbers) if you sctually saw him play when he was at his best.
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.
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.
They're rewriting history all the time, mainly to portray CR7 as a goal poacher who had no other abilities other than to score goals. Messi is more creative player than Ronaldo and a better playmaker but for example Ronaldo has the most assists in the UCL history. Higuain and Benzema were extremely wasteful when Ronaldo tried to set up the goals.
And keep in mind that it was Xavi and Iniesta who were the brain's of Barca's midfield and everything started from them, namely creativity and playmaking. Only after they declined and left Barca, did he become more of a playmaker.
To that extreme? yes.
Yet you are also one to blame going over the top with Cris. So at times you receive what you kind of provoque.
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.
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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Interesting points, thanks for taking the time. It's certainly tempting to look at the past and make sense of it all through what has been written and the historic record (and no doubt I've done that plenty of times), but nothing beats witnessing it all. I agree with your conclusion on Best - Dalglish. These comparisons often come down to who had a better career, or who was better on their very best day. I can't help favour the latter type of player in these debates, which is why I rate Brazilian Ronaldo above Cristiano probably.
To drag it back to another United analogy, it's hard now to convince some people that Scholes was better than Gerrard and Lampard. While Scholes has the team accolades, people will claim he was lucky to play in such strong teams, and that Lampard and Gerrard's stats, numbers and Ballon d'Or placings prove they were superior individuals. But watching them over their careers, there was one clearly better player in my opnion. He just didn't have the engine and athleticism of the other two.
People will also belittle Bobby Moore because he didn't win much, didn't play much in Europe, forgetting how different football was in his era. It's even different from when Brazilian Ronaldo was a player. Paisley's European Cups record stood for ages, now Pep and Zidane have equalled it and Ancelotti has surpassed it all around the same time. No doubt others will follow. It seems less competitive, less open in this era, meaning the top players and top managers may hoover up more trophies now than ever before. Mind you, this will be part of the reason why in just a few years people will be picking apart Cristiano and Messi's records, combing through the stats, and lifting up the new generation above them. An endless cycle.
We can only trust out eyes and intuition, and I don't think you can change other peoples minds really. And that's probably the way it should be, to be fair.
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.
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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Some great points re eras.
I was always a Scholes > Lampard and Gerrard guy as well, because I thought he had the best technical ability of the three. I think a lot of people preferred the swashbuckling styles of Lampard and (especially) Gerrard though, especially in England.