amazing CL run, he has been great even if he’s a total knob
Messi v Ronaldo | Contains double your daily salt allowance
- Thread starter Rado_N
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
- Status
This is probably the worst attempt at explaining away a massive statistical disparity that I have ever seen. Bravo sir. Bravo…….
I don't think so. Most United fans who love Ronaldo (for example me) acknowledge Messi's greatness. I like Ronaldo more but I think that Messi has easily been the best player in the history of the game, and arguably the greatest (I would put Messi as the greatest followed by Pele, but can understand having the order flipped). I have Ronaldo as the second-best ever (with a large distance with Messi), and somewhere 3-7 in the greatest (have him behind Messi and Pele, but someone can make an argument to also put him behind Maradona, Cruyff, Di Stefano, and Beckenbauer).
However, Messi fans love to shit on Ronaldo and pretend that he was in the level of Pippo Inzaghi or something. They then make these absurd arguments like he was mediocre in 4 out of 6 finals (he was mediocre actually in only one), that he was bad in 2004 final (he wasn't, he actually scored, and who the feck cares considering that he was 19), that 7 league titles is a mediocre record (the number of players who had more in top European leagues in the history of the game is probably less than 10), that he hasn't been that great in UCL KO (he has easily been the most influential player ever in KO of UCL), that he was bad in Euro 2016 when they won (he actually was Portugal's top scorer and assister, saved them in the group stage and was involved in every goal in KO except the final when he was injured), and many other pointless arguments.
On the other hand, the debate is more balanced the other way around, and at least Messi is appreciated if not considered better than Ronaldo.
You've also won 6 UCL during Perez's presidency, which is more than any other club (except Milan) in their entire history.
Nop. For a start, Modric is one of the best midfielders of his generation and is underrated. The reason you are not agreeing to comparing Modric with Iniesta is because it makes your argument in putting down Messi ridiculous. Ronaldos time at Madrid was characterised by goals galore and the likes of Modric and Kroos played a huge role especially when you consider the kind of goals Ronaldo generally scored i.e he relied on service much more than say Messi.
In addition, Messi was player of the season almost every season while Ronaldo was that only once. So when you say he the best player along side Messi, it really isn't true; he was one of the best players in la liga from 2009 to 2015. There after his game outside goalscoring had declined.
In any case both deserve to be in the Goat conversation. Messi is arguably the all time GOAT whereas Cristiano is a top 5 all time. Reason being that Messi's peak was extraterrestrial and he also has longevity on his side. Ronaldo's peak was not as high but his achievements and longevity mean he deserves to be considered in top 5.
I have no idea why people have difficulty in accepting this. Just because you don't like Ronaldo or Messi doesn't mean you play down their respective achievements to big the other up. Appreciate that we are witnessing something which will never happen again; 2 players amongst the Goats playing at the same time.
This whole post is nothing but sheer truth
Summed up perfectly and kind of ends this debate
Nobody does that either, though. It's the same there, most would say he's one of the greats and at worst some may have him a tier below the players they consider the GOATs. Which I think is fairly reasonable, even though I don't agree with it.
For me personally, I'd probably have Ronaldo as the second best/greatest footballer ever. Messi is untouchable for me simply because he's one of the GOATs in so many aspects of the game.
Not really the same logic, you are totally wrong here.. Ronaldo did played a major part in 2016 EC (top goalscorer and top assist for Portugal, over 90% of game time, he was Portugal key player in EC, won silver boot in EC, and was in team of tournament), and of course all the league titles win too.
Here's the detail summary of league titles won and his overall involvement highlighted:
League titles (won 7 league titles as major key player and best player/top scorer of the team/league)
06-07 - 17 goals in 34 games (out of 38) winning PL (count, 2nd in Ballon D'or))
07-08 - 31 goals in 34 games (out of 38) winning PL (count, 1st in Ballon D'or))
08-09 - 18 goals in 33 games (out of 38) winning PL (count, 2nd in Ballon D'or)
11-12 - 46 goals in 38 games (out of 38) winning LL (count, 2nd in Ballon D'or)
16-17 - 25 goals in 29 games (out of 38) winning LL (count, 1st in Ballon D'or)
18-19 - 21 goals in 31 games (out of 38) winning Serie A (count, 3rd in Ballon D'or)
19-20 - 31 goals in 33 games (out of 38) winning Serie A (count, best player in serie A, Ballon D'or suspend for a year due to COVID)
Champions league (won 5 CL as major key player and best player/top scorer of the team/tournament)
07-08 - 8 goals in 11 games (out of 13) winning CL (count, 1st in Ballon D'or)
13-14 - 17 goals in 11 games (out of 13) winning CL (count, 1st in Ballon D'or)
15-16 - 16 gaols in 12 games (out of 13) winning CL (count, 1st in Ballon D'or)
16-17 - 12 goals in 13 games (out of 13) winning CL (count, 1st in Ballon D'or)
17-18 - 15 goals in 13 games (out of 13) winning CL (count, 2nd in Ballon D'or)
Euro (won 1 EC as major key player and best impact player of the team, won silver boot and was in team of tournament)
16: 3 goals 3 assists in 7 games (out of 7) (count, 1st in Ballon D'or)
Hence 7 league tiles, 5 CL and 1 Euro should all be counted for Ronaldo in terms of major involvement.
And to keep this short, using the same logic, this is the titles which I don't think should be counted for Messi:
League titles
04-05: 1 goals in 7 ganes (out of 38, less than half) (should not be counted, bit part role in sub only, league was won by Ronaldinho and co, no individual honours for Messi)
05-06: 6 goals in 17 games (out of 38, less than half) (minor involvement, should not be count for comparison purpose, as he didn't even play half of the games for the season and his overall contribution has been minor, league title was won by Ronaldinho and co, no individual honours for Messi)
CL
05-06: 1 goals in 6 games (out of 13, less than half) (minor involvement, did not feature in 90% of games in knockout stage, winning CL including progression in knockout stages has almost nothing to do with him, CL was won by Ronaldinho and co, no individual honours for Messi)
Hence 8 league titles, 3 CL and 1 Copa should be counted for Messi in terms of major involvement.
Last edited:
After Ronaldo joining Juventus . Juventus has less goal , less trophy. It somehow tell you that number of goal scored by a him doesn’t mean everything .
For example , Ronaldo almost took all free kick for Juventus, but only score one. In some aspect , he has negative impact on his team.
Ronaldo did not even play more than 20 minutes in the final, was not even the best player of his team during the tournament (even Ronaldo stated that Pepe should have been picked as the player of the tournament) let alone the tournament (Griezmann was chosen as the best player in that tournament). That final is key because this was the first time Portugal had to play against a former Euro winning nation (France) in the whole tournament, and the defense won it for Portugal. Germany, Spain, Italy, England etc. were all in the other bracket, and Portugal had probably the easiest bracket ever.
As for Juve thing, I have always found it laughable that Ronaldo is going for a "new challenge" in Italy (hard to deny his PR power). It always looked to me like his goal was to automatically improve his poor league record by going to a team (in a one-team league) that has been winning Serie A for 8 years "in a row" (and to a team that played CL final in twice in the last 4 years prior to his arrival) while focusing on CL. Bonucci already has 8 titles in 9 years with Juve, are we expected to be impressed by that? Serie A has long been a lower quality one-team league.. This is no different than going to Bayern in a one-team league and winning the league year in year out. Therefore people discount league titles with Juve .. Equating La Liga or PL title with a title with Juve is absurd, that’s apples and oranges comparison, not comparable. He got 2 league titles in 9 years in Spain, it took him two years to get two in Serie A for obvious reasons…
So, Ronaldo won two league titles in La Liga (and a total of 4 trophies out of 18 when you add Copa Del Rey titles in Spain – winning La Liga player of the year only once) in 9 years, which is really poor. And combined with his United career, has 5 league titles in 15 seasons (33% win rate) in "competitive" - "non one-team" leagues, which is still poor especially when you consider the teams he played for and managers he worked with.
Finally, in my view, Ronaldo was at his peak when playing for United though he only won one CL compared to his Real years. He was a very exciting player to watch at United. Starting with Real, he transformed into a more one-dimensional, less exciting to watch but an extremely effective goal-scorer which kind of defined his career as he spent most of his years in this role achieving great CL success. In his Spain journey, he failed badly in La Liga/Copa del Rey (which was part of the '"challenge" when moving from United to Real) but showed spectacular performance in the CL (especially in elimination rounds) though he often needed to be bailed out in finals. In Juve, his performance and overall contribution declined understandably due to his age (but still a top goal scorer) and he failed in meeting this new challenge which was mostly about helping Juve fix its chronic underperformance issues in CL finals. I would personally put Ronaldo among the top 5-10 greatest ever mostly due to his amazing CL success with Real and great memories in the Premier League with United.
Shows that Memphis can do it against the Girona's when playing for Barcelona 
Next up Getafe!
Next up Getafe!
People are literally doing that on this page. Someone is ludicrously arguing that Cristiano Ronaldo is "poor" at league competition.
And, to be fair, people do it with Messi, just not so overtly.
Ronaldo moved to Juventus at 33, he was already past his prime. He's 36 now, his career is winding down. He's not a particularly great player anymore; that's fine.
You are not going to find many Real Madrid fans who'll tell you that Ronaldo was "bad at league competition" back when he was playing there. It's an insane conclusion that you can only reach if you go in search for it and flimsily justify it with the first number that comes up.
2 league titles in 9 seasons is very poor though. Especially when most Ronaldo fans make out only goals and trophies matter.
Maybe Barcelona was just better than them domestically at least. Well they were since they dominated. Finishing behind Athletico more than once is more where the problem is
True but the problem with this is that Ronaldo fans are hypocrites regarding this type of stuff. If Barcelona win trophies it is because they had an amazing team and Messi is lucky that he played with Xavi, Iniesta and co. If Real Madrid win trophies it is because Ronaldo is a clutch player and all the success is due to him.
Yeah, sure, and then they proceed to say that he is one of the five or ten best players ever. How is that saying he is Inzaghi's, or some other random players, equal or something?
As far as saying Ronaldo is poor in league competitions, that is indeed ludicrous, but then you have those who will say that Messi has been poor in the Champions League, despite clearly being the second best player in the tournaments history. But then I would assume that they would proceed to say that Messi is a top five player of all time as well. This is just the way people argue to big up their guy over the other.
Well, I do consider it a failure of both Ronaldo and Real Madrid to only win 2 league titles with them over 9 years. However Ronaldo is the 2nd highest La Liga topscorer of all time with 311 goals on a 1.07 goals to games ratio. It's hard to argue he didn't do his part. Messi and Barcelona were just better.
Maybe not here but on Twitter, you have threads where people are equating him to this and creating threads where they’re claiming guys before WW2 (that they’ve never seen a single minute of) are better than him.
Yeah, on twitter I'm sure you can find people like that. But then again, on twitter you can probably find just about anything, so it doesn't really matter much. On here it's pretty obvious that both sides rate the other player very highly and it's just a matter of how people argue that makes it sound as if they don't rate the other player.
Come off it, he was as good in la liga as he was in the CL. Real Madrid’s shortcomings in the league were a myriad of factors out of any single player’s control. Why do people never use R9’s lack of a CL trophy against him? Why does Zidane also only have 1 la liga in 5 years despite not having to compete against a strong Barca? These things can rarely ever be within the control of a single player. It’s nonsensical to deem a player a failure because of certain shortcomings of his team in a TEAM SPORT.
And yet I'm sure you belong to the brigade that states that Argentinas failure to win the trophy before this year's copa America was Messi's failure conveniently ignoring it is a team sport. Ditto when it comes to Barcelona's shortcomings in the UCL. The hypocrisy.
That's exactly what Ronaldo fans do when it comes to Messi. If you go back and see one of my first my posts, that's what I said which is
"Exactly, the level of double standards is unreal. While every single Barca & Argentina failure is Messi’s fault, Juve’s failures are due to poor Juve management, managers, teammates etc."
Someone rightly called the hypocrisy of Ronaldo fans above when it comes to player evaluations, they still call the elimination of Barca against Liverpool as Messi's fault in CL, though he probably showed one of the most spectacular individual performances throughout that CL run. They say it is Messi's fault that Argentina lost the WC, and they become completely silent when it comes to Ronaldo's failures and get extremely defensive when someone like me shows his failures in winning things (like La Liga, Copa Del Rey etc.).
Of course, football is a team sport, it is not tennis. I am glad that some Ronaldo fans finally began to realize that football is a team sports (and not only when it comes to Ronaldo's failures).,,
Last edited:
After Barca has given out the biggest contract in football for Messi (555m for 4 years), Barca has been winning less trophies too. Using your logic, he has negative impact on his team with his new mega contact signed.
Messi has been largely invisible in Copa final and missed an one on one sitter, Argentina winning has nothing to do with Messi in the final match, should this not counted for Messi too? Of course not, he has been best player throughout tournament, and he does in fact has major involvement and plays a big part for his team winning the trophy, which is the main point of comparison here.
As for Ronaldo, even you think he may not be the best player, fact remain he is still the most impactful player for Portugal in Euro (most goals, most assist), he was voted team of tournament and won silver boot too, it’s a fact which can’t be ignored. Hence there’s no way the trophy shouldn’t be counted here.
And even you think Serie A is not competitive, Italy still won the Euro with mostly Serie A players coming from different teams, and top scorer in Euro is still from Serie A. And even with Juventus prior dominance in the league, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee them trophies forever. Same way Barca prior dominance in league doesn’t guarantee them trophy in recent years with Messi as their main player, PSG prior dominance in the league doesn’t guarantee them titles last season with Mbappe and Neymar as their main player. Our dominance in PL over 90s & 2000s doesn’t guarantee us trophies in recent years, even with additional 1 billion invested on new players etc. Your logic in this regards is just totally flaw.
At the end of the day, regardless of how you rate both players, and objectively speaking, it’s 7 league vs 8 league titles, 5 CL vs 3 CL, 1 Euro vs 1 Copa, in terms of major involvement in winning major trophies.
Last edited:
You can continue doing mental gymnastics as much as you want, and count in and out whichever title you want to make Ronaldo shine.
If you want to talk about "titles", the fact remains that he has been fully dominated in La Liga/Copa Del Rey failing in this domestic part of that "challenge" ( 2 La Ligas & 2 Copa Del Rey in 9 years, winning player of the tournament in La Liga only once), failed in his "challenge" in Juve in CL (that's the reason he was brought to Juventus, and miserably failed with Juve in CL), got two titles in a "one-team" league (the fact that you are the only one in the whole forum doing mental gymnastics to equate a Serie A title with La Liga or PL says it all). Hope that nonsense "but he takes on new challenges unlike Messi who never leaves his comfort zone" argument ends here as well.
Also, it is not only me who does not see him as the best player in EC. He was officially not chosen as the best player and he himself said that Pepe should get the award as the best player of Portugal (defenders also can impact games you know, like Cannavaro in 2006), it is you bringing your own subjective evaluations here not me.. I do not remember anyone saying "what an amazing tournament Ronaldo has and he should be chosen as the player of the tournament". He scored 5 goals in this Euros with 3 penalties, and I do not remember anyone saying "Wow, what an amazing tournament Ronaldo had" either, and not surprisingly he was not even included in the official team of the tournament this year.
As for individual awards, Messi also played a WC final and three other Copa finals, he has been chosen the player of the tournament three times including the WC vs Ronaldo's "0". And, it seems he is on his way for his 7th Ballon D'or at the age of 34.
Last edited:
Does Michael Owen have a PL trophy or not?
Would it not be easier for you guys to say that Messi has 10 La liga titles while Ronaldo has 3 PL titles, 2 La liga and 2 Seria Titles.
Would it not be easier for you guys to say that Messi has 10 La liga titles while Ronaldo has 3 PL titles, 2 La liga and 2 Seria Titles.
Last edited:
I generally agree with your point, but Zidane actually has 2 league titles in 4 full seasons. He also outperformed Barcelona in terms of points during his first half-season in charge, back when they had Neymar and Suarez at their peak. He has a great league record.
The double standards have been created by Messi's fans, who often insist that he's not only better, but practically on another plane of existence compared to anyone else who's ever touched a football.
I think he was talking about Zidane the player.
In that case it would also be mistaken since Zidane competed against Ronaldinho's CL winning Barcelona, a very strong side.
Zidane retired at RM though, he was past it.
Zidane retired at RM though, he was past it.
Ronaldinho only won 2 La liga titles with Barcelona though in 2004-5/2005-2006. Which means that both of them lost 2 La Liga's to Valencia! Losers!
I was more referring to Zidane the player, and while I agree that he competed against a decent Barca side (not as strong as late 2000s-early 2010s Barca) in his last couple of seasons there, that team still underperformed in the league and that was through no fault of Zidane on his own.
Yeah? Quote me where in this thread I’ve used lack of silverware as an argument against Messi. Ironically, most of my posts were in counter of the double standards used by Messi fans like yourselves.
I have no idea why Cristiano Ronaldo fanboys are so salty. Whatever he has achieved is beyond the vast majority of footballers in history despite not being as talented as quite a number of them.
Being second to Messi, perhaps the most talented of them all, is not an insult. It is credit to him that such an argument even exists. @MrEleson @Iker Quesadillas
Being second to Messi, perhaps the most talented of them all, is not an insult. It is credit to him that such an argument even exists. @MrEleson @Iker Quesadillas
Last edited:
First of all, I didn’t start this, some idiot here think Ronaldo only won 5 league titles after counting out so called “inflation”, so I am simply correcting the flaw and stating the truth.
Secondly, Messi failed his challenge in CL over past 6 years, yet your focus is on Ronaldo missing CL in past 3 years. Really sad case of extreme double standard here.
Third Ronaldo is in fact most impactful player for Portugal in winning Euro 16 with most goals and most assist. You just keep dodging that and going back in your own circle based on opinions from others of who is the best player. All I am saying is, this still counts as major involvement in winning major trophies as he is the most impactful player for his team, regardless of being best player of not under subjective opinions of anyone, why keep running in circle to dodge it?
Fourth regarding Euro 20, no one from any team progressed only up to last 16 got into team of tournament, it’s just the way it is under criteria set by selected panel. From whoscored he does in fact have by far the highest rating out of all players in Euro, and he did win Golden boot (historically the biggest individual award in Euro). But anyway I don’t know why you suddenly brought this up as this is totally off topic, as we are only discussing major involvement in winning major trophies over their career. In this regards Ronaldo easily wins.
Last edited:
Its absolutely amazing isn't it how so many people appreciate a player like Varane for winning everything he can at Real madrid by the age of 27 and then has started to crave a new challenge else where.
Great stuff.
Great stuff.
Yeah because he'll be playing for us. You're a broken record.
No one wouldn't appreciate atleast seeing Messi playing for City in the PL?
Bit of a broken record too.
- Status