LogFAQs > #929883425

A few points on the Ronaldo / Messi thing:

i) They're probably the two best soccer players of all time, I absolutely agree with Ex that they both deserve to be on that list.

ii) The idea that either Ronaldo or Messi dominated the other this decade is pretty ludicrous. There are two ways you can look at this - individual achievements, or team achievements. Let's break both down.

Individually, both won 4 Ballon D'Ors this decade. Based on quick wiki maths, Messi has 523 goals in 526 appearances, Ronaldo has 478 in 483. I'm sure there are more stats you could find to weight the argument one way or another, but for me this is almost a total wash.

Team-wise, Ronaldo wins 4-2 on Champions Leagues, Messi wins 7-3 on league titles and 5-2 on domestic cups. You can weight this in favour of European competition if you want, but I call this a wash too.

iii) On Real's Champions Leagues: I know nothing about american sports, but if Seph believes that it is possible to "fluke" a Superbowl win, then Real Madrid "fluked" at least two of those Champions Leagues. They're statistically obviously the best club team of the decade in european competition. But even when they were winning those trophies, did anyone actually think they were the best team in the world? Especially the last two years, they just seemed like an average side who were preternaturally good at (and obsessed with) winning that specific competition. They only won two Spanish leagues in the whole decade, for comparison!

In any case, the Zidane-era Real really don't strike me as a team that anyone will talk much about in decades to come - if you look at the decade as a whole, Guardiola's Barcelona (featuring Messi of course) is easily the defining team in terms of impact on the sport. So I'm not so sure that's an inarguable point in Ronaldo's favour either.

iv) So yeah, I don't really agree with Ex at all there. You can definitely make the case that Ronaldo is a superior athlete, that he's more "clutch", that his moments of brilliance have defined the sporting decade more than Messi's have. But I'd argue that Messi's actually been dragging both Barcelona and Argentina along behind him for years now, with - counterintuitively - comparatively little attention. In the end, choosing one over the other is pretty much entirely subjective, and to act otherwise is pretty silly.

Enjoying the topic so far, despite the fact I can't add much to the US sports discussion at all. Looking forward to music/TV drama chat later!

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