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In Goal’s new series on the future of football, we reflect on whether someone will be able to fill the gap left by two greats of all time.
Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo? It is the question that has defined a decade of football; The cause of countless arguments around the world.
In the age of social media, you can’t appreciate both. You have to choose one or the other. And who you choose apparently tells you a lot about how you see the game. As Luis Figo argued, it is a matter of taste: “It is like choosing between white truffle or caviar”.
In fact, the only thing everyone agrees on is that they are both amazing; both belong to the conversation about the best player of all time. After all, they are responsible for a rivalry unprecedented in the history of the game: two all-time greats on opposite sides of the Classic divide for nine years, pushing each other to escalate further.
As Messi himself said DAZN: “It was a duel that will last forever because it lasted for many years, and it is not easy to stay at its highest level for so long, especially in those two clubs we were in, which were so demanding, in Real Madrid and Barcelona, The best clubs in the world.
“Competing face to face for so many years will be remembered forever. The sporting rivalry between us was very pleasant on a personal level. I think the fans also enjoyed it, whether they are followers of Madrid or Barça, or simply those who like the soccer”. “
It’s not over yet, of course. Ronaldo and Messi may be 35 and 32, respectively, but have yet to show any real signs of giving in. The Portuguese may have changed teams, leaving Real for Juventus in 2018, but the rivalry with Messi endures; the debate continues, at least among his most ardent supporters.
When Ronaldo transferred to Turin, his followers followed him. The number of Juventus social networks skyrocketed, highlighting this new phenomenon by some supporters who prioritize players over clubs. These very modern soccer consumers have a favorite player, not a favorite team, which raises a much more pressing question than Messi or Ronaldo: what happens after the pair retires?
Will football lose followers? The two great protagonists of the most absorbing drama of the last decade will have left the stage: will part of the audience leave before the next act? After all, how could anything possibly overcome what has happened before?
Ronaldo and Messi have distorted our perceptions of what is possible on a soccer field, making the extraordinary ordinary. They have altered our idea of what constitutes an excellent season for scoring goals. Anything less than 50 goals per season could, in the future, be interpreted as disappointing.
“I don’t want to be pessimistic,” said former Barcelona and Real Madrid striker Javier Saviola Objective, “But it will be difficult for anyone to reach the level of Ronaldo and Messi after they are gone. I think Leo, in particular, has done something ‘inhuman’. It is very difficult to win the titles he won, to score the goals he scored and played as he plays.
“But Leo and Cristiano, we will talk about them as the best for many years because of what they did for a decade, winning 11 Ballons d’Or.”
And that’s the key here: consistency.
“They have done it for so long,” said Spanish soccer writer Andy West Objective. “They barely took a week off. They both had the physical fitness to play 40 or 50 games a year. Neither of them really had serious injury problems, which is surprising in itself. If you go back over the history of the game, there’s a lot , very few players who can maintain that excellence for so long.
“Even if you look at players in my life like Brazilian Ronaldo, he was the best player in the world at his best, but he had so many injury problems that meant he was only at his best for a short period of time. Hour.
“Before Messi in Barcelona, there was Ronaldinho, another worldly talent. He could do things with football that no one else could imagine. But he had a short peak because he lost focus. He enjoyed the good life. He had maybe four or five years at its best before rapidly declining.
“So, it’s hard to stay on top. However, Ronaldo and Messi have been delivering for a decade or more, without a break. And the fact that they also did it simultaneously for so long, while playing in the best soccer league, For the two biggest teams in the world, that’s what makes their era so unprecedented.
“They haven’t realized that no one else has taken a look. There have been a lot of great players in the last decade who would have previously claimed to be the best player in the world, but they haven’t even come close.” “I don’t think anyone disputes that. No one has been close to the level of Messi and Ronaldo.”
Not even someone like Eden Hazard. The Belgian international was one of the best players in the world for years, lighting up the Premier League with his wing magic at Chelsea. However, even Hazard has admitted that he is simply unable to match the numbers of Ronaldo and Messi, as the 29-year-old’s form and fitness problems in his first year at Real Madrid so painfully underlined.
“I often wonder what I can do to become Messi and Ronaldo and get 50 or 60 goals in one season,” he confessed. Sport / Foot. I try, of course, but I realize that I will never be a true scorer like them. It’s not in me. It’s mainly mental: at 2-0, not thinking that that’s enough, for example. Sometimes I keep thinking after a goal: “That’s enough.”
“I am not looking for records like other players. If I can score 15-20 goals every season, I will be very happy.”
One could never imagine Messi or Ronaldo happy with such an account.
Of course, for the sake of the narrative, they are portrayed as opposite poles: Messi is the calm and modest genius who puts the team first; Ronaldo, the self-made goal scoring machine that prides itself on both its looks and records. Both are crude cartoons, which do poor service. Messi can be as ruthless as Ronaldo; Ronaldo can be as magnanimous as Messi.
Furthermore, they are linked not only by brilliance, but also by determination, an internal drive that has seen them both take full advantage of their considerable abilities.
“Messi is as dedicated as Ronaldo but in a different way,” argued West, who wrote the book. ‘Lionel Messi and The art of living’. “We can certainly say that Ronaldo has done everything in his power to be the best player in the world. He has always been open about it: he wants other people to look at him and say he is the best of all. He has always had that approach , then it has done so for external recognition.
“However, I think Messi has the same drive; it’s just that he comes from within. He wants to be the best he can be. He strives to be better, not so that other people say he is the best, but so that he can be at peace with himself I don’t think he needs that external gratification in the same way that Christian does, but he still has that ruthless urge to push himself and bring out the best in himself.
“So in terms of achieving that level of greatness and consistency, a lot of it comes down to the player’s mindset.”
That is why Neymar is no longer the favorite to enter the center of attention when Messi and Ronaldo retire. There has never been a question about the Brazilian’s ability, but his level of concentration has been a concern for a long time.
Five years have passed since Johan Cruyff warned: “Neymar is always at the center of the storm for things outside of football. He needs to play football to improve and develop in many areas. He will only succeed by playing football. The problem is that he it’s constantly linked with negative things. “
Neymar’s situation has hardly improved in the meantime. If anything, that storm has only gotten worse. How is your physical condition.
Since moving to Paris Saint-Germain for a world record fee in 2017, Neymar has been plagued by injury and lack of discipline. At 28, his career path now seems more likely to follow Ronaldinho’s than that of Ronaldo, who has so far failed to strike the perfect balance between sports and business growth.
“I think if you look at Ronaldo, I think it’s fair to say that he is very aware of his image, just like Neymar,” West reasoned. “Cristiano has been very interested in exploiting all the opportunities offered by his popularity as a footballer. But he has maintained the awareness that all this comes from what he does on the field. Soccer comes first.”
“He has not allowed his business life to diminish his professional life. I don’t think the same can be said for Neymar. If you look at Neymar’s tweets, for example, it’s just brand, brand, brand. You wouldn’t know He’s a footballer just like He is portrayed sometimes, he is a celebrity first, while Ronaldo never seems to do anything that jeopardizes his ability to deliver on the field.
“Messi also had physical problems early in his career and was quickly linked by the Barça medical team to a poor diet and poor training regimes. So they changed his diet, convinced him to stop eating pizzas and drinking Coca-Cola , and got in shape and overcame those fitness issues.
“But Neymar enjoys the other things in life too much. He doesn’t have that ruthless commitment to his career, which means he hasn’t been able to reach the level of consistency of Messi and Ronaldo.”
But what about the next generation? Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland are considered the favorites to fill the gap that Messi and Ronaldo will leave behind. They are both extraordinary young talents.
Mbappe is the only man, apart from Pelé, who scored in a World Cup final when he was a teenager; Haaland is the youngest player in history to score 10 goals in the Champions League, having reached that mark in just seven games.
Its potential is as obvious as it is enormous. Questions remain, of course. Can they keep their good shape? Will they avoid serious injury? Will they be as dedicated to their profession as Messi and Ronaldo?
Both are considered colorful characters. Haaland’s former Red Bull Salzburg teammate Maximilian Wober described the Norwegian as objective Like “crazy madman” he recalled how the striker would spend his time on trips “reading scientific articles on who could improve his sleep pattern or diet” while the rest of the team played cards.
In a similar vein, Mbappe once skipped a party in honor of the 2016-17 Monaco Ligue 1 title triumph to be able to get enough rest to be in peak physical condition for the training session the next day. However, the Frenchman was just a teenager back then, and there has been growing concern over his supposedly selfish behavior since he was taken under Neymar’s wing in Paris, as underlined by his recent fights with PSG coach Thomas Tuchel.
Mbappe has admitted to himself that “he is not a great worker”, but that journalists who follow the French league and the national team closely consider him as someone who simply loves to play soccer. As long as he retains that passion for the game, he should, like Haaland, continue to rack up record after record.
However, even Mbappe has admitted that matching Messi can be impossible. He scored 33 goals in 29 Ligue 1 games last season and was still not enough to deny the Argentine a third consecutive European Golden Shoe.
“There were days when I scored three goals and then he scored four,” said the winger. France Football. “I remember talking to Ousmane Dembele (from Barcelona and France) and saying, ‘It’s not possible! Is he doing it on purpose?'”
Of course, it would be unfair to expect someone to match Messi or Ronaldo’s remarkable strike rates. Or take the game into a new era, for that matter. Also, it’s not that the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo has been the only show in town in the past 10 to 15 years.
Messi has never played in the Premier League, while Ronaldo left in 2009; however, the highest English category is, by some distance, the most watched championship and, consequently, the richest in club football. There are, of course, many reasons for its global popularity: the game’s great pace separates it from its European rivals; what it loses in quality, it compensates with the frenetic entertainment.
Furthermore, the almost total absence of running tracks around its fields only accentuates the raucous atmosphere generated by the massive and passionate crowds that encounter its modern stadiums. England changed its practices and image after the Heysel and Hillsborough tragedies of the 1980s, and reaped the rewards.
With the advent of the Premier League in 1992, English football became a perfectly packaged product that BSkyB expertly sold to audiences around the world and, in turn, the additional wealth bestowed on clubs by the sale of television rights. abroad they allowed the acquisition of some of the most talented and charismatic characters in football. All of this, coupled with the sport’s innate ability for unscripted drama, made the Premier League attractive.
“I think soccer has shown that it has always been good at it, but the soccer economy is driven by broadcasters and English gaming has undoubtedly perfected the model,” reported the European Sports Reporter for Wall Street. Journal and author of ‘The club’, Josh Robinson said Objective. “So football was an immensely popular game before Ronaldo and Messi, and also before the Premier League.
“However, Ronaldo and Messi simply existed in this unprecedented rivalry at the same time that social media exploded. So they introduced new ways of consuming soccer.”
“For example, when Ronaldo left Real Madrid to go to Juventus, we also saw a great change in the social networks of the two clubs. However, while there are many unique aspects of Ronaldo, Messi and their rivalry, the way of Watching and consuming the show that they’ve put on for the last decade has now taken hold of fans. So even after retiring, fans will simply apply those same practices and habits to follow new players. “
Essentially, football faces far more pressing concern than the impending retirement of two living legends, as the Covid-19 pandemic has plunged the game into a financial crisis that poses a very real existential threat to clubs and leagues across the board. the world.
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However, by its very nature, soccer is a simple game. Its popularity will not be tempered by the pandemic; If anything, it can be improved, as people become even more appreciative of a sport that anyone can play with a ball.
So if soccer can survive Covid-19, it can survive the loss of Messi and Ronaldo. The show will continue. But so will the debate about who was better: Messi or Ronaldo?
There will never be an agreement, of course, but that is irrelevant. As Messi says, his rivalry with Ronaldo is a duel that will last forever.
