Cristiano Ronaldo

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swooshboy

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In terms of modern day football before Ronaldo and Messi, 1 in 2 was seen as a solid record for a striker, the greats like Ronaldo Lima, Van Nistelrooy, Henry, Shevchenko etc. did better than that but the way these two score goals can only really be compared to how some of the greats scored all those decades ago.

The ability to create/dictate at the highest level is harder to find IMO than scoring. Ronaldo is an amazing player who in terms of being a goalscorer couldn't add much more to his game, but that ability to unlock a tight match? He doesn't have that...
Nonsense.

As Askabob said - he won more than a few games for us almost single handedly.

As for creating/dictating, lets not forget that Messi is playing in a team/system that happens to feature Xavi and Iniesta - not too shabby a supporting cast.

I think you will find that they help create and dictate a lot of Barca's matches.
 

Snowjoe

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Obscene amount of goals this season :lol:

Messi on a 4 game drought apparently too, Ronaldo got sights on top scorer then.
 

thepolice123

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Great skill for the first goal. The second goal shows why he scores so much. Inside the box he is absolutely lethal. The defender had a head-start to Bale's cross but Ronaldo just torches him. Once he hits full stride, there's little defenders who can match his explosiveness.
 

Moby

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Some attackers would cry out of joy if they reached that in an entire season.
Most of them, exactly. These two keep taking the piss out of the game and the weirdest thing is it's not 1 or 2 seasons, it keeps going on. :lol: Ridiculous.

That nutmeg was beautiful though. :drool:
 

Moby

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Being in France tells you a great deal about gloryhunters. I have seen people wearing an Arsenal shirt with Thierry Henry, only to put on the Chelsea shirt of Didier Drogba. Even in England, I saw quite a few people wearing the Beckham 23 for Real Madrid. So you see, I cannot be one of them. I will wish them the best of luck, but there is no way in hell I would follow their careers elsewhere. I worship a club, the history, the culture, and not one person.
So you spend all this time in this thread commenting on Ronaldo without watching him play or following his career? :p
 

amolbhatia50k

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That first goal was lovely. He started the move with the pass to modicum for the one two as well.

I was impressed with bale also. Created two goals.

But madrid as a whole are not great this season. They don't control games well at all.
 

Randall Flagg

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20 in 15? Yeah he is amazing, but that league is seriously not that good.
That league is still better than the PL top to bottom, they are just missing realistic challengers outside the top 2. Although Atletico are a quality side who IMO are better than the likes of spurs, Liverpool and not far off .arsenal
 

MoneyMay

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Cristiano Ronaldo has broken the record held for Champions League goals scored in a calendar year after his second-half strike for Real Madrid at Juventus on Tuesday - overtaking the mark previously set by Barcelona's Lionel Messi.
 

bosnian_red

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Set up Bale's goal as well. He's just too good. If Ribery doesn't win the ballon d'or, Ronaldo probably deserves it ahead of Messi the way he's started this season. He's been on fire, especially in the champions league.
 

Red Shorts

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Top goalscorer in a European cup: 14

Ronaldo's current goals: 8

He could not only be the record holder for most CL goals in a calendar year, but also in a CL season. The guy is just smashing record upon record, and the two gifs above in this page are beauts.
 

Melvyn

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He really levelled up this season. Everyone's talking about Messi or Ribery for the Ballon d'Or but performances in the next few weeks may just swing enough points in Ronaldo's favour.

That's a terrible kit though.
 

Balu

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He really levelled up this season. Everyone's talking about Messi or Ribery for the Ballon d'Or but performances in the next few weeks may just swing enough points in Ronaldo's favour.

That's a terrible kit though.
Ribery's also been brilliant this season, Ronaldo probably ahead of him though, but both have outperformed Messi so far, imo. I agree, that it looks like he levelled up again.

And yes, what's with Real's kit designs this season? The blue away kit is already horrible, the orange CL kit is even worse.

He's apparently a goal poacher according to some here.
Not sure if you consider me one of them, but usually most criticised that he doesn't use the creative side of his game enough and not that he doesn't have one. I really liked the way he played in the last 30 minutes of the classico for example, he needs to drop deeper, carry the ball forward way more than he did in the last 3 seasons when his team was struggling to create something. I really love beautiful wingplay - the gif above is :drool: - and enjoy watching him play that way a lot more than him playing as a wide forward waiting to make runs off the ball to score. Maybe Özil leaving and with him the tactically one dimensional idea of attacking with one mainly creating and one mainly scoring gone, really helps him bring his overall game on another level. It would probably help Bale finding a place in the team as well.
 

amolbhatia50k

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Not sure if you consider me one of them, but usually most criticised that he doesn't use the creative side of his game enough and not that he doesn't have one. I really liked the way he played in the last 30 minutes of the classico for example, he needs to drop deeper, carry the ball forward way more than he did in the last 3 seasons when his team was struggling to create something. I really love beautiful wingplay - the gif above is :drool: - and enjoy watching him play that way a lot more than him playing as a wide forward waiting to make runs off the ball to score. Maybe Özil leaving and with him the tactically one dimensional idea of attacking with one mainly creating and one mainly scoring gone, really helps him bring his overall game on another level. It would probably help Bale finding a place in the team as well.
Not you, Balu. I do agree that he can do more of those things, like he did for us in 2006/07, but there are some who see him as a poacher here which I find very strange. Which poacher has such ability and explosiveness on the ball as Ronaldo? He's not bloody Inzaghi, now that's someone who can be described as a poacher. The way he made Kompany look silly in the CL and always creates Barca problems, or the counter attacking goal last week where he nutmegged the defender, is not the stuff of poachers.
 

Balu

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I'm sure I described a lot of his performances in the last years in a way that sounded like if I'd call him a poacher, especially when his goal stats were used to big him up in comparison to playmakers with less goals. And I still believe, quite a lot of his performances against big teams in Europe weren't far off from playing like a poacher with both games against Dortmund last season as the standout examples. That's why I often said, it looks like he isn't even trying. Same goes for a lot of his performances for Portugal, imo.
 

Skorenzy

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Ribery's also been brilliant this season, Ronaldo probably ahead of him though, but both have outperformed Messi so far, imo. I agree, that it looks like he levelled up again.
Maybe you're trying too much to not let your Bayern bias show, but come on, it's been clear to see to everyone that Ribéry has been above both Messi and Cristiano performance-wise, for most of the year in fact, for both club and country. Last season's Ballon d'Or should've gone to Cristiano (or Iniesta) IMO, but this year I really can't see any reason why he'd deserve it ahead of Ribéry or even Messi for that matter (see my response to Mel_F).

Furthermore, levelled up? In what sense do you mean exactly? He's scoring more than ever maybe, but looking at the performances (and even the goals themselves) reveals nothing of the sort to me. He scored a brilliant goal v Galatasaray and a great one at Rayo, a neat free-kick v Elche, but the rest have been regular striker goals (a lot more headers I've noticed thanks to crosses from Di María and now Bale), penalties (5 already, none won himself) or greatly deflected shots (Villarreal, that was a comical one, Levante and Sevilla, also really flukey). His (successful) dribbles per game or Key Passes per game haven't gone up compared to any previous season (he's back to his curious habit of getting dispossessed more often per game than actually managing to dribble past an opponent), in fact the only thing that's gone up is his shot count, close to 8 shots per game... which is completely absurd, even Messi for all the possession that Barcelona have has never even come close to that figure.


He really levelled up this season. Everyone's talking about Messi or Ribery for the Ballon d'Or but performances in the next few weeks may just swing enough points in Ronaldo's favour.
If you truly believe that this relatively unimportant period of the club season would still have an impact then that just goes to show how weak the candidature for this season/year's BdO has been IMO. Apart from Ribéry none of the top-3 candidates did much of note in the big games.

Messi was terrible in the away leg to Milan, then staged the come-back in the home leg with an excellent performance, savior against PSG while injured, anonymous against Bayern while unfit and as his team got thrashed with and without him. Decent in both league clásico's, okay in 1st leg of the Copa clásico, anonymous in the 2nd leg. Brilliant in the league throughout the previous season. Great tactically and defensively in this season's clásico, completely anonymous offensively and outshone by Neymar.
Not as good for Argentina as in 2012, but still solid enough (even if his game-time was cut short due to his injuries).

Cristiano has been on a terrific run of goals in the CL, without actually having the performances to match them (except v Galatasaray); scored important goals v Utd while not doing much else in both games, scored a gift from Hummels and Higuaín in their thrashing away to Dortmund, then completely failed to make an impact in the 2nd leg as his team were 1 goal away from qualifying for the CL final on away goals. Decent in the league clásico's, anonymous in the 1st leg of the Copa clásico, excellent in the 2nd leg scoring the goals to get into the final. Good form in the league, but nothing compared to the previous season. Scored in the Copa final but got himself rightfully sent off and saw his team lose to their city-rivals Atlético for the first time since 1999 if I'm not mistaken; lost to them again while doing nothing of note in their meeting this season, again at the Bernábeu... Fairly anonymous in this season's clásico (just 1 shot! re: his average N° of shots per game), did have a nice assist at the end.
Very poor for Portugal in a group that should've been comfortable (a 1st international hat-trick, against N.Ireland, being the stand-out moment of his WCQ campaign), may yet redeem himself in the play-offs against Sweden, but if he doesn't and Portugal don't qualify for the WC, it would be something of a farce for him to win the BdO...

Both have been completely outshone by Diego Costa in La Liga at the moment. The only real thing going for Cristiano is his CL scoring form, which is insanely good now, but still couldn't even get him to a final when his team were actually only 1 goal away (so no the usual easy excuses that RM are terrible defensively or that it's a circus don't fly for this one). Messi has half an excuse due to his recurring injury problems and his impact in getting Barça to the semi-final stage last season was remarkable, but ultimately he completely fell short against Bayern, injury or no injury (even his group stage games last season were poor save for Benfica away).

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Nowadays, they both just score a lot of goals, but it's hardly a challenge playing for those two teams. Even guys like Ibra, RVP, Falcao and Cavani are scoring 30+ goals each season. A 1.00 gpg is slowly becoming the norm for top forwards, so it's not that surprising to find that these two are getting closer to 1.50... It's all just not that impressive on its own, it used to be that goals complemented great performances, now they've become a subsitute for it. And most people naively ascribe this to be some sort of great merit on the part of Messi or Cristiano, while it's far more to do with the utter dominance of the teams they're playing for. Think back to 2008-11 (Messi) or 2006-08 (Cristiano) when both of them were consistently playing at a world-class level, giving complete performances while also racking up incredible amounts of goals and assists and being decisive in the big games... Those were seasons worthy of BdO winners, now they're automatically included in the top-3 because of their status and consistent goalscoring in tailormade teams, even when they fail in the crucial moments.
 
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