Unfortunately I am limited in posts because of this flawed newbie system where promotion seems to be based around who is the biggest Top Red when it comes to Man United, rather than actual football knowledge or insight. There are plenty of clueless posters in the mains so don't come at me because I am a newbie on a forum.
However, I was on here once before, and I made a lengthy post criticising Ronaldo - one guy said it should be pinned to the top of the page for all the Ronaldo fanboys to read. For reference I was born in 1982 (as my name suggests) older than Ronaldo and Messi themselves, and been playing football 2/3/4 times a week depending on time since I was a kid, and loads as an adult, other than a two year break between 2000 and 2002. Most think I am a pretty good player too (at an infinitely lower level than Ronaldo and Messi obviously) so I like to think I know what I am on about.
There are loads of myths around Ronaldo as a player, and I simply can't be bothered writing a dissertation-length post on him and his career (I might tomorrow when I can be bothered), but in this thread, it's clear there are a load of little Ronaldo sycophants who are desperate to glorify him.
I don't like either Ronaldo or Messi, they both come across as cnuts and tools for Sportswashers (and Ronaldo especially displays so many negative personality traits: narcissism laced with insecurity, he's a charisma vacuum, he's clearly quite thick and uneducated despite his multi-lingual abilities because he's stupid enough to believe everything the yes men in his echo chamber tell him, not once does he think about the perspective outside his circle, he throws young players under the bus, he displays envy of Messi, his family is insane, he's obsessed with his personal stats and glory at the expense of the team, he's turned football and all his clubs and the Portuguese NT into his own reality TV show clown show circus, and just generally comes across as a complete cnut. As if all that wasn't bad enough, he's an alleged rapist and I do believe he is guilty, he definitely seems the type of weirdo to do it).
But anyway the point is this: The Ronaldo vs Messi 'debate' is a farce which has been manufactured by the media to make it seem close by reducing it to goal stats and trophies. The truth is anyone with the slightest clue about football knows Messi is a far far superior player - he scores as many goals as Ronaldo while being 3-4 levels above in passing, dribbling, playmaking, running a game, free-kicks decision-making, vision, football IQ etc. This disparity between their abilities is so clear that I consider anyone who thinks Ronaldo is as good or better absolutely clueless about football. Furthermore, Ronaldo should never even be shoehorned into the holy trinity of Messi, Maradona and Pele simply because he lacks so much of their all-round game and genius. Ronaldo is better than Messi at penalties and he's maybe the best header I have ever seen. However, these skills are not close to being as important in football as passing, dribbling, playmaking etc, as the latter can be activated at any point in open play - penalties are a specialist skill which are one-off moments in games (other than shootouts), and heading is something that ironically relies on great passing, dribbling, creativity to create a position for a cross for the header to be made. Therefore, you simply cannot compare these attributes as if they should be given equal weight - what Ronaldo is definitely better than Maradona and Messi at are lesser skills than what they're miles better than him at.
Now, I could go on and on about all the myths about this weird creepy cnut - for example
his 'two-footedness' - as if he is ambidextrous and his left is as strong as his right which clearly is not true as he cannot take penalties or free-kicks with his left foot, cannot play crossfield passes or chips with his left foot (he's never done these with his right foot never mind his left), cannot dribble with his left foot, and when you watch him play he clearly uses the right foot in any situation he can. He's good in one particular situation with his left foot: driving the ball at goal with his laces. This however is not the same as being generally 'two-footed'. Being two-footed means using either foot equally well in all football situations and the viewer not being able to tell whether you are genuinely right or left footed eg Wesley Sneijder or Lubo Moravcik
the idea he's an amazing finisher - he takes about 10 shots a game and has the lowest shot conversion rate in Europe over his career. Then his defenders say 'but he takes low percentage shots, that's why!' as if it's somehow a positive for him as a player that he blasts shots miles wide and over the bar from improbable angles and distances, rather than speaking to terrible decision-making and selfishness. I played with a guy who thought Ronaldo was the best ever, and his football IQ was abysmal - never passed, terrible vision and I have never seen someone sky the ball over the bar as much as he did. No wonder he loved Ronaldo.
the lie that he has always carried his Portugal team as if his team-mates are pub players, well they won a tournament without him on the pitch that I believe they'd have lost the final of had he not got injured. Also, the idea that his team-mates are all useless that his arse-lickers use to elevate him - remember the 2014 World Cup? It seems to have been forgotten, but in the final group game against Ghana he was sprinting constantly the entire second half (so much for his terrible knee injury) and he missed about 5 or 6 good chances on the Ghana goal. He scored the winner but if he'd have scored more of those they'd have qualified for the knockout round on goal difference. His team-mates laid all his chances on a plate for him and he fecked it, like he does in every world cup. So much for his team-mates constantly letting him down. Then there's the fact he's put in awful performances every time Portugal have exited a tournament (Greece 2004, admittedly he was good against France as a kid in 2006, invisible as the so called 'best player in the world against Germany 2008, did nothing against Spain in 2010 and 2012 other than sky a late chance against Spain then not get to take his penalty as he wanted all the glory of going fifth), the Ghana game I just mentioned in 2014, terrible against Uruguay in 2018 and a non-entity vs Belgium two years ago). This is a horrendous tournament record for someone who is 'one of the greatest of all time'
the looking at his goal stats without any semblance of context as if football was a game to be analysed on a spreadsheet and not about nuance and aesthetics and beauty
The idea that he deserves 5 Ballon D'ors. I personally consider the Ballon d'or a joke of an award that Ronaldo and Perez desperately campaigned for. If there was any justice Messi would have won far more than he has, and Ronaldo would have about two max. Modric did deserve it in 2018, because he had a great season and then vastly outperformed Ronaldo in the CL Final (Ronaldo has been abymsal in 4/5 of his 6 CL Finals) and the World Cup. Ronaldo himself showcased his stupidity by saying he should have won it and 'the stats don't lie', as if Modric and Ronaldo are two players who should be compared directly on goal stats, further highlighting Ronaldo's delusions.
Another funny thing about Ronaldo is the rewarding of his failure. He won a ballon d'or because he and his team could not top their qualifying group (I believe they finished second to Bosnia) and he got a second bite of the cherry against Sweden. The perverse thing is if he would have done his job originally he'd never have won the BD, because he'd never have been involved in the play-offs in the first place.
Some guy earlier in this thread said it astounds him that anyone could think C Ronaldo is better than Maradona, Pele, Messi, Platini, Zico, R9, Di Stefano, Cruyff, Beckenbauer etc and I agree with him. As stated, I have been watching and playing football for nearly 4 decades, and the idea that C Ronaldo belongs right near the top of that list just feels so wrong and off to me. I don't know how to describe it, but when I watch him play he's seriously lacking that genius level talent all the others had. He seems more like someone who relies on physicality, pace and power, and doing the ordinary on an ultra-consistent basis (not saying he's hasn't had great moments, but they're few and far between relative to the players he's compared to). The point is when I watch this guy play, it just seems so off and wrong to consider him one of the top 5 players in football's 150 plus year history. I feel like I am being gaslighted into believing it because I don't see it with him at all. It's extremely disrespectful to all the players who have been forgotten because of celebrity worship of Ronaldo in this era. We have all seen his disasterclass videos where he does so many braindead, talentless things on the pitch that you'd never expect in such quantities from the players mentioned above.
I could go on and on - he probably scrapes into my top 10 ever. But top 5? Just no. The type who think he and Messi are by far the top two ever must be kids who post on reddit, from places like America and the far East, places with less football culture and who are new to the game and more interested in celebrity, stats, and athleticism than the nuance and beauty of the game, and how football is a cerebral game whereas Ronaldo hasn't got the slightest hint of subtlety in his game.
I could go on and on about this guy but I will spend the next post talking about his fanboy cult, both in this thread and in general, a cult that he clearly encourages
I hope the mods allow this post and the following post cos these Ronaldo fanboys need to be told how creepy they are.
So I said I would talk about his fanboys – this list isn’t exhaustive, but let’s look at the guys who defend him like he’s their brother and seem to devote their lives to him:
Cal – this guy was such a hoot (I have been lurking for 15 years). He was so cluelessly enslaved to Ronaldo, I think he’s probably given up the ghost after Messi won the World Cup (even if Argentina had gone out in the first round I’d still say Messi was far better than Ronaldo as I have believed it for 15 years). The most obnoxious thing about this guy was his hypocrisy – he had a go at anyone who laughed at him for thinking C Ronaldo was better than Messi, yet he mocked and ridiculed anyone who thought R9 was better than C Ronaldo. The irony being of course that it’s far more reasonable to say Ronaldo of Brazil was better than Portuguese Ronaldo than it is to say C Ronaldo is better than Messi
Regulus Arcturus Black – this guy’s Ronaldo worship was evident – it even reached the abysmal stage where he said that it is laughable to include Cruyff in a top five ever list, and that Michael Laudrup (as much as I love him as a player) was every bit as good as Cruyff. Rather than admit he was talking shite after being called out, he went on to display more stupidity by doubling down on it and not conceding defeat. He talked bollocks on other football matters too, including his overly positive rosy view of how United were doing.
SportingCP96 – feck me, where to start with this guy. COMPLETELY infatuated with Ronaldo despite the fact Ronaldo couldn’t give the slightest feck about Sporting Club. He made numerous terrible claims which I will go through one by one.
First, the guy made snidy little comments about Ronaldo being the best ever, knowing it’s a highly controversial claim that people will mock, then he played victim when others laughed at him for it. The pathetic thing is someone actually bought into his victimhood and defended him. A complete WUM.
Second, nother thing this guy does is try to claim Ronaldo deserves to be on the same level as the trinity of all-time greats. He tries to shoehorn him in and makes ludicrous claim like the entire planet sees those four as the four best and noone else has a sniff.
Third, Sporting also proved my point that Ronaldo rides Messi’s coattails in the ‘debate’. He kept saying if Messi is top four, Ronaldo has to be too as they're linked forever. He is nowhere near as good as Messi, but he’s managed to turn it into a stats and trophies debate (when the beauty of Messi’s game is all qualitative, not achievement-based. So essentially because there was another player in Messi’s era who managed to keep pace with his goalscoring and take a few trophies from him (includingh dubious Ballon d’ors), that somehow means that player should be thought of as equal to Messi (and extention Maradona and Pele). That was Sporting’ argument and it was a load of bollocks.
Fourth – and one of the funniest things this guy does, is he tries to give Ronaldo sole credit for Portugal’s ascent as a football nation. Forget his generally dogshit performances in World Cups, is this guy so braindead that he doesn’t realise the reason Portugal get to every tournament now (and they had started doing this in the immediate years before Ronaldo came onto the scene) is because of the expansion of the tournaments? Until 1996 the Euros was a 4 then 8 team tournament. The World Cup was a 16 then 24 team tournament until 1998. The reason Portugal get there every time now is because the tournaments have vastly expanded. Not because of your God Ronaldo. In fact given how many times they’ve advanced through play-offs it’s easy to say plenty of Ronaldo’s teams would have failed to qualify pre-expansion.
Ffith, Sporting is one of these weirdos who likes to makes analogous comparisons between football and the American sports he watches, as if they are even slightly the same. His posts in the past were littered with comparisons between Ronaldo and ‘Brady’ and ‘Lebron’ despite football being vastly different to NFL or basketball. I would suggest this guy sticks to watching those sports and gives up football.
Cyberman – not much to say about him. Most people acknowledge he’s very ignorant about football no matter what the topic. But it's hilarious seeing him wanking over Ronaldo’s ‘amazing goalscoring post 30’ when it’s clearly been to the detriment of his teams (see Juventus and United) and he’s clearly become an extreme poacher who you have to carry get him his stats.
MrEleson - I have never ever seen a post from this guy that doesn't relate to Ronaldo, or more specifically an attempt to paint Ronaldo as by far the best thing ever in any given situation. This guy must be on Ronaldo's PR team.
SirAF – this guy makes me laugh. I have never once seen a post from him longer than one line, with any attempt at justification or analysis. He just ‘states things’. In recent months he has taken to announcing Ronaldo’s pathetic stat-padding goals as Saudi’s number one sportwashing tool with comments like ‘856’ and ‘857’. The fact the guy doesn’t realise how cringeworthy that is is frightening. Even Joel Miller alluded to how creepy it is.
RedRonaldo – to be fair to this guy, he seems like a nicer guy than the rest of these ones, but he’s still come out with some outrageous claims over the years – recently he doesn’t seem to understand that Ronaldo is scoring more than Neymar, Benzema. Mane et al in Saudi Arabia because those players aren’t pathetic enough to take a pub league ultra-seriously to score empty pointless stats. RedRonaldo calls this professional of Ronaldo – I say it’s a guy who is miles past it and terrified of retirement and fading into irrelevance, a guy who doesn’t know when to quit. The way Ronaldo timed his Piers Morgan interview (very cowardly so he wouldn’t have to face his United team mates and manager again) as well as his putting his own career above Portugal’s chances as we approach Euro 2024 (because Ronaldo will be taken care of by any good team) is also evidence of his selfishness.
He’s also recently tried to talk up Ronaldo for ‘outperforming Mbappe’’by scoring against minnows in qualifying matches. Overlooking Mbappe’s much superior record at the World Cup and in World Cup Finals. This was rightly mocked by heraklion and surprise surprise the Ronaldo fanboys asked for heraklion to be thread-banned. Apparently we are supposed to believe that only Ronaldo can score against San Marino and Lithuania for his national team and others can't ('why aren't Kane and Lewandowski racking up goals in qualifiers', they say). That's right - their entire premise and argument hinges on Lewa and Kane being unable to score against the likes of San marino. It's because nobody is socially inept enough to celebrate the millionth goal of the night against Luxembourg like it's a Maradona vs England in the World Cup Final - well nobody except Ronaldo, that is.
But overall, RedRonaldo seems a decent guy.
Pickle85 – this guy might be one of the worst, because unlike the others who own their Ronaldo obsession, this guy cowardly tries to claim he is ‘neutral’ and ‘doesn’t care about Ronaldo’. Strangely though he is ultra defensive whenever someone posts something negative about Ronaldo, despite apparently not being a Ronaldo fanboy. You never seen this level of defence from him for Messi in his threads despite his supposed ‘neutrality’. Someone in the Messi thread even called out that people were trying to be moral policeman in here and not doing the same in Messi’s thread. He was the one who asked for heraklion to be thread banned for his hyper posting styles and green smiley style, when it was clear that heraklion was simply giving RedRonaldo’s bad post the disdain it deserved.
This is another Ronaldo fanboy for me who won’t admit he’s a Ronaldo fanboy, because in his mind it gives his posts more gravitas if people think he is neutral. He’s also the type of guy who says ‘let’s appreciate both’ to try and mislead people that Ronaldo and Messi are equals and detract from Messi’s rightful place as being a far superior player. Whether he knows exactly what he is doing or not I am not sure, but I don’t buy this guy’s act for a second. He goes around here trying to steer the debate in Ronaldo’s favour and stifle criticism of him, and it is pathetic.If you wanna prove me wrong Pickle – don’t be defensive and don’t reply to this. Somehow I doubt you will heed that advice.
Generally though, I know loads of Ronaldo social media followers are bots, but he does seem to have these hive-mind type worshippers who all behave exactly the same and defend him constantly as if their lives revolve around him (even though he doesn’t know they exist and he wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire). They all also make the same deluded arguments that have been debunked for years. I have seen people on other forums post about how creepy they are and that they must be being paid by Ronaldo’s PR team, because nobody spouts the excrement they do for free or charitable reasons. They are like flat earthers and they believe a footballer (Let’s be honest, football means nothing in the grand scheme of things) is some kind of god. Ronaldo himself believes he’s above most humans just because he is good at kicking a ball about, it’s pitiful.
I have only seen this sort of obsessive parasocial relationship hero worship in one other group (royalists, as a republican they’re fecking insane and deluded too). I think this is why the more realistic and knowledgeable posters in this thread (Andrade, heraklion, swoobs, Zehner, Joel Miller etc) are so baffled by the sheer obsessiveness of the fanboys for a guy who doesn’t know they exist. I think Messi is far better than Ronaldo because that is what I see with my eyes – I have no liking for Messi as a person and am not even convinced he should be above Maradona and Pele – but it’s abundantly clear to me he’s much better than Ronaldo. Whereas I get the feeling Ronaldo fanboys love him and claim he’s the best because of their infatuation, not because they genuinely believe it. I don’t even know why he has fans - he’s extremely unlikeable as I have illustrated above. He’s a cnut, a moron, he disrepects opponents, kicks out at them, he's a charisma vacuum, he slaps phones out of children's hands, he associates with Piers Morgan and Jordan Petersen, he's the symbol of a human rights abusing sportwashing country, his style of play has been really ugly for many years, there are loads of far better looking male celebrities and even if none of that was true he’s an alleged rapist and should really be in jail rather than crying about Messi and the 'vendetta' against him. He should be grateful he has the reputation he has after all that shite. Seriously, explain why you love this guy so much because it eludes me?
There’s a quote from Joel Miller on page 101 I believe, near the bottom of the page, where he talks about Ronaldo fanboys being so extreme and insufferable and he’s never seen such weirdos in all his life. That sums this entire thing up for me and makes Ronaldo even harder to like than he already was.
I hope the mods allow this post and the previous one. These people need to be told how bizarre their day-in day-out obsessiveness is. Rant over.
Listen to you mate, ffs.
You go around here pretending to be neutral like a coward to try and give your posts more gravitas, yet you're constantly defensive of Ronaldo in a way you never are with Messi. You tried to police this thread to remove anti-Ronaldo posters in a way you did not with anti-Messi posters in his thread. Do you think that I am the only one who can see what you are doing? I am sure the likes of Zehner, Joel Miller, Andrade, swoobs and heraklion have noticed it too.
They're both sportswashing scumbags though Messi is by far the superior player. But having read this site for 15 years it's boring reading this thread and seeing you pretend to be neutral and fair when you clearly have bias for Ronaldo and cannot admit it.
If you were fair you wouldn't be so in favour of one in your posting. Why are you always calling out 'Messi lovers' but you say nothing about the mental Ronaldo fanatics' bollocks in here? Why do you call out all criticism of Ronaldo but are fine with criticism of the other guy? Why do you try to police this thread but not the Messi thread (someone else even alluded to it)? Why do you say 'let's appreciate both' to try to give the idea that they are equal peers when anyone with a clue knows Messi is the significantly better player?
I am out of posts because of this flawed newbie system. No doubt you'll reply with more shite. It's just fecking sickening seeing your 'I am so objective and superior to Messi fans' shtick when clearly have a major bias to Creepnaldo. Other people will definitely have noticed you doing it.
You've even in recent pages started asking people 'any reason for the vitriol'...about Cristiano Ronaldo of all people? Have you been living under a rock for the past twenty years? Can you honestly not understand why people would hate Cristiano Ronaldo? He's not exactly the most likeable of fellows, is he? Even Man United (who I am not a fan of but most people here are) fans have plenty reason to hate him based on the events of last year. Yet here you are wide-eyed asking 'any reason why you hate him?' Are you playing dumb?
I think you're just trolling now.
Edit: say what you like mate. As I said, I knew some clown would bring up your faulty newbie system. I have been following football since the 80s and know things about the history of the game you will never learn. Being new to a website won't change that. The fact someone like you is promoted when you talk so much crap proves it is faulty. I was proved right about Ole being clueless, I said after day one he was a moronic charisma vacuum with zero tactical ability, while you lot argued about it for THREE YEARS and laughably compared him to Pep and Klopp, I read through those threads bewildered at how you couldn't see how clueless the little gnome was.I said Ronaldo was a bad fit, while you reacted with your knees to his brace against Newcastle, I said Rashford and Fernandes were problems for United long before it became a thing on here, because they are both moments players who force you into playing counter-attack chaos football, so I would say I am doing pretty well. As I said, the newbie system seems to be about promoting who the biggest top red is such is the level of deluded positivity in the United threads.
I also predicted in the summer that Ten Hag will be gone by New Year 2025, while you were all talking about him like he's the messiah. I might actually have been conservative - he will probably be gone after you play at Anfield.
And I am not saying you cannot say Ronaldo was a great player - the point is that saying we should appreciate them both is implying they're on an equal level, when the truth is Messi is easily better and that is what most people think (despite this being the appeal to popularity fallacy).
The fact is, you are clearly a Ronaldo fanboy, 'petal' (you condescending cnut).
The fact you are never in the Messi thread yet spend your life in the Ronaldo thread tells its own story, does it not? You're an embarrassment of a poster.
' but some posters seem intent on imposing their own opinion on threads until EVERYONE agrees with them (no exceptions). '
that's because it is not an opinion like 'do you prefer bananas or apples' where either answer is normal. The fact is Messi has so much more to his game that trying to paint them as equal players and it being a matter of opinion or preference is extremely generous to Ronaldo and unfair to Messi. It's not like prime Griezmann or Hazard which you can feasibly argue either way - in this case it is clear Messi is the much bigger genius.
Re Pickle
I'm really not a CR7 fan. Loved watching him play for untied but have no affinity to him now. And yes, I've said many times I think Messi is the better player!
Why are you camped out in his thread then? Defending everything about him?
I accept I came in with an aggressive attitude and it was unnecessary. But surely you can see your behaviour over the months in this topic is pretty odd for someone who doesn't even like him? Why are you posting 'boring' emojis when Andrade says he needs more goals to equal Pele if you have no stake?
I agree with you that both Ronaldo and Messi are bellends, for myriad reasons. But putting aside my dislike for Messi and hate for Ronaldo, judging them purely as footballers, Messi is clearly a lot better. If Ronaldo had Messi's dribbling, passing and playmaking skills I would agree he's on Messi's level even if he was still a massive cnut. But that clearly isn't the case. I hate Neymar, he seems nearly as cnutish as Ronaldo, but I am a big fan of his as a footballer.
Edit 2: thanks mate, I thought it was the best way to do it. Tbh I am not really as much of an aggressive bellend as I have acted I am just so sick of Ronaldo and his worshippers who are so obsessive about him. It isn't limited to Ronaldo - I have a real issues with celebrity worship syndrome and parasocial relationships in general, I think they are extremely damaging.
Tbh I still feel there's a part of you that subconsciously favours Ronaldo over Messi, but I can be a decent man and admit I was an absolute bellend to you. You have to understand it's just I seen you posting defending Ronaldo all the time yet claiming to be neutral. I didn't really buy it. But I am sure you are a decent guy and that we'd get on well in another setting.
I apologise for being a condescending tit in my earlier posts. As for the Ronaldo fanboy post - I am more worried for their mental health and obsessiveness over the guy, rather than genuinely thinking they are complete pricks.
Sorry man
I spent ages typing the first two posts on Libre Office so I could post them in immediate succession. I was surprised they were approved tbh because I do come across as an aggressive prick, but I stand by many of my points even if some are made in an antagonistic fashion and seem written to deliberately wind his fans up.
Edit 3: it's ok mate, it was just irritating to read as a lurker when I could not reply. Tbh maybe I shouldn't see enemies where there could be potential friends...
If I was to stay I would probably post in the entertainment forum (I will be honest I dislike United, so would probably not get involved in arguments in those threads, and I do feel there is some bias towards your players, but that happens on all forums. As for politics forum, I always avoid them as nothing good can come of political debate, I have learned that in the past.).
But the entertainment forum is brilliant. Lots of very knowledgeable posts in there and I am a massive film buff, love TV shows, anime, music, some gaming etc. Books too. So that would be a place I could post.
Edit 4:
' Can't wait for the dissertation-length posts. '
admittedly I was gonna edit that sentence out as I expected some snippy comments about that. But ironically after all this, I couldn't be arsed.
Just a quick follow-up (now it is past midnight and my posts are reset) where I am being less of an arsehole. Sorry again for being long. Brevity isn’t great for me. However, it would be good if people don't make snarky comments about the length of this and actually read what I have written.
The thing some of you guys might not be accepting is that I am not saying Ronaldo is shite (though he has done some donkey things on the park at times).
The point I am making is that he is indeed a great player of his era and in history - putting aside all the unsavoury stuff off the park he’s been an excellent player. However, the way he plays football is simply not enough to put him in the top 5-6 ever for me. And I don’t think that I should be gaslighted or forced into doing that by guys like SportingCP96 just because the hype around him is so crazy that others automatically do it. It’s also completely unfair on players from history to simply ‘assume’ that he hops over them.
He obviously has a good degree of talent (though I will maintain even of his own generation (s) the likes of Messi, Neymar, Xavi, Iniesta, Suarez, Zlatan and Ribery were more talented), but my personal way of rating players is not by career, goal stats or trophies. I rate players by how talented they are, their peak level, and how good they are at playing football. If we are talking longevity and stats then yes Ronaldo pisses all over a lot of players. However, longevity would discount guys like Ronaldinho, L Ronaldo and Best, who all had significantly more talent than Ronaldo. It isn’t that Ronaldo isn’t talented, and I accept his career and longevity gives him a boost in the all-time debate (though I don’t believe it should be of enough merit to place him in the top 5-6) – the issue is that we are talking about thousands and thousands of wonderful players here, from football’s 150 year plus history. The talent pool is massive. Ronaldo fans desperately want him to be seen as top four or even top 1, but even putting him eighth or ninth is a massive achievement for him and puts him over a lot of wonderful players, many of who I would argue were more naturally gifted than he is. There’s a lot of context to Messi and Ronaldo’s careers which must be taken into account (though I go easier on Messi because of his all-time great playmaking component).
A lot of people value Ronaldo for his hard work (although to me a lot of his hard work seems less about football and more about developing his body so he can pose shirtless) but hard work simply isn’t something I care about that much. I think they see his hard work and it inspires them because they must be around people who are more talented or intelligent than them and they think he proves they can close the gap. However, hard work is something everyone can find with enough discipline – but very few in history can be born with, say, Maradona’s talent. It is simply that Ronaldo’s skillset (hard work, physicality, pretty good passing and dribbling in his prime, but again we are comparing him to the best of all time here and his playmaking component doesn’t stack up to that company) and his goalscoring don’t elevate him to that level for me.
I have never been one to judge by goal or assist stats – as Zehner has said they’re the most superficial of stats. The idea that you’ve automatically played the biggest part in a goal just because you got the second to last or the last touch before it crosses the line is an oddity to me (and this is coming from someone who’s scored lots of goals, playing at my infinitely lower level than these guys, I have tended to be a LW or forward, sometimes a CM). Lots of goals are team goals – some goals are all the goalscorer’s hard work, but many goals (the type someone like Haaland scores for example) are dependent on service and that goalscorer would be nothing without his team-mates (true they need the goalscorer too). Ronaldo falls into the category of being more reliant on service and the players he has around him than the great names I mention above, even in his prime, and that is why I cannot say he should be in the top 5-6. Of course it is a skill in itself to have the movement and anticipation he and Haaland have, but it should never ever be credited as if it is on par with the dribbling and passing the all-time greats in these areas possess. His career and longevity and goalscoring compensate to a degree, but nowhere near enough to give him parity with geniuses like Messi, Maradona, Pele and Cruyff – come on, that is ridiculous.
Football is way too stats obsessed. I find Ronaldo fans go on about his stats, what he has won, his individual trophies (individual awards are very politicised especially in this era and particularly when it’s someone as famous and who is marketed as much as Ronaldo). I on the other hand prize what I see on the park (and if you say the eye test lies, all you have to do is look at Messi’s far superior stats to Ronaldo in all facets of a game, and I am sure Maradona, Pele etc similarly influenced matches more outwith goalscoring). As people have said, if goalscoring is the be all and end all, why isn’t Gerd Muller in the top five (and he wasn’t just a poacher, before someone says that)? He was prolific and a better big-game goalscorer than Ronaldo? It’s probably because he was an old guy and is now dead whereas Ronaldo is a massive worldwide celebrity in the present, and there’s more recency bias – it’s a perception thing. Puskas is another great example, and some others. Nobody really wants to say a dead guy who had a pot belly is better than maybe the currently most famous man in the world with his rippling six-pack. Puskas and Muller don’t have an army of modern fanboys artificially inflating their status in these debates.
Another thing about goalscoring – being the best goalscorer would suggest that Gerrard and Lampard are better than Xavi, Iniesta, Pirlo, Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Modric, Vieira, your own Scholes and Keane etc (I rate Gerrard and Lampard as the lowest of all these names for reasons I’d need to write a lot about to illuminate). Okay some of them are different types of midfielder, but that is my point – you can’t discount one player over another because they’re less predisposed to goalscoring. It’s like saying Inzaghi was the most important player in the Milan team, or that Haaland is the biggest talent in the Man City team past and present (come on, the likes of De Bruyne, Bernardo, Mahrez, David Silva, Aguero, Foden, and Rodri make him look like a donkey technically, doesn’t mean he’s a worse player than them all but still).
It’s the same as how you were all drooling over Rashford last season, when actually I thought his general performance and technical ability were as poor as ever, he was simply finishing chances at a better rate and getting more of them too. I didn’t see it lasting and it hasn’t. To me Rashford (like Haaland, Bale, Ronaldo and Fernandes) is a ‘moments’, quantitative stats based player – he looks better on the stats sheet than on the pitch. Guys like David Silva and Modric are the opposite - they are qualitative players, the type of players who make you love football and who rarely go missing for large portions of games (yes, they aren’t forwards). Messi and Pele are a perfect marriage of both goal stats and eye test. This is why articles comparing Messi and Ronaldo on their ‘goal stats’ are so so disingenuous. It does Messi a massive disservice to eliminate his vast superiority in the playmaking part of the game and his being better in small spaces.
The overall point I am making is that the things Ronaldo has in his favour – goal and assist stats (many of which out of context, stat-padding), trophies, politicised individual accolades – they should never take precedence over pure ability to play football. Messi has these prizes and attributes too, but crucially Messi is also a playmaking, dribbling, passing football genius in a way Ronaldo is nowhere near. Ronaldo has ability but he is too lacking at ‘playing football’ and technically deficient (relatively to the best of all time obviously) for me to think he can bridge that gap into the top 5.
And people who say he’s definitely top four or he is second to Messi because Maradona and Pele were from a bygone, worse era (a lie in my view), or worse that he’s the best of all time, are completely wrong in my eyes. He definitely does not deserve to be placed alongside those three for me, it is vastly overrating him I think. I don't think it's fair to force me or others into saying he's at that level when we don't genuinely believe it. It's almost like Ronaldo fans see it as some sort of compromise - that the pair of them (M and R) must be in the top four or neither, because of the manufactured 'rivalry'. I don't see it that way.
By the way, it is not that I care about Ronaldo vs Messi. It's that I care about the playmaking component. The game outside of goalscoring has always been massive to me. Messi just happens to be the embodiment of that and it's the main thing that separates the two. I could easily use Pele, Maradona or others (and have above).
Sorry for the length of this (again). Just my thoughts and footballing principles.
