frustrations from underage CR brigade is understandable. as soon as Ronnie moved from world cup & Ballon d'Or winning midfielders, year after year he's out from CL before the real tournament even started. "we'll see Messi after Xavi & Iniesta retire" they said. well, Messi is on course to win yet another Ballon d'Or and just finished toying with the rest of the continent now at the age of 34. meanwhile, it's their wet dream hero who is ironically suffering more, not even being able to win the Serie A anymore with Juventus, even though his fans spent years convincing us he doesn't need the best players to win the titles. going past the first round of a knockout stage at any competition looks like an impossible task without Modric and Kroos. and last and the most important - is this even a debate anymore?
Messi v Ronaldo | Contains double your daily salt allowance
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Ronaldo has been 33-36 years old at his time at Juventus. But in any case this notion of the mythical player who consistently wins the greatest team trophies on his own in a 11 vs 11 team game is infantile.
I've shown before that even if you remove those games Ronaldo scored a lot against good teams and the vast majority in competitive games. I'll update the numbers and I'll post it here again but updated.
I don't argue against Ronaldos greatness but you'd have to be extremely biased to argue against Messi being atleast the outright greatest of his generation and arguably the greatest ever.
Going through the thread, I've come to realise that most people who belittle Messi's achievements are either Portguese/ support Portugal (as likely in your case) , support Madrid or Juventus or became Cristiano fanboys during his time at United.
And the only thing you guys care about is goals scored when in truth an attacking footballer can influence the outcome of a match in multitude of ways. If only goals were the measure of how great a footballer is than surely Gerd Muller has to be in the GOAT conversation? No one scored at goals at the rate at which he did and no one scored as many important goals as he DID including the world Cup final.
no point in removing them as goals against those amateur teams are what make his record for Portugal special, just like in the case of Ali Daei. in general, players with most international goals simply have to come from Europa or Asia as those two continents are filled with cannon fodder. it is how it is.
I remember those arguments
It's funny because his 2018-2019 season was absolutely incredible. If any player ever carried a team during a club season, it was Messi that season.
What's the issue in accept that CR is a great goalscorer, maybe the best in that matter?
The bolded part is incredibly ironic.
Also I never belittled Messi's achievements - I am providing context just through crude facts, I have defended him and I've said many times that he had done amazing for Argentina regardless of titles and for me that Messi and Ronaldo are on the same level, which I guess from your "unbias" means I'm a fanatic.
Of course goals are not the only thing that matter. But when Messi and Ronaldo have big numbers for more than a decade you know you have to look in more detail.
Also you are trying to bring Muller to point out that numbers don't mean anything but at the same time refuse to acknowledge the context that Muller, Messi and Ronaldo have. So context only matters when it proves the point?
A quick example:
Messi never scored a goal in a competitive game against the big football nations, if you include Uruguay in this group then he did but in the WC Qualifiers, never in a final stage of a tournament.
This is a fact. It doesn't say Messi was bad in these games, it says he never managed to score against them. People are quickly to point out he is better than the numbers and that context is important.
Now let's point out that Ronaldo never scored in a WC knockout stage.
This is also a fact. It doesn't say Ronaldo was bad in these games, it says he simply didn't score against them. However notice how quickly people use this denigrate him and how these numbers are a true reflection of his subpar performance and never try to elaborate and evaluate the context.
This is what I said before about blind bias, the thing you are accusing me of while I could easily accuse you of the same if I wanted to.
Basically instead of using solid arguments against me you are using subjective points to fight a subjective perception you have of my opinion.
Ronaldo scored a lot of goals for the NT? Bring the context pitchforks, the numbers need context!
Messi has a lot of assists for the NT? Much wow, true caprine quality, no need to bring context into this, how dare you try to.
And again, in my opinion both are amazing for their NT (and clubs). They have different contexts and that's why their metric is not more similar (e.g. Messi with more assists in League or NT and Ronaldo with more competitive goals for NT or higher stages of CL), still in an average of almost 20 years their numbers are roughly similar for such a timespan which shows how little difference they have to each other.
Messi has won 0 CLs without Xavi & Iniesta and a solitary 1 CL in the last 10 years. He’s always had to have 2 of the top 5 players in the world to
win the competition so no idea what you’re talking about.
Did Ronaldo not win Euro 16 without Modric and Kroos and did he not just finish topscorer in Serie A and at the euros without them?
The Portugal Team won that Euro without CR. Thats a fact.
Ronaldo has not come close to winning the CL again without prime Ramos, Marcelo, Kroos, Modric and Benzema, some of the best players of their generation. Don't pretend like Ronaldo played with poor players when he played with world class players in every CL win.
Saying Ronaldo won Euro 16 without Modric and Kroos is fair enough but don't ignore that Messi got to a WC final without Xavi, Iniesta and co, and also won LL titles without a world class squad. The Barca squad of the last 3 years has been quite poor with investment in the completely wrong players.
Ronaldo was top scorer in Serie A but he also joined the best team in the league. Messi has been the top scorer in La Liga the last 5 seasons in a row, even when the team has been pretty average.
These arguments for Ronaldo always try to spin a narrative while ignoring similar situations for Messi.
Look, I never said Ronaldo could win the CL on his own (although he was the biggest reason RM won it all those years). I was simply countering the foolish point that the user I was quoting was making. He was saying Ronaldo needed a great midfield to win the CL as if Messi has ever won the competition without the very best players in the world by his side. He had at least 2 of the top 5 in the world at that very moment in every one of his triumphs. And quite frankly, 1 CL in 10 years is a paltry record for the supposed “greatest to ever play the game by FAR.”
This is a fact in only your head.
He scored or assisted 6 of his teams 9 goals en route to the final. This is a fact.
Now this is getting ridiculous… there’s nothing in similar if compare international goalscorer from Europe and Asia…
Top international goalscorer from Europe:
1. Ronaldo 109 goals
2. Puskas 84 goals
3. Kocsis 75 goals
4. Klose 71 goals
5. Lewandoski 69 goals
6. Muller 68 goals
Top international goalscorer from Asia:
1. Ali Daei 109 goals
2. Dahari 89 goals
3. Saeed 78 goals
4. Mabkhout 76 goals
5. Kamato 75 goals
6. Abdullah 75 goals
Top international goalscorer from SA:
1. Pele 77 goals
2. Messi 76 goals
3. Neymar 68 goals
4. Suarez 64 goals
5. L.Ronaldo 62 goals
6. Romario 55 goals
In fact, apart from Ronaldo, top goalscorer from Europe and SA are of similar quality and more comparable. You can’t really be serious to say Lewandoski or Muller scoring 68-69 goals in Europe is as easy as Kamato or Abdullah scoring 75 goals in Asia? Or is it far easier than Neymar or Suarez scoring 64-68 goals in SA?
Just because Ronaldo had insane numbers doesn’t mean it’s easier for the whole of Europe to score. Yes there are some cannon folders, but it also happens the same to SA players in friendlies. Truth is, Ronaldo is by far the best goalscorer in Europe, even though there have been so many great goalscorer in Europe over the years (more than any other part of world for sure), none of them come close. Does it not count for something?
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I am just going to requote my post in response to the CR7 50cents army talking about quality of players.
Who has CR7 won the leagues and CL with, who has Messi won the leagues and CL with? Why is no one talking about the difference in quality of the managers/coaches these 2 players played under. Heck Messi won the CL with Enrique, won more leagues under Valverde than CR7 had with Mourinho and Ancelotti combined
that argument might have been valid...until the last copa America. Messi finishing top scorer and with 5 assists...without xavi and iniesta. They beat Brazil in Rio in the final...also without xavi and iniesta. You are also overlooking the fact that Messi won the league, against ronaldo, without xavi and iniesta. Messi got to a World Cup final in the same tournament Portugal played in, also without xavi and iniesta. I watch barcelona a lot, that team which won the CL for Luis Enrique, xavi was at the end of his time in Barca and not a starter and nowhere near his peak years. Only iniesta was starting. Take Messi out of that team and they don’t even make it to the final. All in all I don’t think someone can be inferior to someone in the same domestic league (both in h2h or number of titles) and claim to be better than the other player.
Let me put it plain and simple for you to understand. Messi's influence on any given game goes beyond goals and goes beyond assists despite the fact that his contribution in these stats is amongst the very best in history.
Have a look at the copa America stats: Most goals, most assists, most chances created, amongst the most dribbles completed, most accurate through balls, most key passes etc. If you look at these same stats in other competitions, he is always at or near the top of the list. He also gets the most Motm awards every season.
That is how much Messi, even at 34, has on his team.
I used to be the most ardent Ronaldo fan until I watched Messi back in December 2007 in a la liga match. And even though I continued supporting Ronaldo, I always accepted that Messi was and has always been another level apart from goalscoring.
I am still shocked that even at Redcafe, the number of votes for Messi is more than CR7. Guess it will be even more at other forums.
Sure
You can't even compare Müller and Cristiano since Cristiano got to play much more cannon fodder than Müller. That's unique to this era of international football. That's why statistics are a funny little pastime but nothing more than that. I'm happy that Cristiano got the record because it's always nice witnessing something historical during your lifetime but in the end, we're comparing apples and oranges here and you should never read too much into comparing apples and oranges.
Watch the players and judge, not their statistics.
Sure that's a fair point, but my post is in response to someone who claim goalscorer from Europe in general are just flat-track bully against cannon folders like those from Asia, which isn't true.
And even we can't compare stats of players from different era, we can still compare Ronaldo with other top European or SA strikers from the modern time in roughly the similar era, which is more of apple to apple comparsion. As you can see below, the gap is still so huge.
Top European goalscorer in modern era:
1. Ronaldo - 109 goals
2. Klose - 71 goals
3. Lewandowski - 69 goals
4. Robbie Keane - 68 goals
5. Lukaku - 64 goals
6. Ibrahimovic - 62 goals
7. David Villa - 59 goals
8. Dzeko - 59 goals
9. Rooney - 53 goals
10. Henry - 51 goals
Top SA goalscorer in modern era:
1. Messi - 76 goals
2. Neymar - 68 goals
3. Suarez - 64 goals
4. L.Ronaldo - 62 goals
5. Romario - 55 goals
6. Batistuta - 54 goals
7. Cavani - 53 goals
8. Sanchez - 46 goals
9. Augero - 42 goals
10. Vargas - 40 goals
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Some of the guys you mention in those top 6 (Kocsis, Puskas and Muller) don't know what's playing againt cannon fodder like San Marino, Gibraltar or Andorra, worst they had was Albania or Cyprus, and if you follow on that thread a little more, all those goals that modern players scored against smaller teams of today (Bosnia, Serbia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia...) didn't "exist" before because at their time that was facing Yugoslavia or the USSR which were powerhouses in the sport.
And with that in mind, you're not even looking at the ratios, Muller played 62 games and scored 68 goals, Puskas 85 games and 84 goals, Kocsis 68 games and 75. We could even argue about how GOAT is Pelé in a historical context amongst all eras, but no player dominates his era as hard as him, yet his ratio is worse than the European strikers (77 goals in 92 games) which should serve as a point of how South America has a closer level between their teams.
I'm not going to go deeper into the rest of the regions or argue for or against Ronaldo on this topic, but just from the start you're comparing apples and oranges. I think the fairest point to drive home how good Ronaldo's goalscoring record is to compare it to other players that have played for Portugal and, while not world elite level, didn't manage to perform against almost the same countries Ronaldo faces (Pauleta 47 goals in 88 games, Nuno Gomes 29 goals in 79 games, Postiga 27 goals in 71 games, that's the most solid ground to start building a case about a player. Personally I always thought that Pauleta's record was a great outlier on his career and that any Portuguese player would have a hard time to beat it, I was very wrong.
For me, his record is absurd not because he was the greatest at points, or he caught fire on a certain streak scoring 8 or 12 goals in 6 months, but because he did it for 17 years and he's still trying to score as much as he can on any pitch of international level against teams most players would've give a damn against. It's "easy" to motivate yourself to be the best for 3 or 5 years, it's nice to have a good mindset that lets you peak over 4 years and put you up there with the legends. But Ronaldo is the only player in history that has been obsessed about being the best and breaking as many records as he can for such a long period, other arguments? Subjective and prone to be lost between the hay, but that one is, in my opinion, indisputable.
Muller scored in a World Cup final and semi finals, along with 3 goals across 2 European Championship finals. He also scored 3 goals across 2 EC finals with Bayern.
He also held the record for most goals (14) in the WC for 32 years.
Ronaldo can only dream of goals in games as big as that.
Gerd Muller scored more goals than the number of games he played at international level, has the highest goal per game ratio of all time in the European Cup/Champions League and also scored in the European Cup final, the European Chanpionship final and the World Cup final.
You’re absolutely right that if football was all about who scored the goals then Gerd Muller would be in the GOAT conversation, because no one in history (apart from perhaps one or two guys: definitely not Ronaldo or Messi) has scored goals at the rate he did and in games as big as he did. The fact that he’s not in the GOAT conversation suggests that football is not just about how many goals you scored.
Well there were lots of high scoreline games back in the 50s-60s. For example, back in Kocsis and Puskas time, there were many games which ended up with high scoreline of 9-0 (vs Romania, S.Korea), 12-0 (vs Albania), 8-0 (vs Finland) etc. I'd say football during those era, there were lots of amateur footballers and poor defenders in the game, not really same standard as football today.
And since this is Messi vs Ronaldo thread, Ronaldo does actually have better ratio than Messi for international football too.
But anyway, its true we can't compare players from different era. Back then football is less physically demanding too and less defensive-minded, I'd say its much easier to score goals back then, but lets not go deep into that, as we would have pages of arguments on modern football vs the old times.
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Personally i dont think there is. Best ever though? It's definitely a good argument at this stage but he has fairly good competition. If he keeps going to 40 or beyond he probably cant be caught
Messi/Barcelona have won 2 Cl in the last 10 years.
Well Ronaldo also currently hold the record for most goals (14) in Euro, and most goals (21) in WC+Euro. But sure Portugal isn't the same as West Germany in 70s, the team which dominate the era. So unfortunately Ronaldo doesn't have as many big goals in final and semi-final.
basically, what list says is that you have to be GOAT level attacker if you're South American just to stand a chance of entering top 20, Pele and Messi being the only ones. and even them are probably going to left in dust by Lukaku and similar strikers in future. so which part of my post saying European and Asian players benefit from cannon fodder is wrong?
we're looking at the same list I assume. 26 of them are from Asia, 22 from Europe, only 8 from South America - and South America produced 3 goats.
Hmm not really. I'd say over the years there were lots more top strikers produced from Europe than from SA, which isn't hard to understand, as there are only 2 strong nations from SA (Brazil and Argentina), and maybe 3 decent nations (Uruguay, Chile, Columbia). In Europe there are at least 5 or 6 strong nations (Germany, Italy, Spain, France, England or Netherland), and another 10 other decent nations. The numbers just isn't the same to begin with, not to mention the huge difference in quality between European leagues and SA leagues.
But there isn't huge difference in number of goals scored among the top 10 Europeans and South Americans strikers over past 20 years. I am not saying they are the same, maybe top European strikers in average has scored around 10 goals more than top SA strikers. But most likely it is because of the huge gap of total numbers of top strikers among the 2 continents.
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Why are England a top nation and Uruguay just "decent". They beat England in the World Cup last time they played. They've produced better defenders than England have in recent times and they've produced better strikers in recent times. I think you're being extremely harsh on Uruguay and Chile tbh. They'd compete with any of the European nations if they were based here. Suarez, Cavani, Godin, Muslera, Gimenez, Vidal, Sanchez, Aranguiz, Bravo, Medel et al. They've been top teams in this era.
Well surely Uruguay has a strong team in recent years, but I am just looking from a period of past 20 years, by looking at the amount of top players produced from England, they do have a claim to be strong football nation, but of course they didn't quite delivered as much as expected.
England
WC 02 - quarter
WC 06 - quarter
WC 10 - last 16
WC 14 - group stage
WC 18 - 4th
Urguary
WC 02 - group stage
WC 06 - not qualify
WC 10 - 4th
WC 14 - last 16
WC 18 - quarter
Some fantastic discussion lately in this thread. Keep it up boys
Ronaldo has also played in 5 European Championship and 4 World Cups. Muller played in 1 European Championship and 2 World Cups.
Muller has 18 goals from 3 tournaments, Ronaldo has 21 goals from 9 tournaments. Muller's stats are ridiculous.
Ron is obviously going to break a lot of records because of his longevity, and playing far more games than other greats.
Because somehow - even though that's arguably the greatest skill of all - that has become an insult on here when speaking about Ronaldo. Each side can use stats to back up their points, there's no right answer. So different drinks for different needs.
This is a very good point. In the modern game, world-class managers are extremely important with managers like Klopp and Simeone who can transform nearly teams into the elite of club football. There is no doubt Messi has only had one world class manager whereas Ronaldo has been lucky enough to have been managed by a plethora of greats and top managers. If you look at the major titles their managers have won without them it paints a very vivid picture:
Ronaldo's managers' resume without Ronaldo:
World Cup: 1
Champions League: 6
Europa/Cup Winner's Cup: 8
PL: 16
La Liga: 3
Serie A: 8
Bundesliga: 1
Ligue Un: 1
Other European Leagues: 6
South American Leagues: 6
Messi's managers' resume without Messi:
Copa America: 3
PL: 3
Bundesliga: 3
Eredivisie: 3
Libertadores: 1
South American Leagues: 7
Doubt any Ronaldo fan will address this.
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What?
Well isn't of the point that Ronaldo is a goat goalscorer while Pele, Messi, Maradona and Cryuff are goat level as well in other football skills.
Stats... Whatever. Which player makes you laugh in joyous disbelief the most, when you watch their highlights? Which player has the range of skills, and the imagination, to do anything they want with the ball, no matter the opposition? Which player do other top football players wish they were? Which player are we going to be comparing the next GOAT candidate to in a generation or so? Deep down, we all know the answer.
Only if you ignored Ronaldo in his early years/prime and imagine him as some kind of Portuguese Klose
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