But there's a perfectly clear reason for that though, he was competing with Messi. There's lists that are putting players that simply wouldn't have given Messi the competition Ronaldo did, for so long. Purely nostalgia choices.
But who wouldn't? In a hypothetical scenario where they'll get to train and care for their body like modern professionals.
Cruyff would. Di Stéfano would. Puskás would. Beckenbauer would be an odd comparison but even van Dijk gave Messi a run for his money in 2019 (686 vs 679 points) — and Der Kaiser was in another league to him (or any other defender in history) in terms of his ball-playing skills. And van Dijk is pretty great (and probably a match for Beckenbauer in pure defending with an additional bonus of freakish athleticism)! Zico is probably the closest player to Messi in terms of the skillset and style (as well as an overall level)... et cetera.
Messi would, in all likelihood, overcome all aside from Pelé (Maradona would get bored at some point). Just like he overcame Cristiano — and pretty convincingly at that, even though the latter did made an impressive comeback in the second half of the 2010's, significantly closing the gap. But they'll certainly be able to compete with him, winning a few Ballon d'Ors on the way. It's harder to speculate about the likes of Luis Ronaldo or van Basten, whose career got derailed by injuries — would it have been better with modern medicine (and the enormously improved protection of attackers in modern game)? Or were they doomed from the start? But at their absolute peak they certainly could've challenged him. I'd pay an absolute fortune to see peak Maradona, Pelé, Luis Ronaldo and Messi battle it out in fair and similar conditions (and I don't think that Cristiano comes on top in this hypothetical competition unless it's a two-decade long marathon).
Also, most of them were competing with each other (so, other GOAT candidates). Di Stéfano vs Puskás. A bunch of the 1960's greats like Best, Charlton & Eusébio trying their luck against Pelé (and ultimately falling short). Cruyff vs Beckenbauer (with Müller also hanging around). Platini vs Zico vs Maradona, possibly the three greatest pure number 10s that the world had ever seen (although Pelé potentially falls into the same category). Even Luis Ronaldo had Zidane (it's debatable whenever he's a top-10 player or not but for that discussion it's better to go to the Salah thread... I'm still not entirely sure why).
Cristiano isn't worse than those players by any stretch. Probably less gifted in terms of pure ball manipulation skills than the majority of them but his actual footballing talent gets underrated so much with this boring social media driven simplification of "talent vs hard-work" (as in, Messi vs Cristiano). He's certainly more motivated and ridiculously driven than almost all of them, which had earned him all those numbers and records and even a slightly questionable claim for the GOAT status. I mean, Cruyff used to purposely shoot towards the woodwork, not into the net, if the score was already convincing and there was no risk. Because the sound of the ball hitting the woodwork caused more reaction from the fans than a 4th or a 5th goal in a hopeless battering. Can you imagine Cristiano doing that?
But this is as much Cristiano's own doing as it is football's zeitgeist... football was never as focused on goals and individual stats as it is now. The disparity between the top teams and the rest had also never been as consistently big as it was during the era of Real's & Barça's dominance... Cristiano and Messi played an enormous part in that but they were surrounded by not just world-class, but by a plethora of all-time greats in most of the key positions (Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Alves; Modrić, Kroos, Benzema, Marcelo... etc.). Pelé had the same luxury at the international level, so did Puskás (up until the 1956 revolution, so not for that long) and that's probably it. Dutch & West German teams of the 1970's had some historic talent to be fair but quite a few average (on an all-time scale) players in key positions as well. He had the luxury of playing for the two of the greatest managers of all-time at the time of the absolute peak of sports nutrition and medicine, prolonging his career for so much longer. Et cetera et cetera.
Sorry for the rant (and another, shorter rant incoming). I get triggered by the word "disrespect" since this is the word that is usually used in short (and mostly horribly pointless) comments on social media under the myriad of football-related content. You can't disrespect a player by putting him in the top-10 of the greatest footballers to ever play the game, even if it's in the 10th place (a fairly uncommon placing for Cristiano in this thread). He has too many shortcomings to be considered the absolute best — he's not the absolute best in his own generation and even Messi himself isn't a clear-cut number 1 in history (although by this point he's most people's preferred choice for the top spot and deservingly so). And there's been so many magical, mercurial, otherworldly talented players, that you can easily make an argument for a lot of them to be placed ahead of Cristiano — just like you can make a lot of arguments for Cristiano to be placed ahead of the likes of Cruyff and Di Stéfano. It's not disrespect, it's personal opinion and difference in how people evaluate footballer's greatness — do they focus more on their club or their international career, do they prefer a higher peak or superior longevity, what's more important — team honours or individual ones, how do you calculate the value of goals over different leagues and eras etc. How do you compare strikers, wingers, midfielders and centre backs after all (I'm not even going to talk about goalkeepers here!). There's no universal answer to those questions and some of those criteria can be quite unfavourable to Cristiano (while some can even back his claim to be the greatest footballer of all-time even ahead Messi, Pelé and Maradona).
