Messi vs Ronaldo: A philosophical view

There is one thing apiece that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi sympathizers are finding it difficult to contend with. There is also one other thing that the two of them cannot settle on. These are among the many reasons why the debate between who is the best player between them keeps getting controversial by the day.

Cristiano Ronaldo fans cannot believe that despite his out of the world, mind blowing performances over the last 10 years, there was still someone considered by many (other than those in their category) to be better than him and perhaps rightly so. Lionel Messi fans cannot believe that his super human and breath taking performances over the last 10 years, has not given him the absolute monopoly of global attention. That someone else is sharing the accolades and honours with him and apparently even threatening to have a larger share of them is what they can’t simply fathoms.There is one thing apiece that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi sympathizers are finding it difficult to contend with. There is also one other thing that the two of them cannot settle on. These are among the many reasons why the debate between who is the best player between them keeps getting controversial by the day.

The other thing that both Messi and Ronaldo followers won’t understand is that, rating one above the other doesn’t take anything away from the other’s greatness. Neither of them needs to be superior or inferior to any other player for him to cement a unique place for himself in the history of football. One more contentious issue is that neither Messi nor Ronaldo may be objectively considered as the greatest player of all time; although that debate would be better fruitful when they retire.

The modern football world’s obsession with Ronaldo and Messi seems to have affected many followers’ sense of memory and history. It may be possible that more than 70% of present day football followers were not born or old enough to follow football before 1990. For this category, who is the majority, no any other player in history was as good as Ronaldo and Messi, let alone surpasses them. Those who actually know what football was in the 1950s to 1980s may or may not be up to 10% and their voices are not often heard these days. Some 20% may not be that old, but they have enough knowledge of history, the problem is that we don’t often listen to them when they speak.

Except some miracle is going to happen in the remaining few years of Messi-Ronaldo careers, Pele will still remain the greatest football player of all time and only core Messi-Ronaldo fanatics and some few others will dispute that. Whatever scale one is going to use, it would be nearly impossible not to rate Pele above anyone else. From skills to statistics down to achievements, it’s all there. His over 750 official goals in just about 800 matches and his three world cup (the greatest football competition) among others will testify to that.

What of Maradona, who is viewed by many to have single-handedly won the 1986 World Cup? Well, Pele-Messi-Ronaldo individual and team achievements as well as their consistency over a long period plus their crazy statistics are too irresistible to place him above any of them; this is debatable though. His on and off the pitch controversies, and injuries also tend to work against him when it comes to discourses like this.

That this piece is intended to be more hypothetical than analytical means emphasis will not be laid on dishing out statistics of these players which it is assumed the reader is fairly conversant with. That it is intended to be as short as possible also means that long arguments will not be employed.

The player who is very closely behind Pele among the all-time greats would arguably be Lionel Messi. There is probably no objective person who would watch Messi for a year and comfortably rate any other person other than Pele equal or above him. Does that make Cristiano Ronaldo and some of the best players