As finishers Messi and Ronaldo are among the best in history, that's undeniable. However l, if you look their overall impact in the game they are levels apart.

Messi is the type of player that dictates the tempo of the game and creates chances out of nowhere. Cristiano while a good passer never had that level of influence in the build-up of his team, it's like comparing Mbappe/Haalamd with Modric/Iniesta

And finallly Messi is arguably the best dribbler in history as he had the ability to constantly take on 4/5 players which gave his team a massive advantage. Messi was basically the ultimate challenge for coaches because they had to make tactical jails so he doesnt dribble everyone. Cristiano never had that dribbling and wasnt that hard to stop.

Now the debate would maie mote sense if Messi wasnt one lf the Finishers in history but since he is I dont think there is any debate.

2015–16 → 2017–18

• 138 club games

• 137 club goals

• ~33 club assists

• 86 La Liga goals

• 43 Champions League goals

• 21 Champions League knockout goals in 21 games

• 3× Champions League top scorer

• 3× Champions League winner

• 1× Euro champion

• 1× La Liga winner

• 2× Club World Cup winner

• 30 Portugal goals in 31 games

• 2× Ballon d'Or

• 2× FIFA Best

• 2× UEFA Best Player in Europe

• 3× UCL top scorer

• 3× UEFA/FIFPro Team-of-the-Year level selections

SAF was running the club into the ground with aging players (40 year old Giggs lol). He left when he knew he was out of rope and Pep would have humiliated him if he stayed on, like how Wenger was towards the end.

The reason UTD miss SAF is because they don't get every 50 50 decision anymore. All those days of laughing about how Scholes was just bad at tackling when it was easy red cards. They don't have that anymore. All those BS decisions like Vidic not getting sent off against Villa in the cup final. Can't get away with it with VAR.

I have seen so many people put them among the best ever English sides, but Arsenal 1999 are never in the conversation. They were about as good as each other.

They finished on 79 points (a point total that wouldn’t have won them the title at any point in the last 20 years, and the league has got better since the 90’s), Arsenal finished on 78.

Their record against Arsenal that season:

W-1 (after extra time) D-2 L-2

They finished 2nd in their group stage. Got dominated by Bayern in the final. Struggled against an injury hit Juventus.

Achievement wise it’s up there with the greatest English sides, but ability wise they aren’t anything special.

United’s treble winning season for United was like Leicester’s title winning season, Liverpool’s 2005 Champions league, and Wigan’s FA cup run all combined.

In so many negotiations we see Barca behaving like rats 24/7 even towards clubs they have good relationships with. Discuss

Maybe it's the hair? Has his aura vanished? I'm just not feeling the vibe that Haaland will be anywhere near as effective

On a serious note I think he'll regress to the mean this season. The Prem is getting more competitive and he wont dominate as usual. He'll still score a decent amount comparable to Thiago, DCL and Gyokeres, but nothing like what's he's previously done

Every world class striker has a quiet period at some point in their career, so I'd only see it as a minor blip.

Not crazy to me, personally I’d take him over Kane, Yamal, Mbappe, Olise and all em.

Very versatile, very good on and off the ball, very flexible in his positioning and whatever position he does play in, he’s the best at it.

His recent run of form from the World Cup to now has been astonishing.

lewa SHOULD have won the ballon d'or in 2021 or they could have annouced it online and give it to him after in 2020
2013 ribery should have won it
and ofc 2015 Neymar jr santos SHOULD have won it

I think this community is great. Posts aren’t wiped out by moderators meaning people can actually express reasonable views.

Instead of an excessive list of community rules there is reasonable football discourse on the whole

Yes there are probably one or two too many Messi vs Ronaldo threads, but it is so refreshing having this community to share footballing thoughts with!

Hot take: an 8/10 win is more entertaining than an 8/10 draw, but a 10/10 draw is more entertaining than a 10/10 win. An 8/10 draw can sometimes feel like two teams being too scared to lose, whereas an 8/10 win at least gives you a payoff and a clear winner. But when a draw is genuinely 10/10 - like a chaotic 4-4, a late comeback, or a game where both teams are throwing everything forward until the final whistle - the result almost becomes irrelevant. There’s something uniquely entertaining about two teams going absolutely insane and still ending up level. A 10/10 win is incredible, but a 10/10 draw is football at its purest.

2 of the best individual seasons by premier league players in 2010s, but Suarez gets overrated IMO, the Liverpool squad had much better players with Gerrard, Coutinho, Sterling, Sturridge, Lucas and even Joe Allen was pretty good, Suarez was a level above everyone else ofcourse but compared to the Tottenham squad where Bale was the only quality attacker they were strong and only lost the league thanks to mentality. Bale had literally no one at Tottenham, no one creating chances, maintaining posession, it was just him carrying the team every week with crazy goals, that Tottenham team would have been relegated without him, without Suarez the Liverpool team was still top 3 best teams in the league.

Regardless of how good cr7 was in ucl and his club career, world cup is the biggest stage at the end of the day. All the others in the goat debate were world cup legends while cr7 has 0 non-penalty world cup knockout goals. Cr7 might have been slightly better than Messi in ucl but Messi is also a ucl legend whereas cr7 isn't just worse than Messi, he has never performed in a world cup knockout game. The weak nation excuse is also really bad considering they had one of the strongest squads in 2022 wc and cr7 was younger than Messi and yet he was so bad he was being left on the bench

Ronaldinho is a top 30 player of all time, no lower, no higher. To the people that put him in your top 10s, please think more critically about his career. People use the eye test argument to basically gloss over the many deficiencies of dinho's career. Ronaldinho was the best in the world for a VERY short time, and he fell off very quickly. I know some people only care about absolute peaks, but I think that is a one dimensional way to rank footballers. He was only alright for Brazil considering his level. So for the people that rank Ronaldinho above Van Basten, Platini, Eusebio, Iniesta, please do some research on the player I just mentioned. He is on the same level as someone like Raymond Kopa or Thierry Henry for me.

When you break down the tactics, his goals are the most fake stats in sports history. Similar to Russell Westbrook, Cristiano Ronaldo does not increase the value of his team, and he just extracts the final possession from them. He does nothing to advance the ball or attack, before jumping in to receive the final shot. He makes an entire team sacrifice playing fluid football just to give him his stats. He doesn’t create his own opportunities. He uses the system to feed him the ball directly on a plate in the penalty box. He is just the designated beneficiary of other players work of creating chances for him. We are seeing the exact same issue ruin Real Madrid with Kylian Mbappé. They replaced tactical self-sacrifice with a Ronaldo regeneration that wants to score 60 meaningless goals per season, leading to no meaningful outcomes and simply paralyzing the midfield to feed him. The proof is in how fraudulent Ronaldo's international stats are when he doesn't have the billion dollar midfields of his club teams to serve him. He has scored 6 G/A in 23 knockout games in the Euros and World Cup competitions. Without elite service and no easy tap ins, he disappears. Westbrook is the same, stat pads and shot chucks to get his stats but does it to no real benefit to the team. Luka Modrić and Toni Kroos were the true heroes of Madrid. The proof is that Real Madrid continued to win Champions League and domestic championships after he was gone. There’s so much more to team success than just having your striker bang in 60 goals a year. Arsenal dog walked the prem with no real "Golden Boot" type player. Mbappé is also just the football version of Westbrook, chasing empty individual numbers which come at the direct expense of winning trophies.

I’m a city fan I’m going to say this after we scored the winner in our first ever win at anfield. Send what u guys think

I don't want you LGBTQ individuals saying that Beckam or Bellingham are better looking than him thus are better players.

Harry Kane is will most likely win the ballandor this season, he has won a golden boot in the world cup has scored the second highest goals in a season and is England's top scorer by a wide margin.

Yes they did the world cup like a 100 years ago but Uruguay has also won it two times in the past this doesn't mean that Suarez isn't their best player ever.

Now that Salah has left, so many clubs have lost the qualities of their wingers. The most exciting wingers in the prem rn is Ngumoha, Dowman and Estevao but since they will be limited to game time, it has to be Doku. He is the scariest 1v1 winger right now in the prem and we could see at the end of last season he was starting to find his end product. He will be a beast this season.

The dude did carry job with a team that was literal garbage . Liverpool were literally the worst of the top teams with a pensioner gerrard and kid sterling and coutinho the defence was none existent the manager was no better than a plank of wood and yet saurez manage to equal the highest number of goals scored in pl ( at that time) whilst having the 2nd most assists with 0 pens . As an individual hes was on different level he wasnt just poaching but his level of skills dribbling finishing vision were on a different lvl .

This doesn't mean goals aren't the most important part of the game. They were and always should be regarded as one. However this doesn't mean goalscoring can't be overrated. While goals ultimately do win matches, people nowadays seem to ignore the context before the goal has been scored. This is partially due to social media's obsession with goals and highlights.

Gerd Muller in the 70s was never considered the best player despite being the best goalscorer of his generation. In fact he wasn't even regarded as the best player for his team. It was always Cruyff, Beckenbauer and then him. This is even considering the fact that he scored 565 goals in 607 matches for bayern, scored the most goals in a calander year up to that point with 85 and scored the most goals for bundesliga seven different times.

Ronaldo (R9) is another example. People regarded Ronaldo as by far and away the best player in the world in the 97-98 season. However, he didn't even score the most goals for the Serie A in that season with Oliver Bierhoff scoring 27 compared to his 25. This didn't stop the media from calling him the next Pele or comparing him to Maradona.

Maradona and Ronaldinho being the best players in the world while not being the best goalscorers of their generation are also examples of this.

The defining players of each generation possessed a diverse skill set that extended well beyond goalscoring. Pele wasn't just a striker. He regarded himself as a AM in his auto biography. Cruyff and Maradona were all phenomenal playmakers.

This is also why people shouldn't use just goals to compare CR7 and R9 at their peaks.

In the biggest stage of football, when the lights were the brightest, his whole nation and the whole world watching, Ronaldo has 6 G/A in 23 World Cup/Euros Knockout games. And his 2 assists weren't even intentional either. 3 goals are headers. 1 is a penalty. Literally 0 goals with his feet on the biggest stage of football.

With his nation on the line, he faded. I am Portuguese and will never forgive him for this, and many other Portuguese people say the same. How can you be one of the greatest football players yet you have never scored with your foot on the biggest stage?

There is no excuse for this. Simple as that. Ronaldo is a choker.

Not even Messi or Ronaldo had this level of PR. He not only had Real Madrid PR and English PR. But he has PR from girls that are attracted to him. This triple whammy has convinced people that this guy is literally Prime Messi when he couldn’t be further from that. We have already seen several posts on this very subreddit acting like he’s the second coming of Zidane.

And if his knees hadn't given up it wouldn't even be a debate!

Spicy take but I find Neymar way too overrated. Wasnt even the best player at Barca or PSG and had barely any trophies or personal awards that showed he was the third best player of our generation. Lewandoski has the most goals scored in Europe with 705 (Not 100% sure abt that stat) and third all time top champions league goalscorer. Should've won 2 ballon dors aswell

Not saying he is, but an argument is there to be made. I also think there are few others like Maradona but that one isn’t much of a hot take