da luck： Just as Frank Lampard’s retirement precipitated a whole host questions about the former Chelsea midfielder’s role in English football in relation to that of Steven Gerrard, it’s hard to talk about Cristiano Ronaldo without mentioning Lionel Messi.
da bet7k： For one thing, the two are in a class of their own. Former US Presidents often become unlikely pals, and that’s down to the simple fact that there really aren’t that many people in the world who have done the job. They can bond over it. Messi is really the only point of reference that Ronaldo can have – even greats like Maradona and Pele may be in the same bracket in terms of their footballing ability, but didn’t have to put up with the internet, social media. Literally everything that Ronaldo says or does sets hundreds of football news sites flocking to cover it as a story.
And while it’s impossible not to talk about Ronaldo and Messi, it’s often impossible to talk about them, too. When either player comes up with a few goals or even a last minute winner, they often don’t get the coverage that lesser players would get. There is no bias or anything like that, it’s simply because we take it as a given. Of course Ronaldo got that goal, now what’s next? If Messi dribbles around three players and scores, why write about it? He does it so often, we’d never write about anything else.
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But maybe what we should be writing about is what Ronaldo means to football, rather than the individual contributions he makes on a weekly basis.
The narrative is often placed in a black and white context. You’re either pro Messi or pro Ronaldo. There’s a dark and a light, a good and a bad. It’s borne out of the Pep Guardiola Jose Mourinho rivalry during their Clasico years: Ronaldo’s power and pace, champion of the Mourinho Madrid, and Messi, class and poise, champion of the Guardiola Blaugrana.
The reality is that football is in a position it probably never will be in again: two once-in-a-generation players playing for the two biggest clubs and competing on a national and European stage. At the next World Cup, Ronaldo will enter it as European champion, Messi as the last beaten finalist and reigning player of the tournament (if anyone can be such a thing.) You shouldn’t really pick and choose in such a situation – you should really just savour it.
But there is one thing that the narrative brings that should be used in a positive way: that while Messi is natural talent, Ronaldo is the product of hard work.
That’s unfair on Messi. He’s not just a prodigy who happened to turn into a maestro. There’s no way you can paint him as a fraud or as someone who is just lucky to be where he is. In many ways he’s a freak, but footballing talent is never enough by itself, and if Messi doesn’t look like he works hard, then you’re the fool and the fraud, not the four-time Ballon d’Or winner.
Yet if it’s unfair on Messi, it still relays a wonderful message from the Ronaldo side. No one, not even Cristiano Ronaldo gets anywhere without hard work. Not even Lionel Messi (though that does break the narrative somewhat.)
Messi and Ronaldo are two of a kind, and there’s really no need to choose. But there’s also no need to completely hold them up on a pedestal either – not any more than their achievements deserve, anyway.
Neither player is a ‘natural talent’ because no top talent is natural – not in the freakish ‘I’m so good I don’t need to train’ kind of way. Both players are the product of hard work and hard yards. And if there’s one day on which everyone should reflect on the fact that hard work will always make your ‘natural talent’ much more refined and useful it’s Ronaldo’s birthday.
He wasn’t the top dog when he joined Manchester United. His dedication took him from a show pony on the wing to a striker who knew exactly where the goal was.
And if you can’t talk about Ronaldo without Messi, then there’s good reason: since Ronaldo moved to Real Madrid in 2009, both men have scored 273 La Liga goals (at the time of writing, before the weekend’s fixtures.)
There’s value in hard work, you see.
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