Please Note: No Part of this article should be reproduced or copied without the approval of the writer.

[img]http://4.bp..com/-7Tg9faQGhHg/URssB4SBY2I/AAAAAAAAG3M/nA97SjCCOAc/s1600/messi_vs_ronaldo_wallpaper_2013-017u.jpg[/img]
^{Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo}

Today’s great footballers are incomparably fitter than their predecessors. But their perfection goes beyond the physical. This is the best time in football’s history to be a star. The game has been restructured in their service.

They have been two of the world’s most outstanding footballers for several years, dominating the football scene with their array of talents, skills and fascinating panaches of finding their ways through opponents and deciding eventual results in big matches.

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are considered the modern gods of a game played in every land on the planet. They are young. They are living the dream. They are still exploring their limitations. And because they are growing as performers, we do not yet know their place among the greats.

But in one aspect they are already up there. They transcend the league in which they play. Barely a match goes by in which they fail to pull off a trick that makes watching them a joy. But beyond that, they actually outscore the goal scorers on their teams. The most amazing feats they produce every season – they score goals, set new records and break them.

Regardless of their mesmerizing displays, fans all over the world have and still engage in what seems to be an eternal debate as to who is the better person among the two. There are several differences between the two world class players however; Messi is the quiet one, Ronaldo the showman. Messi stands chin-high to Ronaldo. He is a manikin to an Adonis, a Mini to a Maserati. More importantly, Messi has been considered to be a genius of the game while Ronaldo is a hard worker whose body allows for the physique of a modern day footballer.

The obsession for stats can blur the beauty of their game. Seeing Messi dart between the tackles or Ronaldo glide so swiftly and powerfully through them is preferable to counting the notches on their belts.

The statisticians do not even agree on which of all the tournaments they play — La Liga, the Champions League, the Spanish Cup, the Super Cup, the Club World Cup and so on — they should include in their charts.

Messi, now 27, has been at Barcelona since puberty. He has grown up in the style of the club, and he knew even before he grew into the first team exactly how, where and when Xavi Hernández would make the passes or Andrés Iniesta would run for the ball or make decoy runs. The maturing of Messi, from a 16-year-old debutant to something approaching the finished article, has been one consistent, upward spiral. At the time former coach, Pep Guardiola, a former captain of the team, became the coach, Messi moved from the wing to be the main forward.
He is free to move where instinct, skill and determination take him. He once played apprentice to Ronaldinho, and then he dovetailed with Samuel Eto’o, then for a season with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to David Villa and now to Suarez.

But Ronaldo, 29, is Real Madrid’s main penalty-taker. He is also perhaps the world’s most accomplished striker of free kicks. His timing of kicking a static ball, his ability to impart swerve and spin as if by remote control, is better than David Beckham’s. Cristiano plays a more attacking role, most often either as a striker or as a winger, and he is able to play on either wing as well through the centre of the pitch, making him a versatile attacker.

Irrespective of the stats and the comparison between these two greats, it is certain that football has moved from an era where a star dominates a generation while another lies in wait. Although one could say Messi and Ronaldo are not the only best legs in the game, other football stars have been made to feel like weaklings whenever their name pops up.

In 2012, Ronaldo was announced ‘The world’s most complete footballer’ by the BBC and in 2014, he was announced ‘The world’s fittest footballer’ for going on a fifteen push-up clap. For modern day footballers, a body which functions like a machine is required to dominate the game, while Messi recently broke the UEFA all time goal record of the tournament. Ronaldo, as well as Messi smashed Raul's record to move closer than ever.

Cristiano Ronaldo. Footballers of his build, with high proportions of fast-twitch sprinter’s muscle fibres, tend to break down early. That happened to the 1990s stars Ronaldo (of Brazil) and Michael Owen. But through unceasing exercise and diet, Cristiano has encased himself in steel. After returning from a game abroad, according to him, he sometimes takes an ice bath at 5am. He is arrogant because he believes, correctly, that he made himself through hard work. Currently, Madrid is festooned with 19m-high posters of him in his underpants. It is not an advertising campaign that anyone ever contemplated for Maradona.

Messi and Ronaldo rarely get injured, save for lack of rest. They are equipped to produce genius twice weekly almost for ever. Ronaldo has been averaging more than a goal a game for nearly five years at Madrid, the highest ratio in Spanish football’s history. In 2012, Messi scored an unprecedented 91 goals.

The greatness of the duo seems automatic. Arsenal’s manager Arsène Wenger has said Messi is “like a PlayStation”, a sort of human computer game. Something has been lost in the process. Maradona offered the spectacle of the footballer’s struggle with the inner man. Messi offers only a perfectly professional genius, while Ronaldo has done the same.

Though a stiff rivalry grows between the pair, one could say that Ronaldo’s success is as a result of Messi’s entrance into the big stage. Ronaldo once admitted he hates losing and that everything is more like competition to him, “everybody around me know that I hate to lose, I don’t take it well. That is why I sometimes race with my girlfriend in the pool. I don’t like to lose”. The rivalry that grows between them has been the drive towards becoming super heroes of the modern day football. “Even before he signed for Real (Madrid), I knew he would be my rival” were Messi’s words when asked what he thinks of Ronaldo.

Judging both players based on the number of goals scored is merely an understatement. Messi has racked up four FIFA Ballon D’OR awards while Ronaldo lags behind with two adrift. Both players have won every available trophy they have ever come across except the World Cup. Ronaldo shows greater promises even as he ages and might end up closing the gap, if not surpass his arch rival in the quest to register his name on the sands of time.

At some point, UEFA President, Michel Platini joked that having both Messi and Ronaldo on the same side in a team would be regarded as cheat. Each and every season, the world’s most recognized football meeting, the el clasico, is made to look like Messi and Ronaldo’s show in which they are to outshine, outdo and tell the world who the true great is.

Though the eternal debate frenzies among fans of both players as to who is better, it can only be noted that witnessing two consistent super humans in Messi and Cristiano is not something that would be seen very often, not even in the future. Facts and figures will never replace the thrill of seeing Messi or Ronaldo do the unexpected. We should use the word sparingly, but it’s called genius.

Well written and unbiased article. Nice one OP. You are definitely a good writer

akinsadeez:
Well written and unbiased article. Nice one OP. You are definitely a good writer

Thanks!

Nice post without sentiments.