World Cup woes won’t tarnish great legacies
SO, WE’LL have to suffer the rest of the greatest football show on earth without two of the finest-ever exponents of the beautiful game.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo may have exited stage left with little more than a whimper, but the debates rage on like an angry storm about who is better at kicking a leather orb around vast green swathes.
In this vacuous era driven by Facebook likes and Twitter retweets, everything is focused on the present and you’re only as good as your last 90 minutes.
Of course, in the cold light of day what happened over the past couple of weeks will do little to effect either player’s legacy, but that won’t stop the opinionated hordes shouting from the rooftops about the absolute genius of their player of choice and condemning the adversary as a fraud.
We were treated to a total of ten goals in a couple of knockout games on Saturday and the two greatest players of this, or maybe any other generation, failed to find the onion sack between them. Sure, they must be past it!
At 31 and 33 respectively, Messi and Ronaldo’s hopes of lifting the World Cup are all but gone, but will that really have any long-standing impact on how they are remembered by all of us lucky enough to have watched them ply their trade?
Messi almost pulled it off four years ago when he helped to drag Argentina to the final, winning the Golden Ball as best player at the tournament in the process.
Try as he might though, he couldn’t muster the same impact this time around, with the drop off in quality of the players around him obviously a telling factor.
Having captained his country to European Championship glory in 2016, Cristiano Ronaldo began this tournament as if it was going to be his World Cup, but after that lightning start his form tapered off quickly and, despite plundering an early winner against Morocco, he failed to have the influence he would have liked thereafter.
Predictably, the fanatical fanboys on both sides will always point to the positives when it comes to their man and then ostrich-like stick their heads in the sand to ignore the negatives.
When Messi missed a penalty against Iceland the claims were that Ronaldo wouldn’t do such a ghastly thing, when in fact Ronaldo only has a 50 per cent spot-kick conversion rate for Portugal in major tournaments.
Also, in 514 minutes of football in the knockout stages of World Cups, the Portuguese captain has never scored or provided an assist, while Messi has played even more minutes in the latter stages of the tournament without a goal, 756 to be precise.
There’s also a false belief that Ronaldo is lethal from dead-balls, when in fact his hat-trick strike against Spain was his first goal direct from a free-kick at a major tournament at the 45th attempt.
Messi’s conversion rate in this year’s tournament is hardly the stuff of legend either as he had twelve shots in Argentina’s first two group games, more than any other player, but didn’t score with any of them.
These stats are in no way intended to be damning, just a means of illustrating the blinkered views of those bowing down at the altar of one or the other.
Instead of being some kind of football deities, both players are human and although they’re understandibly judged to a higher standard than others, they can’t do it all on their own.
Some will have you believe that Diego Maradona won the biggest prize in international football on his own with Argentina in 1986, and while he was undoubtedly the star of the show in that tournament, a quick glance at the record books will show he had a decent supporting cast around him, with his team-mates stepping up and scoring important goals.
Anyway, the notion that you have to win a World Cup to be considered the greatest is un- doubtedly utterly nonsensical codswallop.
There’s no denying that the Champions League is of a higher quality than the World Cup, and both Ronaldo and Messi have had plenty of joy in that regard and we’re lucky enough to be able to witness it year in and year out.
Whereas you’re relying on the bounce of the ball and the good fortune to be born in the right place to win the World Cup, the cream will generally come to the top in the pinnacle of club football.
George Best, for example, never even played in a World Cup, but there’s plenty that will argue, and justifiably so, that he’s better than any of the English side which won the coveted prize in 1966.
Others like Ferenc Puskas and Eusebio fell agonisingly short of lifting the greatest international prize, but it hasn’t tarnished their reputations as they weren’t lucky enough to be surrounded by supreme talent like another one of the outstanding players, Pelé.
Like Puskas and Eusebio, our modern stars couldn’t quite pull off the World Cup dream either.
Despite Ronaldo grabbing the headlines with a hat-trick as Portugal drew their tournament opener 3-3 with Spain and scoring the early winner against Morrocco, he failed to really hit the heights after that.
Messi began the competition with the ignominy of a penalty miss and, while he showed flashes of his brilliance on occasion, in the main he was a shadow of his mesmeric self as Argentina limped out of the tournament.
That said, the talent of both is unquestioned, or at least should be. However, when one of the highly-decorated duo fails to shine you just have to go on to social media to find a host of boo-boys rubbing their hands gleefully as they pour cold water on any past achievements.
Adults behaving like children with a ‘my player is better than yours’ attitude. You could almost picture the unfortunate creatures sitting behind their screens wearing a full Messi or Ronaldo kit with matching knee-length socks and all.
Just appreciate these wonderful players while we still can. Whether you love them or hate them, lord knows we’ll miss them when they retire from the game.
The fact that they’re gone from this tournament, however, might not be such a bad thing.
At least we can concentrate on the football now, instead of the incessant childish bickering.