Glory on world stage not the only path to greatness
Messi and Ronaldo must be judged on their careers as a whole, not just the ultimate prize
Look hard enough and the career of any sporting giant is necessarily imperfect. Muhammad Ali lost five fights but is probably the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. Paula Radcliffe never won an Olympic medal but is among the best-ever endurance athletes. Pete Sampras could not conquer the French Open clay but would figure in any debate about the finest men’s tennis player. On and on we could go.
The moment that any sporting great begins competing is the second they lose absolute control over their destiny and the final portrait of a career can only be taken in the round, as a complete picture, with the acceptance that there will be blemishes amid the more flawless patches.
Sport is rarely understood in just black and white. Things like injuries, timing, external competition and plain luck must also be factored. The shades of grey usually tell us most, especially when it comes to that favourite pub debate of all about the greatest exponent of a particular sport.
It is why the idea that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are somehow excluded from football’s own conversation if their team have not triumphed in Moscow three weeks from now is so absurd. Or even why the first 10 days of the tournament somehow stand as a resounding answer in Messi and Ronaldo’s ongoing battle for individual pre-eminence among this gilded generation.
We have had plenty of the usual nonsense already in recent days, perhaps best encapsulated by Andrea Pirlo. “Messi is always compared to Maradona but he needs to win the World Cup because if you don’t win the World Cup, you can’t be up there with the very best,” said Pirlo, who presumably rates Kleberson above Zico and Stephane Guivarc’h ahead of Michel Platini.
No surprise, then, that Pirlo speaks from the comfort of having won the 2006 World Cup with Italy following a penalty shoot-out against France in the final. As good
Sport is rarely black and white – things like injuries, timing and plain luck must also be factored in
as he was, he is mistaken if he thinks he was better than every Dutchman who ever played the game.
The World Cup is what it is; the ultimate test of a nation’s collective footballing power but not the definitive word on an individual career. And certainly not some alltrumping card that should be pulled out to dumb down wider discussion.
By its very nature, as largely a knockout competition, it can be fairly freakish in outcome. But for a “Hand of God” and an era with no video assistant referees, who knows if Diego Maradona’s Argentina would even have reached the 1986 semi-finals?
In any case, for all Argentina’s meltdown so far in Russia, Messi and Ronaldo have wider international careers for which they should be proud. Messi has just turned 31 and already played 126 times for his country, scoring 64 goals. That is 35 caps and 30 goals more than Maradona.
Messi also won the Fifa world youth championship with Argentina, as well as a gold medal at the 2008 summer Olympic Games. He is the youngest person to play or score for his country and he has been part of three teams who reached the Copa America final.
In the 2014 World Cup, he was voted best player of the tournament after Argentina lost the final. The wider backdrop is that Argentina had not reached the semi-finals since 1990 and have not won an international trophy since 1993.
It is a similar story with Ronaldo and Portugal. His tally of 85 goals in 152 games is stunningly good. With Ronaldo in the team, Portugal, of course, also won the European Championship in 2016 and reached the World Cup semi-finals in 2006. They had never previously progressed farther.
These are stellar international careers, even if it is still at club level that their achievements are most striking. Ronaldo has just won a fifth European Cup to add to five league titles in England and Spain and 573 club goals across 763 games. Messi has four European Cups, nine league titles and 563 goals in 669 club games.
Maradona never won the European Cup but did win two league titles at Napoli, as well as the Uefa Cup in a club career that ended with 312 goals in 590 games.
The purpose here is not particularly to argue that Messi or Ronaldo are superior – although it remains a personal view that Messi’s ability also to create makes him the best of the lot – but to show that every career has its particular kinks, characteristics and defects. That is why it can only ever make sense to assess both the context and entirety of their performances.
And why, once you do that, it quickly becomes evident that we are watching two players who already stand with anyone who came before.