Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi: Is their era of dominance heading towards its end?
SEVEN weeks into the season, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have scored only three club goals between them.
The pair have dominated football for the past decade, with a combined 1,369 goals, 10 Ballons d’Or and nine Champions League titles.
But with Barcelona and Argentina’s Messi, 32, suffering from multiple injuries already this season and Juventus and Portugal forward Ronaldo, 34, no longer winning golden boots, are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the pair’s era of dominance?
Has the decline started?
Nothing lasts forever. This is the first time since 2005-06 they have scored fewer than five club goals combined by 30 September.
Last season was the first time in 11 years that neither won the Ballon d’Or - although Messi did win the recent Fifa player of the year award.
Messi has played 476 games in all competitions since the start of 2010-11, more than anybody else in Europe’s top five leagues. Ronaldo is third on that list on 452.
But the Argentine has played a total of 90 minutes during his side’s seven La Liga games and is already on his second injury of the season - although he could potentially return against Inter Milan on Wednesday.
While Messi has had problems throughout his career - he has only ever had one injury-free season - he usually does not miss too many league games.
Even if Messi plays all remaining 31 La Liga games, it will be the joint fewest he has managed since 2013-14. If he misses another three across the season it will be the fewest since 2007-08, before he entered his goal-a-game form.
He still had a phenomenal season last year, with 51 goals in 50 games helping him win the Fifa award. But only 120 minutes - and no goals - this season will be concerning to Messi fans.
The amount of games Ronaldo - who has also had an injury this season - has played has dipped each season since
2014-15, with his goal tally largely falling too.
Last season’s 28 goals in 43 games would be great by nearly anyone else’s standards - but it was his worst goalscoring season since leaving Manchester United.
It was the first time since 2011-12 he had not won or shared the Champions League golden boot. And he was only the fourth top scorer in Serie A - five behind a player two years his senior, Sampdoria’s Fabio Quagliarella.
But despite the relative slowdown, there are still goals left in Ronaldo’s legs - he has scored eight in as many games for club and country this season, including one against Spal on Saturday.
How long can they stay at this level?
Luca Toni is the benchmark for Cristiano Ronaldo when it comes to late-career form, with 56 Serie A goals after his 34th birthday
Ronaldo can take comfort from the fact most of the top-scoring older players in recent years have been in Italy
Since 2010-11, six players aged 34 or over have scored 30 league goals or more in Europe’s top five leagues - and four of those have been Serie A players.
Luca Toni managed 56 Serie A goals for Fiorentina and Verona after turning 34, with Antonio di Natale scoring 54 for Udinese from the same age.
Francesco Totti managed 43 for Roma, with last season’s golden boot winner Quagliarella scoring 30 and counting.
But only two players have scored 30 goals or more in a season
(in all competitions) from that age - both in 2015
16. Zlatan Ibrahimovic hit 50 in his final season at Paris St-Germain, with Aritz Aduriz scoring 36 for Athletic Bilbao. Could Messi and Ronaldo suffer burnout having both started young and after playing so relentlessly for so long? By the age of 23 Ronaldo had played 184 Premier League games (plus 25 in the Portuguese top flight), with Messi featuring 144 times in La Liga. But of the six players to score 30 goals over the age of 34, only one of them had played 100 times in Europe’s top five leagues by 23 - Totti with 150 Serie A appearances for Roma. Claudio Pizarro played 62 Bundesliga matches by that age, with Quagliarella featuring 24 times in Italy’s top flight and Aduriz only playing three La Liga games. Toni and Di Natale had yet to even reach the top flight, playing in Italy’s lower leagues.
Messi and Ronaldo’s figures are closer to those of Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen, who managed 201 and 168 Premier League appearances by 23.
There is a widely-held be- be-be lief lieflief the pair suffered burnout from playing so many games so early - however both of their England careers had ended before they reached Messi’s current age.
What other records are left to achieve?
From left to right - Josef Bican is the top scorer of all time (maybe), Ali Daei is the top interna- interna-interna tional tionaltional goalscorer and Francisco Gento has won more European Cups than anyone else
Ron- Ron aldo and Messi have most of the relevant goalscoring records between them, but there are still more up for grabs.
Messi is the all-time top goalscorer in La Liga, Barce- Barce-Barce lona lonalona and Argentina history - with Ronaldo holding the records for Real Madrid, Portugal and the European Cup/Champions League.
Ronaldo is sec- sec-sec ond ondond on the La Liga list, with Messi second in the European Cup.
So what else is there?
Ronaldo is the second top scorer in inter- inter-inter national nationalnational history with 93 - but remains 16 goals behind Iran legend Ali Daei. But four goals in his last match against Lithuania increased his chances of breaking that record.
He also needs one more European Cup/Champions League to equal 1950s-60s Real Madrid player Francisco Gento’s record of six. That would also make him only the second player, alongside
Clarence
Seedorf, to win it with three different clubs. Unlike Ronaldo, who won Euro 2016 and the 2019 Nations League, Messi is likely to retire without winning a senior international trophy.
He won the 2008 Olympics, a youth tournament, but lost the 2014 World Cup final and three Copa America finals.
The 2020 Copa America and 2022 World Cup will surely be his last chances. Ronaldo’s goal against Spal on Saturday took him up to 604 club goals, one above Messi’s 603. The pair are the joint all-time top goalscorers in Europe’s top five leagues on 419. Ronaldo has 422 league goals, but his three in Portugal for Sporting Lisbon do not count as one of the top leagues.
So what are some other goalscoring records they could break? Statistics for previ- previ ous generations and smaller leagues are often difficult to confirm. A list compiled by unofficial statisticians RSSSF claims former Austria and Czechoslovakia striker Josef Bican is the top goalscorer in official games with at least 805 (some data is missing for one lower-league season). In- In cluding international goals, Ronaldo is on 697 goals - 108 off that mark - with Messi 25 behind.
If Ronaldo did play until he is 41, he would only need to average 16 goals a season to break that.
Romario (772), Pele (767), Ferenc Puskas (746) and Gerd Muller (735) are the only players to score more than Ronaldo or Messi. Romario and Pele both claim to have scored more than 1,000 goals but those include goals in non-com- non-com petitive games. Uefa says the record for most goals in European leagues is Bican’s 518 (with 500 in Czechoslovakia the record for a single
Statistics for previous generations and smaller leagues are often difficult to confirm. A list compiled by unofficial statisticians RSSSF claims former Austria and Czechoslovakia striker Josef Bican is the top goalscorer in official games with at least 805 (some data is missing for one lower-league season).