Manchester United doyen and arguably the creme de la creme of football managers, Sir Alex Ferguson, had actually gone into an intriguing discussion in an interview six years ago regarding Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi’s ability and propensity to score for different clubs, and his razor-sharp assessment is now being proven right after both players moved clubs in the recent summer that shook the football world.
Portuguese dynamo Ronaldo, who Ferguson brought to England in 2003 when he signed him for Manchester United from Sporting Lisbon, has already scored four goals in three matches since returning to Old Trafford this summer. Meanwhile, Messi – as expected to those long familiar with his nature and style of play – has yet to register a goal or an assist for Paris Saint-Germain after leaving Barcelona this summer after 21 years at the club.
What Ferguson had previously implied in the past was that he thought Messi could only achieve the numbers he has achieved all this while playing for Barcelona, the one club he had been so loyally and integrally attached to for 21 years since joining La Masia as a weak, young kid from Rosario.
Sir Alex Ferguson has previously given Cristiano Ronaldo the edge in the debate between him and Lionel Messi – but only in terms of being able to adapt faster to playing conditions and NOT as the better player among the two.
Speaking to legendary former snooker player John Parrott in 2015, Ferguson discussed the Ronaldo vs Messi debate.
“People say who is the best player in the world? And plenty of people quite rightly say Messi – you can’t dispute that opinion.
“But Ronaldo could play for Millwall, Queens Park Rangers, Doncaster Rovers… anyone, and score a hat-trick in a game. [But] I’m not sure Messi could do it.
“I think Messi is a Barcelona player, you know what I mean?”
Having returned to United this summer after 12 years away, Ronaldo has scored four times in his first three games back to take his total for the club to 122 goals in 295 appearances.
This comes after he tallied 450 goals in 437 matches with Real Madrid before going on to score 101 times for Juventus during three seasons in Italy.
However, his great rival Messi has failed to hit the ground running after joining PSG on a free transfer after over two decades in Spain.
He has failed to register a goal contribution in his first three appearances for the Parisiens against Stade de Reims, Club Brugge and Lyon. And this coming after he scored a staggering 672 goals in 778 appearances for Barcelona? There’s definitely a lot more to this than meets the eye.
To understand the primary difference between Ronaldo and Messi, and what defines their individual greatness and playing styles, it’s all about adaptability. In a nutshell – how they both had to adapt to their environments since entering the fray of professional football and how the both of them had to cope differently, and uniquely, to the various situations they had to cope with within the clubs they were engaged in from the beginning.
For both the players, it was of course also about each one being apportioned with different talents, which accordingly developed into different skill-sets and abilities, finely honed over time in having to get intimately accustomed to the group context each of them had to get used to playing within their respective club(s). In the case of Messi, it was always with almost the same group of players he had been so used to over the years except for occasional few new players who became also a part of the Blaugrana contingent over the years. For Ronaldo, more gung-ho and with his insatiable thirst for adventure, he grew rapidly accustomed to playing with different players in different teams over the years, which over time again shaped his particular playing style and nature on the pitch.
Ronaldo’s survival instincts have been honed over the years by force of habit, not by choice, only to suit his ‘lone wolf’ culture whilst Messi had been so used to playing within a more comfortable group context of familiar players whom he knows fully well he can trust as he’s so accustomed to their playing styles over the years within his Barcelona paradigm. It’s already second nature to him and his boys.
Ronaldo’s survival instincts incessantly goaded him into being primarily a goalscorer courtesy of the amazing skill-sets he possesses that he had laboriously developed over years of intense discipline and hard work that he has been so highly respected for, even by his peers. And having to play for different top-flight clubs in Europe with different sets of players each time, he had finely developed his own idiosyncratic style of play over the years to trust no one but only himself to deliver the goods. A mercenary for hire, so to speak, which accounts for the aggression – his aggression – that characterizes his style of play. Almost ruthless, predatory, and extremely physical in intensity. Which is why he has been likened to a predatory beast launching off at any given instant into a sudden whirlwind burst of speed, ready to pounce on his adversary as he looks to finish off the hunt with speed, precision and strength.
Messi’s style of play, on the other hand, is easily more suited to him being not only a goalscorer –due to his immeasurable and incomparable talents – but also essentially as a playmaker. Unlike the more physical Ronaldo, the diminutive Argentine is technically much more versatile and a lot more at ease on the pitch. He is the gazelle, lyrical and fluid in movement, lithe and graceful, and sheer poetry in motion, able to execute natural feints, sudden body swerves and subtle twists at will so as to be totally unpredictable – all this while he anticipates the situations around him while processing mental permutations in nano seconds as only he can.
What Fergie had noticed and said in 2015 was absolutely correct, except that he could not articulate why this was so for both players. But he had hit the nail right on the head. Both Ronaldo and Messi developed their individual styles of play fitting into the context of the group cultures they were forced to adapt to. Ronaldo had to adapt to different teams with different playing philosophies and cultures. But not Messi, who had to adapt only to the Barcelona way of playing all his earlier 21 years.
In the long run, Messi’s style of play is definitely more sustainable and preferred in terms of longevity and practicality as it is less taxing on him as the playing style promotes group excellence and interdependence. Ronaldo’s style, on the contrary, is very punishing on the body and ultimately would bring into play diminishing marginal utility and returns because the style of play is too taxing on one person as the workload is not shared out. This is probably also why he has been accused of being very selfish in the way he plays all these years, being likened to a prima donna. Which is not really a fair assessment of him as an individual, to be fair to the man. He became what he had to be in his survival to be among the best. And he did what he did best, to his credit.
Although so far this season the statistics are proving Ferguson right six years on from his incisive verdict in the Ronaldo versus Messi debate, it is still very early days for the latter in France, just like his old comrade-in-arms at Barcelona, Thierry Henry, just only commented on with confidence after the PSG-Lyon encounter, which further confirms the faith of Messi’s legions of fans that the Argentine’s goals will soon come – in a deluge, no less.
Like he said, even the world’s best players need some time to adapt.