With the accolade heaped on him as one of the greatest athletes since the advent of the millennium, Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi crossed the threshold into the new decade with a record-breaking sixth Ballon d’Or trophy.<\/p>\n
Whilst removing the likes of Pele, Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona from the equation would lead many of us to view Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo\u00a0as the lone contenders in footbal, that would understandably open up the proverbial can of worms in itself with the Messi vs Ronaldo debate having swung back and forth with ceaseless arguments on social media for the best part of 15 years.<\/p>\n
Now with the debate’s brake pedal firmly at the floor with both La Liga and Serie A having been suspended for the better part of 3 months, Goal took the lockdown as a timely opportunity to see who football fans really thought would be the deserving post-2000 GOAT.<\/p>\n
With the hashtag\u00a0#GoalIcons, a series of polls was conducted in a tournament format that allowed fans to vote on head-to-head match-ups between 16 players until they reached a grand final.<\/p>\n
Not to anyone\u2019s surprise, as one can surmise, it eventually culminated in a Messi vs Ronaldo final, but only after the likes of Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo Nazario, Ronaldinho and Andres Iniesta fell by the wayside.<\/p>\n
It was a little befuddling to see Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Samuel Eto’o not even making it to the quarter-finals despite winning their round of 16 votes, but the clear-cut proclaim a definite result that can\u2019t be bent like a Beckham freekick.<\/p>\n
Ultimately Messi claims the crown by by cantering easily away to a comfortable enough distance.<\/p>\n
It was fascinating albeit a tad odd to note that Zidane didn’t even make the quarter-finals despite most people readily conceding that Rooney, Neymar and Puyol are not up to the mark set by the incomparable Messi despite their own achievements.<\/p>\n
Rooney proved to be something of a dark horse in the tournament and came within a hair’s length of reaching a semi-final battle with his former Manchested United\u00a0strike partner.<\/p>\n
But in the end it was the Brazilian pair of Ronaldinho and Ronaldo Nazario who were left to try and wrestle apart the duopoly with the former coming closest with a strong 45% of the semi-final vote.<\/p>\n
Decisively in the end, there was no messy (pardon the pun) splitting of hairs with the votes in the final with Messi receiving the accolade of the millennium’s greatest player, as far as Goal readers are concerned anyway.<\/p>\n
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