It's very likely they won't win a World Cup but that doesn't matter. Nothing will detract from their careers – the most outstanding in football history. Romantics, old journalists, and fans will say that no other football player has ever matched Pelé, Johan Cruyff, or Diego Maradona. I'll never agree with this absurd and cliched argument of who is the best of all time.
We're lucky, we're privileged to see, week after week, competition after competition, the two most prominent football players of all time: Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are the best football has given to the world – it's useless to compare them as both are extraordinary, frighteningly good leaders and, above all, winners.
Messi has 30 titles with the Barcelona , the only club he's played for throughout his professional career: eight in LaLiga (Spain's Football League), seven in the Spanish Super Cup, five in the Copa del Rey, three in the UEFA Super Cup, three in the FIFA Club World Cup, and four, yes, four, in the Champions League. To all of them, we can add five Ballon d'Or wins.
Ronaldo, who learned to stand out in key matches and use the rest to break records, has 15 titles with the Real Madrid : two in LaLiga, two in the Copa del Rey, two in the Spanish Super Cup, three in the UEFA Super Cup, three in the FIFA Club World Cup, and three in the Champion's league. Yet overall, the Portuguese has a total of 26 titles .
With the Sporting CP he won one Portuguese Super Cup and with the Manchester United he won three times the title of English Champion, two times the Community Shield, the same number of titles in the English League Cup, one in the FA Cup, one in the FIFA Club World Cup, and one in the Champion's League. With his national team, he is the current Champion of Europe .
The goal Ronaldo scored yesterday against the Juventus is proof of what a football player can do if he lives and breathes his profession a hundred percent. He's inhuman, just like Messi, who no one can downplay only because he hasn't earned a title with Argentina's National Football Team when his career is the most spectacular ever , unlike Pelé and Maradona, the persistence of the Barcelona player is undeniable.
Messi is Catalonian because they value him there. In his country he is demeaned by people with complexes; listening to people like César Luis Menotti saying Messi will never be like Maradona until he wins a World Cup is absurd, words spoken with a forked tongue.
You may like them or not but no one else will be able to do what these two have accomplished. Ronaldo and Messi have made of the Real Madrid vs Barcelona a worldwide classic – no small feat. Let's hope they make it to the final of the Champions; it would be unparalleled during a World Cup year to see these two teams contending for a European cup. In fact, it would be even more appealing than Russia 2018.