The Never-Ending Rivalry Between Messi and Ronaldo

If you ask anyone who knows anything about football who are the two best players in the world at the moment, you are likely to hear the names Messi and Ronaldo. Even those football fans who do not cheer for Barcelona or Juventus will have to be realistic and accept that there aren’t two more skilled pair of legs in the sport right now.

But if you ask who is the better one of the two, you are not likely to get a very uniform answer. Everyone has their favorite for various reasons. Is it possible to settle this debate objectively by considering some irrefutable facts? We believe that it is, and this is exactly what we will do below.

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo Side by Side

When it comes to football skills and the performance on the field, Messi and Ronaldo are quite different players. This makes comparing them a bit more difficult, as each has a different set of qualities.

For example, Messi is much better at dribbling and is a lot faster in crucial moments. On the other hand, Ronaldo is more precise and scores more headers. We could use Ballon d’Ors (Golden Balls) to determine who the better one is, but that would not help much. Both of them have won five so far.

If we take a look at the penalty stats, we can see that Ronaldo is much more successful from the notorious white dot. He scores from penalties 82.58% of the time, compared to Messi who is a successful penalty shooter 77.14% of the time.

Face to Face Match Results

Luckily for us, Messi and Ronaldo have played against each other numerous times. In total, before Ronaldo transferred to Juventus, they met 35 times on the field.

Of those 35 matches, Messi’s team won 16 times, whereas Ronaldo’s team won 10 times. The other nine matches finished as a draw. While this is a reflection of their whole teams, they are the most valuable players, so it could help us come to a conclusion regarding this rivalry.

If you’re still not convinced, and you need more facts, stats, and data, you should check out the infographic below created by Betting Sites which compares Messi and Ronaldo side by side.