Who is the greatest? Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo

They have demonstrated great discipline and have shown great mastery of their game. They remain a gift to all lovers of the round leather game.

I have watched these two highly talented players compete like gladiators year in year out with none of the two showing any signs of fatigue just yet. The highest accolade in the game of football (or soccer), as far as individual football awards are concerned, is the FIFA world player awards – the Ballon d’Or. Since inception of the Ballon d’Or awards in 1956, the most number of times any has on the trophy is three times – the magical Lionel Messi has won this award for a record number of 5 times, the last being the 2015 awards. 

Lionel Messi (FIFA.com)

One may be tempted to think that the three times winner Christiano Ronaldo is a far less sophisticated footballer when compared with Lionel Messi on this statistic. Nothing could be further from the truth than this, especially when you consider that winning this trophy for only just one time is a dream that will never become reality for many a great football names. As a matter of fact, only very few footballers, aside Messi and Ronaldo, have been able to win this trophy trice in the past – namely Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten. Now, it may be incredibly tough if not impossible to make any calls as to who is the greatest between Messi and Ronaldo – perhaps with the passage of time one may just be able to tell if the other slips up. However, what is more important is the fact that we must count ourselves lucky to be witnessing this two football geniuses do battle at the same time. More often than not, the level of talent, hard work and brilliance shown by these two comes very rarely. Even when one does finally come round with this level of talent, he would most certainly monopolise the stage unchallenged and undisputed.

Christiano Ronaldo (FIFA.com)

Both footballers (Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo) are great achievers and deserve to be celebrated as such. They are very good examples of individuals that have not been born with a silver spoon in their mouth but have been able to rise above the challenges of their humble start in life to become the stars we know them as today.

Messi and Christiano have most certainly taken the game to a completely new level and if this were a Hollywood plot, I would most definitely recommend the screenwriter for an Oscar award.