Cristiano Ronaldo ~ Your Favorite Player Is So Much Better!! Thread

I agree that every game is important, but the further you get into the competition, the more difficult the games are. And Ronaldo is simply far superior to any player from the quarter-finals onwards. In theory, if you play on a team that finished first in the group stage, you will face a weaker team in R16 because they finished second so your team is supposed to overperform them. Unless you get a really strong team that just finished second because that were the group of death.

 

A lot of times what you described in your last sentence happens (or a player’s own team finished 2nd in their group). Go look up who Messi has played in the Round of 16, especially in the last bunch of years. I’ve done analysis on this before and there’s a good argument that Messi’s Round of 16 opponents overall have been harder than Ronaldo’s QFs opponents. Limiting stats to just QFs onwards is a thing that people just like to do to make Ronaldo look better, not because it really makes much of any sense.

 

Messi in the games his team were knocked out of champions league (only K.O. stages):

Chelsea 04/05 2nd leg: didn't played
Liverpool 06/07 2nd leg: 0 G/A
ManU 07/08 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Inter 09/10 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Chelsea 11/12 2nd leg: 1 G/A
Bayern 12/13 2nd leg: didn't played
Atleti 13/14 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Atleti 15/16 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Juve 16/17 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Roma 17/18 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Liverpool 18/19 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Bayern 19/20: 0 G/A
PSG 20/21 2nd leg: 1 G/A
Real 21/22 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Bayern 22/23 2nd leg: 0 G/A

Total: 13 games 2 G/A (0.15 per game)

Ronaldo in the games his team were knocked out of champions league (only K.O. stages):

Porto 03/04 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Milan 04/05 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Milan 06/07 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Barça 08/09 final: 0 G/A
Lyon 09/10 2nd leg: 1 G/A
Barça 10/11 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Bayern 11/12 2nd leg: 2 G/A
Dortmund 12/13 2nd leg: 0 G/A
Juve 14/15 2nd leg: 1 G/A
Ajax 18/19 2nd leg: 1 G/A
Lyon 19/20 2nd leg: 2 G/A
Porto 20/21 2nd leg: 1 G/A
Atleti 21/22 2nd leg: 0 G/A

Total: 13 games 8 G/A (0.61 per game)

 

He doesn't "look better". He actually IS FAR BETTER than anyone else including Messi from QF onwards. And this is an undisputed truth

 

No, it’s really not, but I’ve argued with people making this exact same point here so many times that I don’t really have the stamina to do so again. There’s just a lack of recognition of the fact that Messi is one of the greatest players ever in multiple areas of the game that are not goalscoring, while Cristiano Ronaldo is not, so Ronaldo is not automatically better in some sample of games he scored more in.

And, in any event, you’re ignoring the whole point of my post—which was that it’s dumb to limit evaluation to the QFs onwards, and is really just done by people in order to prop up Ronaldo as much as possible. There’s no logical reason to discuss just the CL QFs onwards. The ostensible logical reason would be that the QFs onwards are tougher, but then we’d have to contend with the fact that Messi has, if anything, played tougher opponents on average in the Round of 16 than Ronaldo has played in the QFs (not to mention that they’ve both lost multiple times in the Round of 16). And at that point there’s no reason whatsoever to limit discussion to QFs onwards except to optimize how much a non-nuanced look at scoring numbers will prop up Ronaldo.

 

Why are words being exhausted?

Whether the champions league R16 matters more or less is immaterial/irrelevant/inconsequential

Messi did have a superior record in the R16 to Ronaldo

He did
He no longer does which is why nobody uses this argument anymore

Ronaldo has an identical record to Messi in the R16 and blows him out of the ********ing water in rounds after
We can take it down the non penalty goal route if you want but we know Messi fans are the biggest manipulators and falsifiers of statistics
They use it when it suits them and hide it when it doesn’t




And as the poster kindly highlighted
Ronaldo contributes when he wins and when he loses and he does do to a significantly greater degree than Messi

Which is why he has gone far deeper in the champions league and more frequently than the Argentine

 

I notice your screenshot stops before you get to the part with the Round of 16 average WhoScored rating—which has Messi substantially ahead. Again, if the two are scoring the same amount, it almost certainly means that Messi played substantially better. He has a large advantage in Round of 16 matches. And overall, if we look at WhoScored ratings, Messi has a 8.29 average rating in Champions League knockout stages while Ronaldo has a 7.73 average rating. WhoScored ratings miss a winning campaign for both of them and some earlier stuff, but Messi’s advantage here is huge. Messi has been the better player in Champions League knockout stages. Ronaldo has scored more, but Messi has been the better player. Ronaldo’s teams have actually done better, but I’ve been over before how Messi’s team lost an abnormally high percent of ties against top teams that he did not average a 8.0+ rating in, while Ronaldo’s won a little more than average, and also how no one has ever lost a tie with even close to as high an average rating as Messi had against Liverpool in 2019. See here to refresh your memory: https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/is-messis-cl-legacy-disappointing.2124676/page-5#post-41205835. If one player’s team loses essentially every time he doesn’t play amazingly, while the other player’s team still wins like half the time in those instances, and the first player’s team also manages to occasionally lose when he plays amazingly while the other player’s team doesn’t, then of course the other player’s team is going to win more!

 

I actually rated/rewatched a lot of Individual UCL KO campaigns/Game from Messi and Cr7 one Thing I can say is Cristiano is overall more Consistent and more Deceisive esspecially because of his Goalscoring. Messi imo has better Peak Campaigns/Games.

 

https://www.messivsronaldo.app/detailed-stats/match-winning-goals/

 

That’s interesting info that I didn’t know existed on that website (that website really has a ton of great info!). They’re both very close there in terms of the percentage of games they scored a match-winning goal, and I’ll note that Messi is ahead if you limit it to non-penalty match-winning goals. I wish someone had done this with Gerd Muller—who I suspect would probably be top of the heap in his type of measure.

 

Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid
129 match winning goals
15 penalties
438 matches
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/cri...=&pos=&minute=&pos=&torart=&stand=gamewinning
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/cri...os=&minute=&pos=&torart=204&stand=gamewinning

Gerd Müller at Bayern Munich
149 match winning goals
16 penalties
605 matches played

https://www.transfermarkt.com/gerd-...=&pos=&minute=&pos=&torart=&stand=gamewinning
https://www.transfermarkt.com/gerd-...os=&minute=&pos=&torart=204&stand=gamewinning



Robert lewandowski at Bayern Munich
86 match winning goals
17 penalties
375 matches played
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/rob...=&pos=&minute=&pos=&torart=&stand=gamewinning
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/rob...os=&minute=&pos=&torart=204&stand=gamewinning



Luis Suarez at Barcelona
61 match winning goals
2 penalties
283 matches
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/lui...=&pos=&minute=&pos=&torart=&stand=gamewinning
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/lui...os=&minute=&pos=&torart=204&stand=gamewinning



Erling haaland at Manchester City
16 match winning goals
6 penalties
60 appearances
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/erl...=&pos=&minute=&pos=&torart=&stand=gamewinning
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/erl...=&pos=&minute=&pos=&torart=&stand=gamewinning




Overall

Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid

with penalties
Scored the game winning goal in 29% of matches he participated in


without penalties
Scored the game winning goal in 26% of matches he participated in



Gerd Müller at Bayern Munich

with penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 24% of games he participated in

Without penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 22% of games he participated in


Robert lewandowski at Bayern Munich

With penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 22% of games he participated in

Without penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 18% of games he participated in


Luis Suarez at Barcelona

With penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 21% of matches he participated in

Without penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 20% of games he participated in


Erling haaland at Manchester City

With penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 26% of games he participated in

Without penalties
Scored the match winning goal in 10% of games he participated in


I expect you to say something like
well this ain’t fair why didn’t you include the seasons Cristiano Ronaldo was playing as a winger for Manchester United?

I didn’t include them For the exact same reasons I did not include Luis figo or franck ribery or arjen robben or David Beckham or Robert pires etc

I included your “dedicated goalscorers” when they were “dedicated goalscorers”

Will be interesting to see how you will manipulate this data as we know you can never accept cristiano is the single greatest ever player in any single aspect of football

Just in case you accept the facts for what they are and your fanatical Barcelona tendencies don’t overwhelm you we can maybe discuss other things like how haaland is looking like a legendary statpadder(so far)

Or how lewandowsi on a superteam needs penalties to appear as clutch as Suarez on a superteam

Or how lewandowski was never as clutch as Gerd Müller at club level which is something he would need to be for us to seriously entertain the idea that he could’ve replicated Gerd Müllers achievements at international level had he played for a better National team than Poland.

 

Interesting—I didn’t realize Transfermarkt had this. But you’re only counting Real Madrid for Cristiano. That is in some cases a valid comparison to these other guys (like Suarez only at Barcelona). But for Gerd Muller, his whole career was at Bayern, so you’re really comparing Ronaldo’s prime to Muller’s whole career. If we included Juventus and Manchester United for Cristiano, then he’s at a 23.9% with penalties and 19.7% without penalties. Which is below Gerd Muller. You could probably parse it down and get Cristiano slightly ahead again if you took out his first few years at Manchester United, but then again we’re doing Muller’s whole career so I’m sure we could parse him down too. And similarly, if we just took Messi at Barcelona, it’d be slightly above Cristiano at RM/Juventus/ManUnited in non-penalty terms (and just below with penalties).

So basically, I guess the answer here is that these super top all-time goalscoring guys basically are essentially equal in this regard and we could have battles back and forth to parse what we count and say one is ahead of the other if we count this or that, but the bottom line is that their numbers are super similar in this. Which, honestly, is probably not at all surprising, since guys who score about the same amount as each other probably should be expected to be about the same in this regard.

That said, one thing I’ll add about Gerd Muller is that I think him even keeping up with Cristiano (and Messi) in this regard is really impressive, because his team wasn’t always very good (and almost never was as good as those guys’ teams). You can’t get game-winning goals if your team doesn’t win the game (which obviously is not just in these players’ hands)! I’d imagine if we looked at the percent of their teams’ wins that these guys had the game-winning goal in, Muller would be noticeably ahead.

______________

By the way, I also think there’s really multiple ways to define what a “game-winning goal” actually is. Transfermarkt’s way of measuring it is to say it’s a goal that gave the team more goals than the other team ultimately would end up with in the match. So, for instance, if you score a goal to put your team up 3-0 and then the other team scores two goals and the game ends 3-2, then that 3-0 goal was a “game-winning goal,” even though at the time it was scored the match wasn’t close. I think that’s a valid way of looking at it, but there’s other ways to define the term “game-winning goal.” For instance, one might define it as just being goals that break a tie game where the other team doesn’t get that amount of goals in the rest of the match. In that case, there’d be no “game-winning goal” in the match I described above, but for instance a goal to put a team up 2-1 where the game ends that way would be a “game-winning goal.” Anyways, just some thoughts. I have no idea what players would look better or worse with different definitions of “game-winning goal,” and my best guess is that it wouldn’t really change how these players compared to each other. So this is more a sidenote about a more academic question. It looks like the messivsronaldo website has a box you can tick that seems like it allows you to switch between these options (and it also uses aggregate scores for two-legged ties—which is good).

 

Also, @carlito86 I’d note that by Transfermarkt’s definition of game-winning goal, Gerd Muller scored the game-winning goal in 55% of the competitive matches he played for Germany.

 

You did exactly what I said you would do

In any case transfermarket does not include several seasons for Gerd Müller
He played most of his career for Bayern not all

The two before Bayern and the the ones he played for NASL

It does include 1964/65 when he played in a regional/amateur league
I Included 1964/65 already knowing beforehand that it would be unfair to include his statistics in what was akin to Sunday league football

But I did it anyways without nitpicking
You on the other hand will nitpick until you can find a way to put cristiano second or third or in the absolute best case scenario equal

Never first
You cannot accept first

Parsing the data(as in manipulating the data)?
I can do that

All I would have to do is show you a 606 consecutive game span at club level during which cristiano produced more match winning goals with/without penalties?

Potentially even less than 606 games if I completely discount 1964/65 from Gerd Müller
Would you like me to do that?

 

Second division of German football


In 14 seasons playing tier 1 football with Bayern Munich(573 matches)

1965/66 -1978/79
Gerd Müller Scored 137 game winning goals


In 9 seasons for Real Madrid(438 games)
2009/10-2017/18
cristiano Ronaldo Scored 129 game winning goals

If I include his last 3 seasons at Manchester United
2006/07 - 2008/09
153 games
38 game winning goals



Overall

Cristiano
2006/07-2017/18
591 games
167 game winning goals
Scored the match winning goal in 28% of games he participated in
Played as a winger,wing forward and forward


Gerd Müller 1965/66 - 1978/79
573 games
137 game winning goals
Scored the game winning goal in 24% of games be participated in
Played as a striker


Cristiano Played in more games
Played in more positions
And for sure he was generating considerably more penalties than Gerd Müller

He was generating more penalties than Messi at least that much we do know

Cristiano Ronaldo has won 14 penalties in La Liga, at least five more than any other player since 09/10. Presence

— OptaJose (@OptaJose) February 2, 2016

 

@carlito86 I ran some numbers regarding what percent of their teams’ actual wins Cristiano and Muller had the game-winning goal in. This controls for the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo was on better teams that simply won a notably higher percent of their games (and, again, of course you can only get a game-winning goal if your team wins).

And here’s how it comes out:

In his entire career on a team in the first division in Europe, Muller had the game-winning goal in 41.64% of his team’s wins. And he had a non-penalty game-winning goal in 36.78% of his team’s wins.

In his career at Real Madrid, Juventus, and Manchester United, Cristiano Ronaldo had the game-winning goal in 34.62% of his team’s wins. And he had a non-penalty game-winning goal in 28.52% of his team’s wins.

Cristiano’s numbers at just Real Madrid are close to Muller’s for his entire career on a European first division team, but even just at Real Madrid he doesn’t match the percent of the time Muller scored his team’s game-winning goal. Haven’t run these numbers for Messi (it takes a while to manually count out wins), but I imagine he would similarly be well below Muller.

 

@carlito86 as has been shown in the Gerd Muller thread, Gerd Muller often played a midfield role, sometimes even playing most of the match like a defensive midfielder. Match footage has been shown on this. I don’t think it’s correct to suggest Muller played a more dedicated striker role than Cristiano. In fact, almost every match I’ve seen of Muller at Bayern involves him really dropping deep a lot—it’s really only a question of how much, with him sometimes being akin to a defensive midfielder and sometimes more like an attacking midfielder. At Bayern, he was not a player that just waited in the box for chances. That may more accurately describe his role for Germany, but for Germany he scored game-winning goals in 55% of his competitive matches.

 

Ronaldo played seasons in that role

Multiple seasons

Not rare once in a blue moon games ‘discovered’ on some random VHS copies

If I see you even daring to suggest Müller was as involved in build up as Cristiano we can probably just end the conversation here

Ronaldo has confirmed seasons with over 200 crosses

He has multiple confirmed games with 10+ dribbles


I’d be willing to put my neck on the line(figuratively) that if we had access to all and I mean all of Gerd mullers games for Bayern Munich and Germany

You would never be able to put together a more impressive highlight reel than cristiano Ronaldo in just 2007/08
Never

If we are getting to a stage where Gerd muller is being categorised as a defensive midfielder and attacking midfielder then this forum has just completely gone down the toilet drain

Cristiano Ronaldo was 37 years old when he made 74 passes in one match
https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1...-League-2021-2022-Manchester-United-Brentford

Something Suarez/lewandowski/Salah/Kane etc never did at any age

Imagine that was only one of 7 full matches you saw of him?
You would call him Alfredo Di Stéfano and even greater than that because of the goal record and longevity


I can tell you for a fact that the games of classical era players that tend to be ‘discovered’ and then uploaded on YouTube are either the best or one of the better games of that player

The uploader of will tend to have a treasure trove of games and he will select the game that paints that specific player in a favourable light


There is a chance Gerd muller is hard done by(the narrative that he camped in the box and did nothing else is not exactly true)
The people who say this tend to have only/mostly watched him in the World Cup and in the World Cup he was as pure a poacher as there ever was.

Outside of the international scene there is a chance he was either required or perhaps even took it upon himself to participate in build up more. Mainly due to Bayern Munich not being as capable as the NT

But for sure he was not and never was a dribbler
He was not a ball carrier
He never possessed anything that can remotely be described as ‘out of the ordinary creativity’ or technical ingenuity
The way you love to break down ‘individual attributes’ and compare Neymar to cristiano.
Cristiano will wipe the floor with Müller completely
Technically and physically he was in a different league

That is a blatantly obvious fact to any neutral observer


I ask you a simple question
Do you think Gerd Müller was anywhere near as dynamic as cristiano in his latter Manchester United seasons and first 5 years at Real
Madrid?

 

Go look at the video footage that has been shown across a ton of pages of discussion in my Gerd Muller thread. It’s not that Muller played like that “once in a blue moon.” It’s just what footage of Gerd Muller games for Bayern looks like in general. I’ve looked at all the footage of him at Bayern that I can find, and it is pretty obvious that he simply wasn’t a player who was typically just waiting in the box. The perception that he was is just an incorrect one, likely stemming from him playing something closer to that kind of role for Germany.

No one is suggesting Gerd Muller is a better overall player than Cristiano Ronaldo. But there’s definitely a good argument he was a more decisive goalscorer.

Watch the many videos people have shared in the Gerd Muller thread and do some additional research yourself and then get back to everyone. Gerd Muller did not generally play as a pure striker for Bayern.

That is true to some degree, but I think is less true with someone as far back as Muller. For stuff that far back, the limiting factor is more just what games footage even exists for. Most games weren’t even televised. There’s not enough footage for people to go around cherry-picking games.

And by the way, the Gerd Muller thread also has posters who actually were old enough to have watched Gerd Muller at the time, and they’ve attested to this exact thing. The footage just backs up what people who saw him have said.

Yes, this is exactly right. And, I’ll note that when he played as more of a dedicated goalscorer for Germany (because their midfield was much more capable than Bayern’s often was), he scored the game-winning goal in 55% of his competitive matches with Germany.

No one is saying any of that at all. This is a discussion about game-winning goals.

 

It was

It was until you went back to playing your old tricks

Don’t force me to spell this out for you

If Gerd Müller was allegedly a more decisive goal scorer than cristiano
While at the same time being equally prolific to cristiano(you would insist more)

while at the same time allegedly functioning In the exact same role as cristiano then the only logical conclusion that stems from this is Gerd muller definitely being a superior player to cristiano (he was not but that would be the only logical conclusion that could possibly follow on from this)

I don’t get why you just don’t say what you believe.
It is very easy

 

What you’re saying here doesn’t actually logically follow.

I didn’t in any way say they were in “the exact same role.” I said Muller was not a more dedicated goalscorer. There are a lot of different roles a player can fulfill beyond a dedicated goalscoring one. Muller was not playing a winger role, nor was Cristiano fulfilling the same kind of non-goalscoring role the footage shows Muller playing.

And even if I were saying they played the exact same role, it is not at all “the only logical conclusion” that I’m saying Muller is “definitely…a superior player to Cristiano” because I’m not making any statement whatsoever about how well they fulfilled the non-goalscoring aspects of their role. Muller could absolutely be a more decisive goalscorer and not play as more of a dedicated goalscorer and still be an inferior player by not being as good at the non-goalscoring aspects of the game. And, indeed, that’s exactly what I think is the case.

 

I don't understand your stance on whoscored rating and how much value you put onto it at all, and after so many years you are yet to acknowledge Messis superior whoscored rating in ucl and give a plausible explaination why it doesn't matter in this particular case and it matters so much when it comes to Fabregas 2010, Drogba 2010, Ronaldo 2010, Ronaldo 2015, Robben 2015, etc.

 

It appears that around the time the 1974 World Cup came around that Gerd Müller was a slightly more dynamic player
In the 1970 World Cup there are several areas in which Müller did not contribute at all

There is a notable improvement in this four years later

 

I already read an argument from you that said that Messi was as prolific as Ronaldo and was still superior in dribbling and playmaking. But this is not the case with QF onwards. In this case, Ronaldo wipes the floor with Messi in the goalscoring aspect. He is in a league of his own.

elo difference on Ronaldo's games on QFs:

06/07 Roma
1st leg: +140 (lost 1-2)
2nd leg: +85 (won 7-1)

07/08 Roma
1st leg: +117 (won 2-0)
2nd leg: +150 (won 1-0)

08/09 Porto
1st leg: +176 (draw 2-2)
2nd leg: +157 (won 1-0)

10/11 Tottenham
1st leg: +189 (won 4-0)
2nd leg: +211 (won 1-0)

11/12 APOEL
1st leg: +539 (won 3-0)
2nd leg: +543 (won 5-2)

12/13 Galatasaray
1st leg: +385 (won 3-0)
2nd leg: +391 (lost 2-3)

13/14 Dortmund
1st leg: +199 (won 3-0)
2nd leg: +219 (lost 0-2)

14/15 Atleti
1st leg: +88 (draw 0-0)
2nd leg: +89 (won 1-0)

15/16 Wolfsburg
1st leg: +302 (lost 0-2)
2nd leg: +241 (won 3-0)

16/17 Bayern
1st leg: -15 (won 2-1)
2nd leg: +32 (won 4-2)

17/18 Juve
1st leg: +15 (won 3-0)
2nd leg: +74 (lost 1-3)

18/19 Ajax
1st leg: +155 (draw 1-1)
2nd leg: +132 (lost 1-2)

Average: +192,2 elo difference
Average goals scored: 2.12
Average goals allowed: 0.95
Average goal difference: 1.17

elo difference on Messi's games on R16s:

05/06 Chelsea
1st leg: -29 (won 2-1)
2nd leg: +18 (draw 1-1)

06/07 Liverpool
1st leg: +47 (lost 1-2)
2nd leg: +18 (won 1-0)

07/08 Celtic
1st leg: +235 (won 3-2)
2nd leg: +213 (won 1-0)

08/09 Lyon
1st leg: +127 (draw 1-1)
2nd leg: +146 (won 5-2)

09/10 Stuttgart
1st leg: +279 (draw 1-1)
2nd leg: +263 (won 4-0)

10/11 Arsenal
1st leg: +154 (lost 1-2)
2nd leg: +161 (won 3-1)

11/12 Leverkusen
1st leg: +344 (won 3-1)
2nd leg: +335 (won 7-1)

12/13 Milan
1st leg: +296 (lost 0-2)
2nd leg: +186 (won 4-0)

13/14 City
1st leg: +48 (won 2-0)
2nd leg: +77 (won 2-1)

14/15 City
1st leg: +129 (won 2-1)
2nd leg: +195 (won 1-0)

15/16 Arsenal
1st leg: +228 (won 2-0)
2nd leg: +296 (won 3-1)

16/17 PSG
1st leg: +110 (lost 0-4)
2nd leg: +67 (won 6-1)

17/18 Chelsea
1st leg: +212 (draw 1-1)
2nd leg: +208 (won 3-0)

18/19 Lyon
1st leg: +223 (draw 0-0)
2nd leg: +273 (won 5-1)

19/20 Napoli
1st leg: +170 (draw 1-1)
2nd leg: +157 (won 3-1)

20/21 PSG
1st leg: -18 (lost 1-4)
2nd leg: -33 (draw 1-1)

21/22 Real Madrid
1st leg: -43 (won 1-0)
2nd leg: -68 (lost 1-3)

22/23 Bayern
1st leg: -185 (lost 0-1)
2nd leg: -170 (lost 0-2)

Average: 129,6 elo difference
Average goals scored: 2.58
Average goals allowed: 1.11
Average goal difference: 1.47

While the elo difference might suggest that Messi was catching stronger opponents on average, the goal difference suggests that Ronaldo was catching tougher opponents on average. The fact that Messi's teams had a higher goal per game ratio means that it was easier for him to stat pad in the round of 16 than Ronaldo in the quarters

 

Okay, but if Messi is superior in dribbling and playmaking, and Ronaldo scores a lot more goals, how can you say that Ronaldo was definitely better overall? It’s obviously a question of whose advantage was bigger/more important. And it’s not so clear. I’m sure you’d say Ronaldo’s goalscoring advantage was more important, but, for example, WhoScored ratings (which value goalscoring a lot) don’t agree—Messi has a 8.06 average rating in QFs onwards, while Ronaldo has a 7.84 average rating in QFs onwards. So it’s definitely an open question, even under the “only-QFs-onwards” lens, which itself is just a lens that’s trying to be as favorable to Ronaldo as possible.

Okay, so first of all, the fact that Messi’s teams actually did better in the matches is a reflection of the fact that Messi played better than Ronaldo. Like, the whole reason Ronaldo fans don’t want to consider the Round of 16 is because they know Messi played great, but the rationale given for it is that it’s because Round of 16 opponents are too easy. You can’t then turn around and say that, even though Messi played more difficult teams in the Round of 16 than Ronaldo played in the QFs, we still shouldn’t consider Messi’s fantastic Round of 16 performances because Messi’s team did too well against those difficult opponents. That’s the whole point! Messi’s incredible performances were a huge part of why his teams did so well! Messi did fantastic in the Round of 16 against opponents that were harder on average than Ronaldo’s QFs opponents. In that context, it does not make sense to limit consideration to just the QFs onwards, and it’s an argument that’s just meant to narrowly consider things through the most favorable lens to Ronaldo with no reasonable reason to use that lens.

The whole argument for excluding the Round of 16 from the analysis is supposed to be that the opponents in that round are too easy, but you’ve just proven that Messi’s Round of 16 opponents were harder on average than Ronaldo’s QF opponents. So by that logic, we shouldn’t include Ronaldo’s QFs either, I guess? Or we include all of it (which is what actually makes sense). And when we include all of it, you can still make an argument for Ronaldo (he did still score more, after all), but the overall picture is also one where Messi averaged an 8.21 WhoScored rating in CL KO stages compared to 7.73 for Ronaldo (and Messi has a similar group-stage advantage for what it’s worth). Of course, WhoScored ratings are just a formula attached to a ton of stats, so they’re not authoritative. But it uses a lot more information that just comparing goalscoring, and Messi being well ahead despite scoring less goes to the point that Ronaldo scoring more in a particular set of games really doesn’t necessarily mean he played better.