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

Messi crosses to the flank from the right side. I am obviously talking about right-sided crosses into the box. There is a whole area of the pitch that is unexplored by Messi as a right inside forward. Who are you kidding?


Where are the right-side cross into the box?



STATSBOMB isolated his entire right-foot pass map for 2018-19.

Inswinging crosses are obviously not part of his game or Barcelona's game on the right side.
I'm done with this silly convo, since none of my points are being addressed and I'm getting dragged to Neverland.

You have yet to provide an example of these mythical crosses. I'll wait. I showed you that Salah a player in a similar position offers that option to his team.

The "random screencaps" are to explain a tactical point. Their "randomness" is impertinent. I did not have to pick Messi. I deliberately chose to, to give credit for when he used to push the defensive line backward.

 

Why in the world should we really care about Messi making crosses from the right with his right foot, when we know he is an all-time-level crosser from the right with this left foot? Especially when we know he’s also fantastic at line-breaking diagonal balls to the wings. It’s just nitpicking that does not actual demonstrate the point—which is supposed to be that having Messi prevents a team from utilizing crosses to generate goals. That’s just not true. Messi himself is a fantastic crosser, he’s very good at freeing up other crossers on either wing with his passing, and with his quickness and positioning he’s extremely adept at getting on the end of low-driven crosses.

Of course, Messi is also amazing at generating goals or assists with through balls. And you yourself have said “in today’s era, most goals are from through balls. Tactical Evolution.” So you’re basically criticizing Messi for being best at the thing that you yourself say tactics have evolved to favor, while somehow claiming that tactics actually don’t favor that thing and that Messi is bad at the thing you’re now saying tactics do favor (even though he’s actually really good at it, unless you very narrowly define what you’re talking about to be so specific that it’s hard to see how it matters).

 

Ronaldo in away games in the UCL K.O. stages:

Messi in away games in the UCL K.O. stages:


Levers...

 

Do you think these two players play the same role in Champions League knockout stage away matches? Or do you think they play substantially different roles?

 

Both were the focal point of their teams' attack

 

FYI, as I’ve noted in the past, Barcelona moved to a more cross-heavy system in the 2020-2021 season, and we see that Messi adapted by having a much more cross-heavy diet of chances creation:



https://statsbomb.com/news/statsbom...l-seasons-from-2004-05-2020-21-now-available/

This looks very different from the type of pass map that @Sexy Beast created for Messi’s assists in an earlier season (and I’m sure would be different to virtually any other season). There’s not a lot of throughballs, and indeed we know from WhoScored that he had half as many throughballs that season as he had in any prior season, while simultaneously having more crosses than he’d had in any prior season. So Messi has absolutely functioned in a system that had a more cross-heavy emphasis.

Of course, I imagine one might point out that this was not a particularly great season for Barcelona, as they finished 3rd in the league that season. But they had a pretty weak team that season, and in terms of attack, Barcelona scored 18 more goals than anyone else in the league. Messi can obviously function well in a more cross-heavy system.

 

SpinMaster Jake. You know exactly what I mean.
Messi is a master at the final ball. I've said that. You can provide the final ball without being implicated in other phases of the game.
I'm not narrowly defining anything. I am demonstrating why Messi demonstrably struggled in Europe for a huge chunk of his career.

 

Provide video please. It will make this much easier for all of us. I have no idea what is a cross and what isn't in this graph.
All I can tell is there are no inswinging crosses or cut-back low crosses (unlike the left flank).

 

Jesus. I was expecting separation, but nowhere close to this. Wow.

edit: What's crazy is Ronaldo played a significant amount of UCL matches as a RM and took a while to score.

edit 2:
Incoming excuses will be that Messi played as a DM.
That Messi has dribbled more.
That Ronaldo scores garbage goal tapins.
That Ronaldo happens to consistently face easier teams away ?? (Make it make sense)
e) all the above

The obvious thing is to just accept reality of course, but by now none of us should be expecting that sort of response.

 

Omg what an overwhelming difference. Champions League knockout games away are undisputed the most difficult games. And Ronaldo did massively better than Messi on those games

 

Stats by UEFA Coefficient:

Of note: Ronaldo has 3 hattrick vs Top 5, Messi has 1.
Avg Match rating (for those that built an argument on whoscored ratings)



Avg Match rating (for those that built an argument on whoscored ratings)

 

Really though? Which of these players do you think occupied the central forward areas way more often? Did you know that, in the data we have (from 2017-2018 onwards), in their CL KO stage matches together, Luis Suarez had almost 50% more non-penalty xG than Messi, and that in their CL KO stage matches together, Mbappe had over twice as much non-penalty xG as Messi? Messi probably should’ve scored a few goals in these games, but he really was not the scoring focal point, as there were other players occupying the most important scoring zone. And have you watched all these away matches? Are you confident that Messi wasn’t great in plenty of the games he didn’t score in?

First of all, Messi did extremely well in the Champions League, won it several times, and has some of the greatest Champions League campaigns ever. So there’s a lot of work being done by the phrase “for a huge chunk of his career.”

Anyways, to the extent his teams didn’t always win, perhaps his team just struggled? It’s an 11v11 game. You’re basically taking Messi having won the Champions League fewer times than Cristiano Ronaldo, assuming that this was caused by Messi being individually deficient compared to Ronaldo, and then coming up with some sort of post-hoc tactical mumbo-jumbo for why that’s the case. Maybe the answer is just that Messi’s team didn’t play as well in the competition? Perhaps Messi’s defenders were pretty consistently worse for most of the relevant time period? Perhaps the main striker on Messi’s team in the years where his team “struggled” is a great player who nevertheless is known to significantly underperform in the Champions League (including massively underperforming his xG in the data we have)? Perhaps the answer is that Ronaldo’s team had more consistently good managing in a competition where quality of the manager is more important than any individual player? It’s certainly the case that when Messi’s team had a good manager, they did very well in the Champions League. And we know it’s the case that Messi’s team was much less likely to win when he wasn’t amazing than Ronaldo’s team was when Ronaldo wasn’t amazing, and we also know Ronaldo never lost a tie where he played as well as Messi did against Liverpool. You’re just making un-nuanced analysis that starts at a conclusion that Messi must be the reason his team didn’t win. And it’s just not really in keeping with what happened in reality.

 

The day someone looks at Messi's stats in matches where his team had inferior ELO rating, or less possession than the opposing team will leave some people traumatized. The less said, the better.

 

Lol, Messi literally just had a cut-back low pass with his right foot to get an assist in the World Cup semifinals after making a run on the byline.

 

Oh I see, we are back to the old Messi is great but Argentina sucks level arguments. Poor Messi the only GOAT who always has a bad, impossible team when he fails, and takes all the credit when it doesn't. Knew this would be the last resort argument.

I thought Messi played for the "greatest team of all time" and with the "most dominant midfield of all time" and that this team performed from at least 2008 to 2013.
Ronaldo never played for the "greatest team of all time" with the "most dominant midfield of all time". No, he won with Modric and Kroos - the midfielders "who are missing something compared to the GOAT midfielders", and Benzema "not a serious candidate for greatest striker of his generation" and "behind Suarez".
Make it make sense!!! My head hurts! How can Messi not have had the platform to do more than Ronaldo with a superior team and teammates??
Logical impossibility and conundrum.
Either Barca 2008-2012 is inferior or Messi was inferior. You gotta choose

 

Yes, and Zidane had a weak-foot volley outside the box from a ball falling 40m. And Ronaldo a bicycle kick on attempt 400. Like, get real. This is getting predictable. I already told you he must have done a few, but the frequency is so infinitesimally small - it is clearly not part of his repertoire.

 

UEFA coefficient is a pretty blunt instrument, as there’s basically zero inputs to it except prior placement in European competition. There’s no input for league success, etc. And this also includes group-stage matches. We’ve done this analysis using Carlito’s own description of who were top teams and in what years, and Messi’s average WhoScored rating against top teams in the Champions League KO stages was higher than Ronaldo’s.

 

He didn’t have a “bad, impossible team.” He literally has won more trophies than any player in the history of football. He just didn’t always have the team that played the best in the Champions League.

 

UEFA Coefficient or Carlito's opinion. With respect to Carlito, this is a non-argument. Clearly Messi does not perform close to Ronaldo's level for high-ranked teams. This is final.

 

Lol, again, UEFA coefficient has essentially no inputs to it whatsoever besides one thing. It’s not really meant to even be comprehensive rating of club quality, but rather just a method for roughly seeding teams in the group stages of European competition. We all have a much more precise sense of what teams are good because we all have way more information on that than the UEFA coefficient considers.

 

With respect, this is waffling. Let's stick to the subject. What will you tell us next? What's the last trump card in the books? The WC. Save it for later.

He had by your admission the GOAT, most dominant midfield and GOAT Club Team from at least 2008-09 to 2013-14. These are YOUR assertions. During that time span, he made 2 CL finals (won both with good performances).

Ronaldo had INFERIOR MIDFIELD PARTNERS (less than GOAT Modric + Kroos - your words in that thread. You specifically claimed Kroos and Modric are inferior in chance creation...) + and INFERIOR STRIKING MATE (Benzema). He made 4 champions league finals and progressed to every semi-final.

You have a logical conundrum.
Either Messi did NOT play with the GOAT Team and GOAT Midfield - so you should revise that opinion and the players involved
OR Messi was inferior to Ronaldo - since the latter did BETTER with WORSE.

Which is it?

 

He clearly is capable of doing it and isn’t generally tactically asked to. But he was able to do it at the highest and most important level, beating an incredible defender to do it. But either way, this doesn’t matter because Messi is arguably the greatest crosser from the right wing in the history of football—he just does it with his left foot. Your demand that a player consistently make crosses with a particular foot is just silly.

 

If it did not correlate with anything, Messi's production should not predictably tank. Somehow, for illogical reasons, Messi has better production the lower the UEFA rank. So, we can establish that he does worse the higher the rank and significantly so HOWEVER YOU WANT TO INTERPRET THAT
Try to spin that one, I beg you.

 

He had the greatest midfield ever from 2008-2009 to 2011-2012 for sure, and his team won the Champions League twice, in historic fashion with those teams being widely considered amongst the greatest teams in the history of the sport (as I’ve previously shown, with tons of rankings on this), while also winning a bunch of other titles. That level of success is not remotely inconsistent with Messi being the GOAT and that midfield being the greatest ever midfield.

 

When Carlito debated you on Ronaldo's playmaking abilities, your retort is his lower volume is an indication that he is less than proficient, not that he wasn't "tactically asked to". Be consistent.
In any case, I did a thorough dissection of Messi's conundrums as a center forward / inside forward. I invite you to read it, it is illuminating.