Wait what? Casemiro scored
This those they hate on Ronaldo - how can you not be amazed by the fact that he does not possess that natural ability but has the professionalism, desire and work ethic to reach those nights regardless of not being the most naturally gifted. How can you downplay a guy who, even at the summit, works on holes in his vane relentlessly until they are adjusted. Sorry, when this is also downplayed, you only sound silly.
After all these years I'm still amazed that these two players can reduce grown adults who dislike one or the other to start acting like children. I understand during the moment, but no one reads their posts a day or week later and feels no shame? Probably 90% of the arguments are emotionally driven with very little actual substance.
Imagine now, how stupid it would be reading 50 year old arguments about Garrincha vs Pele, but not a discussion, a pissing match that tries to tear one player down, while hyping their own. That's what you guys are doing.
Actually, this is precisely why I downplay him. He's a great player, but his value has always been exaggerated by the vast majority of football fans. I'm not a Messi fanboy by any means, either.
Actually, this is precisely why I downplay him. He's a great player, but his value has always been exaggerated by the vast majority of football fans. I'm not a Messi fanboy by any means, either.
But to me, that's his most amazing attribute. Ronaldo, with the work ethic of 99% of footballers, would have just had the career of a "very good winger". Maybe. But, it was his dedication to his craft that elevated him to where he is. There have been countless players with a more natural skill set than Ronaldo had who didn't get near his accomplishments. How about many of those players with tremendous natural ability, but average production and work rate?
At the end of the day, it's the results, the numbers. Both of them, although through different means, are killers beyond anything I've witnessed on the pitch in 30 years of being a fan.
I don't think his value has been exaggerated
I think he's quite clearly the #2 of all time, behind Messi.
He's won everything, and he's done it putting up such ridiculous numbers that seemed impossible until he and Messi showed up.
His numbers absolutely dwarf anything ever put up by anyone except Messi.
In longevity, not in peak performance. Players today can stay healthier longer.
I'm not sure what you mean.
His longevity is that, like Messi, his best 7 or 8 seasons absolutely dwarf anything ever done by anyone other than those 2.
People used to top out and win scoring titles at 22-25 goals. 30 was considered out of this world.
Ronaldo da Lima scored 47 in a season ONCE and was a miracle (his next highest total was 35, 34, 31 and 30... and then some 20s).
Cristiano Ronaldo's scored 40+ goals 8 times. 50+ goals 6 straight times and 60+ goals twice.
Noone comes even remotely close (again, except GOAT Messi).
It's not like his longevity peaks out at 20 goals and he played 20 seasons, no - his peak, again, is miles ahead of anyone but Messi.
They (Messi and Ronaldo) have completely moved the goal posts in scoring standards, it's like having Gretzky and Lemieux in football.
Remember, neither of them played an out-and-out striker for most of their careers (Ronaldo has changed his game the last couple of years, but for the majority of his career, he was a winger/wide striker)
I realize people defend one by crapping on the other, but its really not necessary.
We will likely never see anything like these two again, at least not at the same time, stars alligned for this.
Just enjoy it while we can, they're not getting any younger.
And how many other guys have scored over 30 goals in the past couple of seasons? Aubameyang, Lewandowski, Cavani, Ibra, Higuain (broke Serie A record), Suarez (also scored 40). League average scoring curve in Spain has risen and continues to rise to levels not seen since the 70s. Ditto in other leagues.
Cristiano's scoring doesn't stand out nearly as much if you set aside the penalties either. His career non penalty goals per 90 minutes is basically neck and neck with Brazilian Ronaldo, for instance.
Not this again
Don't think Ronaldo is #2 alltime.
Someone like Pele, Cruyff, Platini brought more to their teams, and didn't have allstar teams around them most of their careers.
I'm still baffled by the "Penaldo" rubbish.
First of all, except Suarez, where Messi takes penalties, all those strikes take penalties. Ibra, Higuain did in Napoli, Cavani, Lewa, all regular penalty takes in their best season (obiously Higuain doesn't take them at Juve, and Cavani didn't take them while Ibra was at PSG)... Auba takes some, though from what I've watched of BVB, not always (?).
Oh, and Ronaldo R9 took penalties. At PSV, at Barca, at Inter, at Milan, at Real.
Everywhere he went, he took penalties.
And just to throw it out there, percentage of penalties out of total goals scored:
Messi - 13,10%
Cristiano Ronaldo - 15,67%
Ronaldo Nazario da Lima - 13,33%
With Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo has taken 86 penalties so far.
Messi's taken 80 with Barca. That's 6 penalties. SIX.
Hardly the difference where you'd label one "Penaldo" and apply that logic only to him.
I'm not following... Is there somehow doubt that Ronaldo (and Messi) have not been playing center forward/striker their whole careers?
In his ManU season, where he really took off with goalscoring, Ronaldo played wide right with Giggs left and Tevez and Rooney in the middle. He had 31 league goals that year (9 outside of the box) and 42 in all competitions.
Yes, Ferguson changed stuff up a bit to hinder the opposition and due to injuries here and there (in the CL final vs Chelsea Ronaldo played left, higher up, with no Giggs, and Haargraves played right, but more defensively; or vs Roma where Park played right and Ronaldo in the mddle), but for most of the season, yes, he was playing wide.
Pele is hard to gauge, as his club career was spent overseas. The level of competition just wasn't the same.
Obviously, he was scoring like a madman AND won 3 WCs, so one can easily make a case for him as top-3 all time (though I think for both him and Maradona there's more than a little of nostalgia when people are accessing what they've done).
Cruyff was amazing, he's my favorite player from that time.
He was the key cog in Ajax winning the EC and was a dream player for Holland.
But he ultimately didn't win with some great Holland sides and his Barcelona career ultimately fell short of what looked was going to be an culture-changing team (he was amazing the first year, won the La Liga, and it looked like he was going to do for Barca as a player what he later did for them as a manager... but he started to fall off from his 2nd season onward and it never really happened).
Platini is probably among the most underrated among the football greats, partly because he played in Maradona's time. He did wonders for both Juve and the french national team and is unrightly rarely mentioned in the same tier as Maradona or Pele etc.
In my opinion, neither was better than Cristiano, certainly didn't have the individual and team accomplishments.
But, we're not talking about pure strikers here (well, in case of Cruyff and Platini), and we can have a nice old discussion.
As for the all-star teams...
You can't really apply that to Ronaldo without applying it to Messi.
Or a bunch of other (recent) superstars, who almost exclusively ended up on star-filled teams at one point or another.
(though I agree with you that it wasn't possible to create such powerhouses until the removal of cap on foreign players - for example, even the great Milan teams had to rely on 8 Italians in the starting 11 - whether it was Gullit, Riijkaard and Van Basten playing, or later Savicevic, Desailly and Boban, the bulk of the side was home-grown, and had to be)
Not how I would frame the topic to be honest. He has taken 6 more penalties in La Liga... in ~3.5 fewer seasons and 191 fewer appearances than Messi.
With Barca:
Messi: 62 goals of 510 were penalties (12.16%)
With Real:
Cristiano: 72 goals of 406 were penalties (17.73%)
With European clubs (Real, Inter, Barca, PSV, Milan):
Ronaldo: 32 goals of 264 were penalties (12.12%) (Only 10 of 145 for Real and Barca)
Significant difference there.
No, it's that it simply doesn't matter. Cristiano was extremely goal-oriented just about his entire career. The nominal difference of whether he was a central striker or not is pointless.
What has Ronaldo actually won internationally? I mean, Portugal won the Euros but Ronaldo barely played in the final and that was the flukiest team winning since 2002. Ronaldo didn't even get out of the group in 2014.
It was fluky because of how they did it. They didn't win a game in the group stage and went through as a third place team. They only won one game in the knockout phase in regular time. The team was superb defensively apart from the game against Hungary.
Not how I would frame the topic to be honest. He has taken 6 more penalties in La Liga... in ~3.5 fewer seasons and 191 fewer appearances than Messi.
With Barca:
Messi: 62 goals of 510 were penalties (12.16%)
With Real:
Cristiano: 72 goals of 406 were penalties (17.73%)
Exactly. Here is the context. Penalties taken as an illustration of goals is laughable. Furthermore, the "small" difference is 5%.
Speaking of laughable, since we had a couple ("you know EXACTLY who you are guys" ) of laughable posts on it yesterday, I'll just say that context isn't about discrediting anyone including Ronaldo. There have been some... let's say "interesting" comments in this thread that needed some context and surely some more that could use some context.
What's also amusing are the "if someone's saying that about Messi then they should be corrected" lines. The commentary about Messi on this forum has been there for a long time and yet nobody was on their period when that was going on. Someone actually mentioned Xavi and Iniesta as if we haven't heard that argument a million times. It's like with Zidane. When it was Guardiola it was a fluke because of the squad he had but with Zidane it's because he's a tactical mastermind.
With the exception of a few comments acclaiming Zidane after the UCL Final (all of which had a tone of being surprised at his ability to pull it off, I might add), every one here has been, from what I've seen, pretty realistic with the fact that Zidane is far from being a tactical maestro. Saying that Guardiola doesn't get his due credit may or may not be true, but to say that Zidane is thought of as a "tactical mastermind" on this forum is straight-up incorrect.