Reuters/AFP
When Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi go head to head tonight, there will be a brief acknowledgement but nothing else.
They are the best
players in the world but they will never be best friends. When Cristiano
Ronaldo and Lionel Messi go head to head tonight, there will be a brief
acknowledgement but nothing else.
Really, though, they should go out
of their way to thank each other. Every time Ronaldo sparkles for Real
Madrid, Messi inevitably tries to go one better for Barcelona. The
results have been spectacular and it means Spanish football is now
essential viewing.
But watch them this evening in the
second leg of the Copa del Rey semi-final — and again on Saturday in La
Liga — and you will see nothing more than a cursory handshake. You
don’t need to be a body language expert to appreciate there is no love
lost between these two.
The question both men should be
asking, however, is this: where would I be without you? You have to
wonder whether their statistics would be so incredible if one was
playing in another league. When Ronaldo scored a hat-trick last month
against Getafe, Messi scored four the night after against Osasuna.
All that was missing from his
performance was him lifting his shirt to reveal the message ‘anything
you can do, I can do better’. Messi has always been a top player and is
surrounded by magicians in Xavi and Andres Iniesta but you can argue
that Ronaldo’s £80million move from Manchester United in 2009 took his
game to another level. Statistics back that up.
If you look at a breakdown of how
Messi has reached 300 goals, the first 80 came in 161 games. In the 204
matches he has played since Ronaldo arrived in Spain, Messi has rattled
in 221, as if to hammer home the point he is the best in the world.
Ronaldo,
of course, would never acknowledge that nor would he say that trying to
outwit Messi has taken his game to another level — he scored 118 goals
for Manchester United in 292 matches — but, for Real, his tally is 183
goals in 182 games.
His enmity towards Messi really
surfaced last summer at Euro 2012, when Denmark fans barracked him
during a game against Portugal, chanting ‘Messi!’ every time he got
possession.
‘You know where he was this time
last year?’ Ronaldo asked after the game. ‘Being eliminated from the
Copa America. In his own country. That is worse, no?’
Further proof arrived via the
voting for the Ballon d’Or, which Messi won for a fourth time recently.
As captain of Argentina, Messi was given a vote and his top three
choices were Iniesta, Xavi and Atletico Madrid’s Radamel Falcao.
Ronaldo, meanwhile, also got the
chance to vote, as he is captain of Portugal. Yet he handed the
responsibility to his deputy Bruno Alves. Unsurprisingly, Alves picked
Ronaldo as his No 1 and left Messi off his shortlist.
Of course, rivalry in sport is
nothing new. Look at Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett. Would Coe have won
the 1500 metres gold medal in Moscow in 1980, had he not been beaten six
days earlier by Ovett in the 800m?
The
intense competition between those two was the reason there was a golden
age for British athletics in the 1980s and I read that Coe cited his
rivalry with Ovett as the reason he broke three world records in the
space of 41 days in 1980.
Similarly, there was no affection
between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost when they dominated Formula One.
Would they have enjoyed so many podium finishes without the other
pursuing them?
The tragic footnote to that
rivalry came when Senna was killed in 1994 and Prost said that ‘part of
him also died’ with Senna. They had no allegiance on the track but the
respect Prost had for Senna was shown when he was one of the
pall-bearers at his funeral.
It is all about appreciation and
recognition. Victoria Pendleton and Anna Mears, the top women cyclists,
had a feud that lasted years but melted in a second when they embraced
at the end of a sprint, won by Mears, at the Olympics last summer.
That was two athletes realising
the role they had played in each other’s career, a fitting way to bring
the curtain down on their rivalry.
Will that happen with Ronaldo and
Messi? Unlikely. Ronaldo was pictured with a face like thunder when
Messi was presented with the Ballon d’Or. Messi has not once said in
public how good Ronaldo is. They emit mutual loathing rather than mutual
respect.
Should
that stay the same way, it would be a huge shame. Both men have
fantastic team-mates and have enjoyed the backing of brilliant managers
but they should also appreciate their private competition is making them
play better, possibly better than they could ever have dreamed.
So while they might not be able to
live with each other, one thing is certain — they cannot be without
each other, either. – Daily Mail .
copied from http://www.iol.co.za
