• Who is a better international player, Messi or Ronaldo?
• Why is the international contest so important to the debate?

This is a LONG thread, but I promise if you read it all the debate is settled for good. Any retweets and shares are greatly appreciated

You can have great performances without winning a trophy. Take Kane, trophyless but a WC striker.

Therefore, you can’t call Ronaldo a better NT player than Messi because of the 2-0 trophy count.

This means we must judge off of goal involvements and all-round performances.

Let’s begin by considering their stats in all internationally recognised matches, including friendlies:

Instantly you can see Ronaldo has a much greater goalscoring impact. Messi is the same with assists, however overall the involvements rate still favours Ronaldo.

However, these stats include international friendlies. These matches are uncompetitive and don’t have any stakes, leading to rotation and trials of tactics.

It is much fairer to analyse Messi and Ronaldo’s competitive statistics:

It is true that Messi plays a slightly different role for Argentina than he does at club. Yes, he is a forward, but he does have a role to create.

However, the assists this lead to do not overcome the goals scored by Ronaldo proven by GA/G.

Some will rightly say that because of European qualifiers, on the surface it appears that Ronaldo has weaker opposition. However, Messi also frequently plays low ranked South American teams.

I decided to investigate the overall relationship:

The AVG Coefficient is the average FIFA ranking of all of their teams they have scored/assisted against, at the time of the match. Source from MichelaCosta.

If you compare the ranking points of 1416 to 1486, Messi’s opposition is only 4.8% stronger.

However, if you use the same data calculated for their involvements, you can see that Ronaldo has a staggering 27.7% more involvements than Messi has had.

This more than outweighs the slight opposition difficulty increase (4.8%) that Messi has.

Our next point is to consider major tournaments as they’re the endgame in International football. This is in all competitive matches except qualifiers:

Messi G/G: 0.33
Messi A/G: 0.43
Messi GA/G: 0.76

Ronaldo G/G: 0.48
Ronaldo A/G: 0.25
Ronaldo GA/G: 0.73

On the surface, Messi’s goal involvements pip Ronaldo’s in major tournaments. However, this doesn’t consider that Copa America often has weaker opponents.

I applied the same process as before, to find the average strength of opposition:

I then compared the FIFA ranking points to find the % difference of opposition strength. This went 8.11% in Ronaldo’s favour, whilst the involvements only went 3.95% Messi’s way.

Also for each involvement Messi has in a MT that affects the outcome of the match, Ronaldo has 2.3:

NOTE 1: Affect the outcome of the game means take away their involvements and see if it changes the scoreline. If the answer is no, the goal is ‘not needed’.

Except when they are involved in a goal but the team loses - all of these involvements are ‘needed’.

NOTE 2: Outliers were removed for extremely low ranked opposition which the player had less than 3 involvements against. This is so that one low FIFA ranking doesn’t unfairly distort the overall average of teams they assist/score against.

Now it’s time to contextualise this data to see if there’s something we’ve missed.

The first point is age. Both are top players, so their PHYSICAL prime can be estimated at around 22-30. Ronaldo only played 4 major tournaments in this time, whilst Messi got to play 6.

This point swings Ronaldo’s favour, as if he has played less tournaments during his prime you’d expect him to have less involvements.

The next point is their team strength. You can try to look at the top teammates they had with them for most of their career.

For Argentina, Romero, Demichellis, Otamendi, Zabaleta, Mascherano, Di Maria, Lavezzi, Higuian and Aguero come to mind.

For Portugal, Patricio, Pepe, W. Carvalho, Moutinho and Nani come to mind.

Obviously, this is completely subjective. So we can also compare by their WC odds:

This tells us that Messi has always played with a fairly better team, which is backed to go far in major tournaments, unlike Ronaldo’s Portugal.

For context, Portugal won Euro 2016 against 20/1 odds. Argentina lost Copa 2015 when they were favourites with 9/4 odds.

We can also compare their nation’s footballing history too:

Before Messi, Argentina had failed to qualify for only 1 World Cup in history. They’re tournament regulars, including 2 title wins. They have also won 14 Copa America in their history.

Before Ronaldo, Portugal only qualified for 3 world cups in history, never winning. Since Ronaldo has been playing, they’ve qualified for 4/4.

They’ve also only qualified for 5 EUROs, never winning. Recently they have qualified for 4/4, including their first title win.

Whilst this shouldn’t be taken too seriously, it has an impact on the players coming up through the nation. When you consider it over 15-20 years, the influence a ‘footballing nation’ has on creating more talent is relevant.

So, let’s recap what we’ve learned so far:

Now it’s time to bring up points which favour Messi’s argument. In WC KOs Messi has 0 and 4 in 8. Ronaldo has 0 and 0 in 6.

However, just because you’re in the KOs it doesn’t necessarily mean your involvements have a greater affect or that they are against a better team.

The 4 assists were in R16. 1 vs Mexico, 1 vs Switzerland and 2 vs France. 1 was a deflected shot, another one didn’t affect the outcome. The 2nd vs France was elite.

However, it would be unfair to say Messi is a better NT player solely because of 1 world class assist.

Looking at their records, 4 of Ronaldo’s 6 KO games came when he was just 21 and a creative winger.

The teams he played were Netherlands, England, France and Germany. Since that point, he’s only blanked in two KOs. One against WC-winning Spain, and also against Uruguay at 33.

Most with an objective opinion would say that the most iconic WC performance of them both was Ronaldo’s hattrick vs Spain.

It wasn’t a KO game, but it was a decisive match they needed a point from. It was against top opposition. It shows the KO comparison isn’t representative.

Similarly for Ronaldo’s case, in the EUROs he has 4 KO GA against 3 top 6 nations, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Germany.

This shows that he can have decisive involvements against top teams in a major tournament - just that he has not had the same chances in the WC.

My point from all of this, is that KO involvements are a cherry picked stat. Better performances can happen in the group stage, and worse opposition can be faced in the KOs.

The difference is only 4 involvements over 15 years, hardly defining.

Moving on. If it’s unfair to judge on trophies because you can have great performances but not win anything...

It’s also unfair to judge on individual trophies because you can have great performances but not win if there was another player who did as well.

Not to mention, Ind. trophies can also be subject to bias/popularity rather than performance. However, to play this debate fair we need to consider them:

* Individual Awards

2007 Copa America Young Player
2014 World Cup Golden Ball

2016 Euro Silver Boot

This breaks the common misconception that Ronaldo has never won an individual award during a tournament.

Furthermore, unlike Copa the EUROs didn’t used to have a YPOTT. However in 2004, Ronaldo was the only U21 who made it past the QF stage as well as making the TOTT.

This means if we’re being fair, under the same rules as Copa, Ronaldo should also have a young player of the tournament award.

However, YPOTT shouldn’t be valued much, as it’s effectively an award for your balls not dropping.

Similarly, under the same rules, Messi should be awarded a Silver Boot for Copa 2016 as he had the outright second most goals during the tournament, even if none had an affect on the result of the matches they were scored in.

It’s also important to mention - Messi was allegedly set to be awarded with the Copa America 2015 MVP.

Messi scored 1 penalty (GS Paraguay) and had 3 assists vs Paraguay in a 6-0 SF win in the tournament. It is alleged that he rejected it, and nothing was officially given.

That means overall, Messi and Ronaldo’s Individual awards are balanced - except from the World Cup Golden Ball.

This is a very controversial award, as many players had more goal involvements than Messi. James Rodríguez, who also won a Puskas, was one example:

Some might say Messi deserved his golden ball due to his WhoScored rating, but in reality the system is flawed.

If a player can have over double the GA/G of another, then that player should have a higher rating as they affected the game in a more direct way. (Both are forwards)

The strange thing about Messi winning, was that Argentina’s success was a big team effort.

Whilst Messi won the group, Romero & Mascherano’s defence kept 4 KO clean sheets in 90 minutes. Di Maria also scored the winner in Switzerland and Higuain in Belgium.

Furthermore, Di Maria won Argentina’s 2014 POTY. Di Maria missed the final due to injury where they lost.

When Germany vs Argentina was replayed later in the year, Messi didn’t play but Di Maria did. They won 4-1 with all goals/assists from Di Maria.

This isn’t the only time this has happened. In Copa America 2016, Messi was on the bench for the first group game against Chile. They won 2-1 against Chile’s first team.

In the final they played Chile again. Messi played this time, and the team failed to score and lost.

Back to WC2014. Two winning Germans, Müller and Kroos were both overlooked for the Golden Ball. Müller had 5 goals and 3 assists to Messi’s 4 and 1.

FIFA uses the Castrol Index to rate players performance, and Kroos was the highest rated player. Messi was only 6th.

Therefore, if the individual awards were fair, neutral and consistent between tournaments Messi and Ronaldo would both have YPOTT and Silver Boot each.

As previously mentioned, individual awards shouldn’t be considered much for the same reasons as trophies.

As were mentioning everything on both sides, some will say the Olympics is a major trophy which proves Messi’s success outside of Barcelona.

However, 8/11 players are required to be under 23, meaning the Olympics is effectively a youth tournament.

Therefore we can’t consider it like Copa/WC the same way we don’t count youth level trophies.

In 2018 Messi said “I would swap my Ballon d’Ors for a title with Argentina.” Messi had already won the Olympics at this point, this means he himself doesn’t consider it a proper title.

Whilst the trophy count isn’t the deciding factor, let’s take a look at what we can interpret.

Ronaldo reached two finals with his national team. In neither final did he get a goal/assist. Messi reached four, and in none of his did he get a goal or an assist.

However, Messi lost all 4 of his finals yet Ronaldo won both of his.

This is because Ronaldo is a great captain and leader - his mentality has a positive effect on his teammates - Messi’s on Argentina has less effect.

This is a calculated response. In 3 finals, one player would surely have stepped up just ONCE if the team was positive and well lead. It’s too frequent for it to be a coincidence.

More evidence? Messi was the captain of two of the most notorious UCL comeback defeats in B2B years

Now, this doesn’t mean Messi is an awful leader or anything on his playing ability, but it’s Ronaldo’s winning mentality which is what has set them apart and why he has won 2 more trophies despite playing 2 less finals.

Now, we only have one aspect left to cover.

So despite the trophies & mentality, the goals & assists, the balance in deserved individual awards, the quality of opposition faced, the importance of involvements.

Some will say Messi has something more to add.

And they are right - it is true that Messi does more to affect the game than involvements, with dribbling and assisting.

However, it is unfair to compare the dribbles/passes of a player in a creative role to one in a goal-focused role like Ronaldo.

Similarly, Ronaldo is a central playing forward. He also does things apart from goals and assists to affect the game.

This includes off the ball movement to stretch the defence and break offside lines, to hold up play to allow teammates to run in behind etc.

The true value of this can’t be measured, which is why ratings that only consider dribbles & passes are ineffective.

Similarly, whilst a player may have more dribbles and passes, they’re less worthwhile if they’re further down the pitch and don’t lead to involvements.

There is only ONE way we can measure a player’s overall affect on their team without looking at their involvements.

This is to look at the win rate of the team, with and without the player. This includes goals, passing, dribbling, any way they positively benefit their team.

This leads us to a theory - if Messi’s dribbles/passes are more important than Ronaldo’s higher goal and assist rate, then when you take them both away from their teams Argentina’s win rate will fall more.

And here is the killer blow:

I’ll say that differently:

Argentina’s win rate is 5% more with Messi.
Portugal’s win rate is 9% more with Ronaldo.

Messi’s dribbles/passes are not more important than Ronaldo’s higher involvements, because Portugal’s win rate increases at almost double the rate.

With Messi and CR7 out of the picture - Argentina has a higher win rate.

When you put Messi and Ronaldo back into those teams, Portugal now has a higher win rate.

This considers everything. Goals, assists, dribbles, passes, mentality. Ronaldo is more important to his team.

So, this puts the checkmate on the international debate, and Messi fans with a tough choice leading to the same outcome.

You either look at the win rate with both players, and say that Ronaldo is a more important and better player for his NT as their win rate increases more...

Or you say that Argentina’s win rate fell less because they had better players - meaning Ronaldo managed higher GA/G per opposition at ALL levels and won trophies with a worse team, proving that Ronaldo is a better player for his national team.

Either way you choose, the answer is the same. Ronaldo is a far better player for Portugal than Messi is for Argentina.

Now, this is when we make a crucial analysis. Argentina is the only place we have seen Messi outside of Barcelona.

This means that when they play for their national teams you can compare them in the only more neutral environment:

(I say more, because Ronaldo is still disadvantaged)

Here, Messi didn’t have 7-8 all time legends playing in the same team as him giving an advantage over CR7.

It’s important to note, this isn’t a way of saying Messi is a system player.

Messi is still a good player for Argentina. But the CRUCIAL point is - he’s not as good as Ronaldo is for Portugal - in every worthwhile stat. Most importantly, not as vital for his team.

This means even if Messi was the engine running prime Barca, CR7 would be a more effective engine in his place.

The way Ronaldo can be clearly ahead in a neutral area, have taken the more difficult career path, and there still be a stalemate on the debate, proves he is above.

Even if you don’t agree with the inferences - you can’t refute Ronaldo is a greater NT player. Personally I still consider Messi GOAT tier because of his club career.

Please share the start of the thread so others can finally see an objective breakdown, thanks for reading