Can Messi or Ronaldo join the immortals? ---------------------------------- To claim that Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo are somehow lacking something as footballers seems almost perverse. These are the twin tornados of todays football landscape, chasing each other in a statistical arms race, tearing up records, making the impossible mundane. But as their third World Cups come around, there remains a sense of incompleteness, of a final summit still to climb. What separates Argentinas Messi and Portugals Ronaldo from footballing immortality? Certainly not goals, whether in quantity or style, or club honours, or individual accolades won. By those measures both match Pele and Maradona, arguably surpass Zinedine Zidane and Johan Cruyff. What it is missing is a World Cup: not a brilliant solo goal, nor a single great win, but a tournament that they have dominated and defined. Diego Maradona achieved that grail in 1986, dancing and driving Argentina to the title. Pele perhaps did it twice, as spearhead in 1958 and embodiment of his teams brilliance 12 years later. Even in defeat Cruyff (1974) and Roberto Baggio (1994) owned a tournament. This is the power of a World Cup. Reputations are transformed. Legacies are gilded. In 571 minutes at World Cup finals Messi has scored just one goal, the same number as Matthew Upson and Gary Breen. In 754 minutes, Ronaldo has only one more than the England and Ireland centre-halves. To put that into goal-scoring context, Denmarks comparatively prosaic forward Jon Dahl Tomasson has five. Pele ended with 12, and the Brazilian Ronaldo had 15. If you are a great player for a country like Argentina, Italy, Germany or England youve got to prove it at a World Cup - not necessarily to win it, but to make yourself one of the greats of that tournament. It is probably the one thing that counts against Messi and Ronaldo at the moment when set against the likes of Pele and Maradona.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 09:30:11 +0000
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