Overeducated sports writers log

linebaugh

Well-known member
a face comfortable here
ae588775b4667d87d99c51fb52920db3--chiefs-football-fantasy-football.jpg

but endearingly flawed here
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Ronaldo has certainly won more hasn't he? European Cup with Portugal, 4 CLs with Madrid, one with United... countless leagues in UK and Spain. How many CL has Messi won? Xavi and Iniesta have a better trophy haul I guess cos they've won everything at club level with Barcelona and everything at international level with Spain.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The original Ronaldo looks goofy
Do you remember that thing when a load of kids saw Wes Brown training and they thought it was Ronaldo?
Bit harsh cos he was never that fat and ugly... or that good at football obviously.
 

version

Well-known member
Ronaldo has certainly won more hasn't he? European Cup with Portugal, 4 CLs with Madrid, one with United... countless leagues in UK and Spain. How many CL has Messi won? Xavi and Iniesta have a better trophy haul I guess cos they've won everything at club level with Barcelona and everything at international level with Spain.
Ronaldo only won two league titles in Spain, Messi won seven or eight in the same period. Messi also has four CL titles, so he's only one behind Ronaldo's four with Madrid and one with United.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But I do think that when totting up trophies won there does need to be a weighted value to each of those trophies. A hierarchy if you like. When you look at those kinds of things I would personally say that a world cup is probably the most valuable*, a European cup (with country) would also be very high (as would its equivalents from South America or Africa or whatever). A CL - or its equivalent from other areas would be highly rated too of course.
It quickly gets very complicated cos winning the Champions League is a bigger achievement than winning the Asian Equivalent and so on so it would be difficult to weight those things fairly.
A league title is also worth a lot - but again it should count more to lift the Bundesliga than MLS and so on.
Without going into that in the necessary detail, I would put Ronaldo ahead cos of that extra Champions League victory and because of the Euro victory with Portugal (unless Messi has lifted the equivalent trophy with Argentina, something I may have missed) - I think those outweigh the extra league wins... although possibly one could argue that in Messi's case those leagues count extra cos they were competing directly against each other.
Also, there are the extra Ballon D'ors of course but - perhaps perversely - I was really thinking team trophies for some reason. That's just a gut feeling and I'm prepared to listen to arguments on that one.
But really my feeling is that their totals look something like this.
Major Intl trophies - Ron One, Messi None
CL or equivalent - Ron Fve, Messi Four
League Championships - Ronnie approx one million, Leo approx two million
Domestic cups - both in the billions I guess

And for me those top two lines (both of which could conceivably change yet) constitute a lead that can't be overcome simply by the minor trophies below, however large the difference on those lines.

Other factors that could be taken into consideration are the number of Ballon D'ors and also the number of times they have been top scorer in leagues or tournaments. Also some might want to make an issue of the fact that Ronaldo has lifted the league in England, Spain and Italy (which are undoubtably three of the top four leagues) and has won the CL with two teams from two countries. But again all this is just pissing around the edges of the main things.

*actually a strange one cos Champions League is the highest standard of football - and yet world cup winners medals are more elusive cos they only come round every four years and of course you can't build an invincible team with whoever you like in it in the way that is theoretically possible with club sides.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Both played with some of the finest players of the modern game too. Imho Messi always had better team-mates onboard, don't know if that counts as a positive or negative bias though.
 

version

Well-known member
Messi's won more league titles with Barca than Ronaldo has with Sporting, United, Madrid and Juve combined. He's won more cup titles. He's come out on top when they've gone head to head in both the Champions League - beat United in the final, knocked Madrid out in the semis - and in Spain. He has more golden boots and, I think, more scoring titles and records in general. He's won two trebles and Ronaldo's yet to win his first. He's scored 91 goals in a single year. Also he's two years younger and has played two fewer seasons at top level. Ronaldo's Euros win and additional CL obviously count for a lot, but I don't think it's enough to edge it or hide the fact he only managed two league titles with Madrid in the nine seasons he was there.

Other than that, I think when you actually watch them it becomes quite clear who's the better of the two. Messi scores just as frequently as Ronaldo whilst performing at a similarly high level as a playmaker. He does for Barca what Ronaldo and Modric were expected to do for Madrid between the two of them.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Messi's won more league titles with Barca than Ronaldo has with Sporting, United, Madrid and Juve combined. He's won more cup titles. He's come out on top when they've gone head to head in both the Champions League - beat United in the final, knocked Madrid out in the semis - and in Spain. He has more golden boots and, I think, more scoring titles and records in general. He's won two trebles and Ronaldo's yet to win his first. He's scored 91 goals in a single year. Also he's two years younger and has played two fewer seasons at top level. Ronaldo's Euros win and additional CL obviously count for a lot, but I don't think it's enough to edge it or hide the fact he only managed two league titles with Madrid in the nine seasons he was there.
Other than that, I think when you actually watch them it becomes quite clear who's the better of the two. Messi scores just as frequently as Ronaldo whilst performing at a similarly high level as a playmaker. He does for Barca what Ronaldo and Modric were expected to do for Madrid between the two of them.
Yeah but I wasn't arguing about who is the best. I was saying that Ronaldo's trophy haul is better... I didn't say it explicitly but I kinda meant despite being the lesser player. I guess the biggest team achievement he was involved in was 4 CLS in a row - really bizarre cos I don't think anyone would argue that they were the best team in Europe for all four of those years.
With the league titles, they arguably demonstrate the best thing... but normally a CL counts for more. I say normally only cos this season there was the unusual circumstance of Liverpool wanting the league more than the CL cos they had won that several times in living memory and hadn't lifted the league for yonks.

Both played with some of the finest players of the modern game too. Imho Messi always had better team-mates onboard, don't know if that counts as a positive or negative bias though.
Yeah absolutely. When you see those youtube arguments and stuff you often see people going "Messi was only good with Xavi and Iniesta" - but I don't give that much time (and I know that's not what you're saying) cos then you look at Iniesta and there will be people saying "Messi made him good" and so on.... you get for the whole team, apparently they were only good cos they were made to look good by the genius around them.
But there is a slight grain of truth in there somewhere in that that team was crammed with stars of the level that, if they were able to, the other side would love to double up on... but obviously they couldn't do that cos it would mean leaving Suarez or someone unmarked. So yeah, they could of course express themselves in a way that perhaps they wouldn't have been able to in a lesser team wherein it might have been possible to stifle them with sheer numbers. That's what a good team is.
 

version

Well-known member
It was three in a row, but yeah. Still ridiculous. Nobody had done it twice in a row up until that point and they went and did it a third too.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
What about World Cup vs Champions League? I think that I'd sort of told myself that because the Champions League is a higher standard (I think that's uncontroversial right?) it was automatically a better tournament, but last time around somehow the magic of the world cup came back for me - partly cos I was in Russia at the time (though not at the games - at one point we did DJ in Yekaterinberg and we arrived when there was maybe one group game left and so there were still loads of Swedes, Mexicans and Germans around and the atmosphere was fantastic, the locals never see foreigners there at all and they loved it and all the fans seemed in good spirit and it was a great vibe in the town) but really I think just watching it while travelling made me concentrate on the games and sort of understand more fundamentally how important the whole thing is... the magic of surprises, the four-yearly making it once in a life-time for so many of those involved... and, yeah, national pride, in one of its better incarnations I guess. If I'm not kidding myself.
 

luka

Well-known member
When Kyrgios walks towards you it is like coming face to face with a hip-hop star. The fade, the fit, the pimp limp; six feet and four inches of imposing swag.


As a schoolkid with a “cuddly” physique ( his words, not mine) he was photographed on court in a Wu Wear top with a racket in his hand and a look on his face that suggested, like Wu-Tang Clan, he “ain’t nuttin ta f’ wit”. As more than one wag has pointed out, the Canberran plays tennis like Wu-Tang incarnate, insomuch as on night’s like Wednesday there can be up to nine characters battling for attention during his matches.

But the Staten Island collective are also famous for their improvisation, and creativity. A recent study suggests Wu-Tang have one of the widest vocabularies in hip-hop. Kyrgios is not dissimilar in his discipline. Nobody else serves underarm, like he did successfully in the opening set. Nobody chooses a tweener as an offensive strategy early in a deciding set, like he did. He even paid his dues to OGs past with his spin on the Sneak Attack By Roger.
 
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