Flying Lionel Messi Has Put Comparisons with Cristiano Ronaldo to Bed

The night after Barcelona vanquished Manchester City 4-0 in the Champions League in mid-October, LuisSuarez received the European Golden Shoe. While collecting it from his children, Benjamin and Delfina, he regaled the audience with an anecdote.

"Benja asked me why I didn't score any goals," said Suarez. "But the fact our neighbour, whom he knows and is friends with, scored three made him happy anyway."

Suarez's neighbour has scored an awful lot of goals, more goals than any other player in a Barcelona shirt—or in an Argentina shirt. He's scored more goals than any other player in Spanish football history.

Suarez's neighbour has 467 goals for Barcelona, to be precise, and 14 of them have come this season. Six of which have come in the last two-and-a-third matches, including the aforementioned hat-trick against Manchester City.
Nobody doubted that Lionel Messi would come out swinging after a month's absence through injury, but it was hard to predict such brutal statistics.

Messi scored within three minutes of returning as a substitute, his treble against City was the 37th of his career and he netted the opening and closing goals of Barcelona's thrilling 3-2 win over Valencia.

Los Che stopper Diego Alves did his best to try and put Messi off as the Argentinian prepared to take a penalty in the final moments of stoppage time.
Alves told referee Alberto Undiano Mallenco he only wanted to tell Messi one thing, which the referee allowed.

"You know I’ve stopped you before," he said, in reference to a previous spot-kick save, as revealed by TV station Cuatro. "Do you remember that?"
Messi acknowledged with a little nod while Ivan Rakitic tried to clear the other Valencia players away.

Then, in a bid to extend the wait before the penalty, which puts more pressure on the taker, Alves asked for water. "Agua," he cried out. But this time, the referee did not acquiesce to his request.

It was the world's best player against the world's best penalty-saver, and despite Messi's shaky record from the spot, he made no mistake.
Alves went the right way, low down to his right, but Messi's penalty skidded past him into the corner.

If there is anything you can fault Messi for, it’s his bad record from the spot—the No. 10 missed four penalties for Barcelona last season. In every other aspect, he leads the field.

The Ballon d’Or shortlist was released on Monday, and Messi is, of course, on it. But he is not the favourite. Most believe that to be Cristiano Ronaldo, more for his Champions League and European Championship medals with Real Madrid and Portugal respectively than for his performances.

Ronaldo recently spoke about Messi to Coach.

"The media like to make out like we have this big rivalry, but we don’t," explained the Portuguese. "It is not like we are good friends, but there is a mutual respect on both sides."

Ronaldo is right about one thing. The rivalry has died. He has four goals in nine games at club level this season. Messi has 14 in 11.

Focusing on recent goals is not necessarily an accurate measure of the players’ respective abilities. But for two seasons, Ronaldo’s goal tally has been used as the main argument for him What’s more, Ronaldo’s performance level has dipped to borderline unacceptable.

It was disguised by the farce over whether he had appealed for offside against team-mate Alvaro Morata’s winning goal in their 2-1 victory over Athletic Bilbao—he hadn’t—but Ronaldo had endured a torrid game that culminated in the forward missing a one-on-one.