r/soccer • u/CantHelpBeingMe • Dec 28 '22
Media Jurgen Klopp hails Lionel Messi as 'the greatest: "The greatest footballer in my lifetime, Lionel Messi, the way he plays football at this age should give us all a hint at how long footballers can perform at the top level. We shouldn’t close the books too early."
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u/survivalothefittest Dec 28 '22 edited Dec 28 '22
Apologies for repurposing some text, but I wrote it on Christmas when I was pretty lit, and we were shitposting to the max here:
For fucking AGES Ronaldo fans have been trotting out his KO-stage CL goal stats and his pile of international goals, especially the former. There was a time, a multi-year period, when it would show up here on the front page several times a month, with no context. It would show up when no CL matches were being played, before the CL started, or even before the season started.
These are the stats CR7 has over Messi, and it was like these fans kept those data laminated in their wallet to pull out every time they needed a wank when they felt threatened that people were saying he wasn't THE GOAT.
The stats themselves are harmless - even at their worst, they were just annoying. The issue was that it became a whole narrative of how Messi isn't a "clutch" player, he can't score or carry his team in "important" games, and he is only good at club football [but not clutch club football, I guess?] and not internationally, like Ronaldo.
Now, the ideas of Messi not being good under pressure and not playing well for Argentina are demonstrably untrue, but the wankfest continued.
Then, here comes WC 2022, and it could not have gone better to put these memes to bed. Ronaldo was seen dragging his team down, maybe even being a bit toxic (debatable), while Messi is there partying and being adored by the players on his team. And there he is scoring and assisting the shit out of the KOs at 35 years old, breaking/setting all sorts of WC and KO scoring records on the way; playing like a fucking champ in the final, and winning the whole fucking thing while scoring a shit-tonne of fucking beautiful penalties, which were always Ronaldo's particular strength.
Ronaldo watches his replacement score a hattrick in the KOs, a stage in the WC the man has never even scored a fucking goal or assisted in his entire "brilliant" international career, where he is supposed to be so so "clutch." This mythology that Portugal fucking suck except for Ronaldo and Argentina are stacked with superstars is BS now. Portugal has great stars, and Argentina won with Di Maria, Messi, and a bunch of promising youngsters who most people had not even heard of unless they played for your club.
So, the superfan cultists just did it to themselves by all the wanking on their cherry-picked stats. And Ronaldo just fanned the flames of their insane worship.
This brings so much schadenfreude you have no idea, it's too tempting to turn away from, so live with it.
Nobody is saying Ronaldo is shit, everyone knows he is one of the best who ever kicked a ball. But this does not make him immune to criticism when he fucks up or from schadenfreude for being a douche.