Rare photo of Ronaldo standing without resorting to tip toes. Rare photo of Messi standing without hiding tax bills in his arse.
In Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix, Dumbledore shows Harry a prophecy that goes a little bit like this:
“The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”
As Harry comes to the realisation that the prophecy is about himself, Dumbledore tells him that “(it) could have applied to two wizard boys, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom.”
HOLY FUCK
Neville. Sweet, chubby little Neville with the mental nan and the toad called Trevor, could have been the hero, if not for Voldemort choosing Harry on a whim. We could all have lived in a world where Neville Longbottom & The Sandwich Of Farts was a best seller, where Potterfanatics became Bottom Bandits, where kids up and down the country were gaining weight and buying frogs and adopting a Yorkshire accent.
But as the story turned out, there could be only one. Voldemort made his choice, and Harry ended up being the one with the glasses and the shit hair and the ginger mate and – no wait, that wasn’t a result of that.
Anyway, logic dictated that there was one person in the prophecy, only one that could stop Voldemort. There couldn’t be two equally as important, equally powerful young wizards who were there to stop the Dark Lord in his tracks.
Why couldn’t there have been?
Similarly, the feud between fans of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi boils down to the fact that there must be only one. Only one can be the best in the world, the undisputed GOAT of GOATs, the top goalscorer in the Champions League, La Liga, Ballon d’Or winner… the list goes on. This process is replicated in every department of the entertainment business, and beyond. Best Picture at the Oscars. Employee of the Month at McDonald’s. Your mother’s favourite child.
It’s only natural that we tend to crown an individual’s achievements above all others, because that’s the method in which entire civilisations have been founded; on one person, who has become king or president or leader of the revolution.
But in a sport where constant argument rages on over whether the best is Pele or Maradona, it’s safer than most to assume that there never will be one prevailing winner in said debate. Ask a third of football fans, they’ll say the former. Ask another third, they’ll say the latter. Ask another third, they’ll probably say Nicklas Bendtner because they think that it’s fucking hilarious and not a waste of my time when I’m actually doing research for a very important blog post you bastards.
So why do we have to crown a winner now? Why do we have endless articles week after week asking if Messi’s aesthetics are better than Ronaldo’s sheer power, if the diminutive Argentine has declined while the strapping Portuguese’s game has only gone from strength to strength, whether one is currently head and shoulders (but what sensational shoulders he has) above the other?
Why do so many care?
The fact is that there is two people on this planet currently far far better than everyone else at the thing they have chosen to do. There isn’t many fields where you can say that. Tennis in the early 2000s, when Roger Federer would turn up, and with a flick of his wrist as delicate as a flower masturbating, would demolish the entire competition. EastEnders in the same time period, Shane Ritchie breathing life into an ailing show. My nan at farting. She’s just great at it. Sublime.
Messi and Ronaldo are the same. As good as Luis Suarez is, as talented as Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Sergio Aguero or their fellow Ballon d’Or nominee Manuel Neuer may be, they just aren’t as good as Messi and Ronaldo. This is a fact.
What isn’t a fact is whether one is better than the other. For years, people said Messi. For the last couple of them, people have said Ronaldo. I say they’re both extraordinary players, two of the very best in the entire history of the game, and trying to decide who is better is like trying to decide what sex act you like more, or whether a roast or a fry up is better, or if Transformers 2 is worse than Transformers 3. It’s a fruitless, pointless, inconsequential act that leads to thousands of gorms linking millions of videos and links, and inevitably ends up with everyone concluding that they’re both quite good aren’t they.
Which they are. They really are both quite good. In the same way that Neville turned out alright in the end, and far better looking than Harry if not quite as good at producing magic, Ronaldo follows Messi. Fuck the prophecy.
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