That last part was stupid.

If you want to continue with pointless discussion about Ronaldo and Messi go ahead

You don't get to decide what is pointless or not. This article has an interesting methodology of looking at the importance of their goals, rather than just the goals themselves, and I made the topic to discuss it.

The ignorant are easly entertained

Well, I'm a Madrid fan and I've always claimed that Messi has been the better player if we compare the overall carreers of both players (over the last 2 years Cristiano has been the better player imo).

However, I don't think this approach is the best to decide if Messi is better than Cristiano or not.

First of all, there are other factors than "scoring the most important goals" that should be looked at when it comes to deciding which player is best. I think this is something most of us would agree on, although we might not exactly agree on what those factors would be, so let's leave it here because this could lead to an endless debate.

Secondly, Messi is more likely to score tie breaking goals for different reasons. Among them are that:

- Madrid has scored more goals than Barça in all but one of the last 5 Liga seasons, meaning that statisticly Madrid (and therefore Cristiano) will score more goals when the score isn't a draw than Barça (and therefore Messi).

- Madrid (and therefore Cristiano) is most deadly when counterattacking. Most teams will try to not risk receiving a counterattack from Madrid unless they need a goal because they are behind in the scoreboard.

- During most of the seasons where both Cristiano and Messi have played in La Liga, Cristiano has had more goal scorng partners to share his goals with (for example in 2012 Madrid had 3 players among La Liga's top 5 goal scorers while Barça's second top scorer wasn't even iin the top 10) making it statisticly less likely for Cristiano to score decisive goals.

- Messi has played more of these "important games", such as CL finals or WC games, than Cristiano, so again he's statisticly more likely to score more of these important goals.



That's just a few examples out of the top of my head.

+ this article is for sheep

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Some good points. In no way am I saying the article is perfect, but it's one of the ways you can look at the data differently and come to an interesting conclusion from it.

I think there are other factors that favour Ronaldo in scoring decisive goals (at least for this season). One point that people miss is Messi plays deeper than Ronaldo and is more of a playmaker, as opposed to striker, so gets more assists that could prove to be equally decisive as the goals themselves. Also, sharing a lot of goals with Suarez and Neymar, whereas in Ronaldo's case, Benzema and Bale aren't scoring nearly as much comparatively. I understand the data is for 2013 and 2014, but IMO Ronaldo hasn't scored as many decisive goals as he should have this season when considering he scores way more than any other players in their team.

This post was edited by dro94 on Mar 26 2015 11:11am

thats exactly it, i dont know what this score comparisons are about
messi is the much better overall player and provides more for the game than ronaldo ever will

Messi and Cristiano started their career (I mean, in ManU and Barça 2004~) the same year, so if Messi reached more finals or important games, it is because he did it possible.

This post was edited by Catalunya on Mar 26 2015 11:19am