Jonathan Clegg - Messi vs. Ronaldo - One Rivalry, Two GOATs, and the Era That Remade the Worlds Game

To our parents, with love:

Aline & Jeffrey, Lizzie & Ant

And to Evie and Cooper, almost certainly future Ballon dOr winners

There are countless ways to tell the stories of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and the era of soccer that bound them together. On the pitch, every weekend they spent in the Spanish league was its own miniature soap opera. Every major-tournament summer became a magnificent psychodrama. And away from the field, Messi and Ronaldo built global empires that put them on a level of fame normally reserved for US presidents and popes.

Taken individually, each one offers his own portrait of all-time sporting greatnessand plenty has been written about both. But any story focusing on just one of them necessarily comes with a gaping hole shaped like the other. Whether they like it or not, Messi and Ronaldo are inextricable from each others narratives. In the twilight of their careers, theyre now secure enough to admit this. For nearly two decades, they drove each other on. Being the GOAT meant first being better than the other guy.

As it turned out, this wasnt an isolated battle. In their intertwined quests to make history, Ronaldo and Messi also turned into the twin centers of gravity in the worlds most popular sport, exerting their pull on everything and everyone that came within their orbits. Even at a time when the sports world was changing more dramatically than in any 20-year period since the invention of the TV set, the most remarkable thing about this one was that the players at the very top stayed the same.

This is the era that we grew up in as reporters for the Wall Street Journal. We came of age when Messi and Ronaldo did, and we have chronicled their careersand their ripple effectsever since. For nearly 15 years, weve chased their exploits on four continents. We were there for Champions League finals, World Cups, and European Championships. We saw them raise and re-raise each other with moments of supreme glory, from Messis fourth Champions League title in Berlin to Ronaldos exorcism with Portugal at Euro 2016. We also witnessed them confront crushing disappointment. None was more dramatic than the evening in Rio de Janeiro when we trudged to the Maracana Stadium, sunburnt and sleep-deprived, fully expecting to see Lionel Messi win his World Cup on South American soil.

That was the day Messi had a chance to become a world champion and gain a decisive edge in soccers all-consuming debate, Messi or Ronaldo? When he didnt, as Argentina lost to Germany, we came away with a realization: the Debate is never really over. More than that, the Debate is beside the point.

Thats why this is not merely a dual-biography of two brilliant players. The whole point of this book is that it isnt just about them. It could never be just about them.

Messi vs. Ronaldo is an exploration of how two footballing geniuses emerged at the same time to alter the sports world and accelerate the changes within it. In this account, they are not only a prism through which to understand modern soccer, but also a study in power, reach, and influence. The rivalry went so far beyond the fieldwhere they have met only around three dozen timesthat it disrupted entire business and cultural ecosystems, even though the individuals themselves had little awareness, or control, of the consequences.

There have been biographies of these guys, but there has been no serious journalistic treatment of their global effect on the game, the business of sports, and the nature of global celebrity.

Implicit in all of it is the mutual understanding from Messi and Ronaldo that their most important business partner is the other one. The rivalry generates so much energy and zeal in otherwise rational people that their currency is no longer sports. Instead, as their soccer careers wind down, their stock in trade is whether you love them or hate them, a conversation that Messi and Ronaldo have long stopped trying to manage. And in many ways, they made it easy for fans to pick sides, because these two extraordinary players are so extraordinarily different. They are opposites in every meaningful way: One is big, one is small. One likes to burst past defenders, the other likes to weave through them. One is a finisher, one is a playmaker. One is shy and humble, the other a strutting peacock. You already know which is which.

For years, Messi made it look simple, scoring effortless, dazzling goals. Ronaldo made it look impossibleyou could see every carefully honed muscle and sinew stretching as he smashed the ball in.

Neithers art required translation. Kids from Beijing to Brooklyn instinctively understood that the global order was these two and then everyone else. They scored in practically every game they played, and they played every three days all year-round. Yet the deeper we got into the story, and the longer their careers went on, the more similar they started to seem.

Based on deep dives through confidential documents and years of original interviews from around the soccer and sports business world, with executives, teammates, and coaches, this book is a snapshot of the galaxy they created, with the two massive stars in the center. In many cases, those close to Messi and Ronaldo only agreed to speak to us anonymously, since their relationships (and occasionally their livelihoods) hinged on discretion. Where we have recounted whole conversations, they are reconstructed from the firsthand accounts of the people in the room or those briefed on them immediately afterward. And through it all, over and over, we did the most important thing anyone in soccer could do in the Messi vs. Ronaldo era: we watched them play.

Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg, April 2022

Two of the greatest soccer players who ever lived sat awkwardly in a Swiss opera house wondering why theyd bothered to show up. There was the floppy-haired Lionel Messi in a dark suit that draped over his narrow shoulders. And there was Cristiano Ronaldo with diamond studs in his ears and wearing a tuxedo, even though the event was expressly not black tie. Neither of them wanted to be there. Neither of them was allowed to leave.

The reason they slouched like punished schoolboys was the empty seat between them.

At their first ever FIFA World Player Galaan annual celebration of dazzling skill, relentless drive, and uncomfortable banterMessi and Ronaldo had both been voted not quite the best mens player of 2007. Instead, that honor had gone to a Brazilian playmaker named Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, or Kak for short, who was now up onstage collecting his trophy. He was older than Messi and Ronaldo, and as far as they were concerned, he was also worse at soccer.

At least two other people in the velvet opera house seats that night agreed.

One was a Portuguese former nightclub promoter named Jorge Mendes, who was remaking himself as a slick-haired soccer agent by moving Iberian and South American players around Europe as casually as he juggled his many cell phones. Putting Ronaldo on that stage was a key piece in his master plan to make his client the richest athlete on the planet.

The other Jorge in the room was even more outraged. That would be Jorge Messi, father of Lionel, who still spent much of his time in their hometown of Rosario, Argentina. It had been barely seven years since he bundled his sobbing son onto a flight to Spain in the hopes of impressing some coaches at FC Barcelona. Now the former supervisor at a metal factory was an agent toowith one client who happened to share his last namefumbling his way through the most cut-throat business in sports.

That night, they all learned a vital lesson. Award shows like this one had never counted for much in soccer before. The trophies that mattered were the ones handed out on the field, at the end of a struggle, with everyone wearing shorts, not designer suits. But that was about to change. The game they grew up with had never known an era-defining rivalry between two soloists. What no one could predict in Zurich that night was that the guys who finished second and third were about to transform soccer into an individual sport. Award shows would become their unlikely battlefieldjust as soon as Messi and Ronaldo could start winning them.