When the referee blew the final whistle at Old Trafford, Cristiano Ronaldo, 37, was the picture of desolation. He opened his arms, shook his head in disbelief and headed for the locker room.
His team, Manchester United, had drawn 0-0 with Watford, penultimate in the Premier League.
Hours later, in Paris, Lionel Messi’s team, 34, beat Saint-Étienne 3-1 in the French Championship. The Argentine didn’t score, but he played well and gave a pass for a goal.
The statistics of the two athletes who have been the protagonists of an unprecedented duopoly in world football in the last 15 years are not the same as in previous seasons. So much so that one can ask a question that until recently would have been unimaginable: Are Messi and Ronaldo in decline?
“I still have four or five years to go. I want to keep winning titles,” summed up the Portuguese last week, a figure who seems increasingly frustrated at United, the club where he exploded into football and to which he returned last year. It was supposed to be a coronation. It has been difficult.
Lionel Messi is still trying to get things right in his first season at Paris Saint-Germain after a departure from Barcelona that, for both him and the club, was traumatic. In France, it is a luxury piece of a billionaire gear and has not found the same rhythm shown in Spain.
The Argentine has fewer problems than Ronaldo in England, it’s true, but the internal challenges are much smaller. PSG’s only goal is to win the Champions League.
“He’s not going to leave a mark on Paris. He’s a kid from another club, Barcelona, ​​that’s his life. He doesn’t have the legs to run as much as he used to,” accused midfielder Jèrôme Rothen, who played for the Parisian team of 2004 to 2008 and is now a commentator for the RMC broadcaster, in France.
Including the matches for the Argentine national team, for which he won the Copa América, Messi’s average goals this season is 0.37. He hit 30 starts in 2021/2022 and scored 11 times. That’s just over half of the worst offensive mark he’s had in the last ten years for Barcelona.
In the previous two seasons, he averaged 0.73 in 2020/2021 (44 goals in 60 games) and 0.70 in 2019/2020 (31 goals in 44 games). Despite being worse, they are above what strikers in European football tend to produce. In both years, he was the top scorer in the Spanish League.
None of this is close to what he did in 2011 and 2012. In the 2011/2012 season, he reached the mark of 1.22 goals every 90 minutes (83 in 68 games) and in 2012/2013, he recorded 1.11 goals per game ( 68 noted in 61 appointments).
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 20 goals in 34 games for Manchester United and Portugal this season. The average of 0.60, compared to the previous ten, when he played for Real Madrid and Juventus, is bad. In the period, on four occasions he reached a number equal to or greater than one goal per match: 1 in 2016/2017 and 2011/2012; 1.01 in 2013/2014; and 1.15 in 2014/2015.
The two changed positions over time. In the 2018 World Cup, in Russia, Messi showed that he was no longer physically able to get the ball in the defense field and take it to the opponent’s goal.
Cristiano Ronaldo went from being a speed player through the wings to become a striker, a finisher.
Even so, they continued to dominate the awards for the best in the world. Messi won six times (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2019) and Cristiano Ronaldo five times (2008, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017). But in the last two years, the winner was the Polish Robert Lewandowski.
It’s a drop in performance in a season that ends in what should be the last World Cup in the career of the two strikers. And the last chance for both of them to win the biggest national team tournament on the planet. Runner-up in 2014, Messi will arrive in Qatar in November, at the age of 35.
Argentina, the current Copa America champion, is already qualified for the World Cup. Portugal will have to go through a repechage in two matches next month. One of them could be against Italy.
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