Barcelona vs. Real Madrid: Analysing Form of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have become the symbols of El Clasico in recent years.

The pair scored an astonishing 80 goals between them in La Liga last year—per ESPN—while also hitting double figures in their respective assist counts.

Both Messi and Ronaldo have yet to hit the dizzying heights they reached last season, but their good is better than most players' great. 

Here’s a breakdown of their season to date.

 

Lionel Messi

Scoring 12 goals in eight games isn’t a bad return for a guy who has reportedly been struggling with injury in the opening two months of the season.

Much of the talk at the start of this campaign surrounded the arrival of Neymar, and whether or not the Brazilian would fit into the same team as Messi. 

The sole purpose of much of Barcelona’s play is to service their diminutive forward. The team is packed with selfless individuals throughout, and when a player arrives—like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, for example—the marriage rarely works.

Upon Neymar’s arrival, the Brazilian spoke of Messi being the best player in the world—per John Drayton in the Daily Mail—and how he was in Spain to help the Argentine player.

The early signs are that he has done just that.

With six assists and two goals—per ESPN—you get the sense that Neymar has bought into the Barcelona philosophy of working hard for Messi and sacrificed his own goalscoring abilities in the process.

Per WhoScored, Messi has an overall rating of 8.78 in La Liga this season, and he has been successful with 85.2 percent of his passes while making two key passes per game.

Not bad for a guy supposedly short on fitness.

 

Cristiano Ronaldo

Ronaldo has bagged 15 goals in 12 games for Real Madrid across all competitions this season.

Watching the Portuguese captain, you sometimes get the impression that he is on a one-man mission to break every goalscoring record possible. He has taken an unbelievable 80 shots in La Liga this season, which is more than twice than Messi (36)—per ESPN—but he scores enough to get away with it.

There were questions at the start of the season about how Ronaldo would react to the world-record signing of Gareth Bale, and the early signs appear to be that it hasn’t affected him the slightest.

While Carlo Ancelotti has put his own stamp on the team, Ronaldo remains as important to Los Blancos now as he was in Jose Mourinho’s system.

As Guillem Balague points out in his Bleacher Report piece on this weekend’s game, Ancelotti likes to pack six men behind the ball and let his stars do the damage up top, and that plays to Ronaldo’s strengths.

The only black mark beside the Portuguese’s form has been his performance for his national side. He went six games without scoring in World Cup qualifying, often against inferior sides.

But in the white of Real Madrid he has looked the part, and when he arrives at the Camp Nou on Saturday, he will be brimming with confidence.

Per WhoScored, Ronaldo possesses a rating of 8.04 in La Liga this season, and his pass success rate sits at 80 percent.