Ronaldo's FIFA Award Is Window Dressing, Lionel Messi Is the World's Best Player
2016 was a special year for Cristiano Ronaldo. Big trophies in the Champions League and Euro 2016 came the way of he and his teams, and few would argue that his presence in both the Real Madrid and Portugal starting XIs had a massive hand in the winning of those competitions.
He's an enormous presence, a tremendous talent and an acknowledged great of the modern game, and being the Ballon d'Or recipient was a natural and deserved culmination of the year for him in the eyes of many.
The start of 2017 has begun in similar fashion, with The Best FIFA Men's Player also handed to the No. 7—but was this also the right choice?
"Congratulations, @Cristiano Ronaldo!
— FIFA.com (@FIFAcom) January 9, 2017"
Winner of #TheBest FIFA Men's Player 2016 🏆 pic.twitter.com/6kNMWROFce
His fans, and Madrid's, will naturally argue it was. But in an age of football where second—even second-best in the world—is merely seen as irrelevant or derided as nowhere near as good as whoever came first, the case is surely there for Lionel Messi to warrant being elected as The Best, for his efforts to be recognised once more just as much as Ronaldo's have been.
Contrast
Barcelona and Real Madrid are never going to be worlds apart in their season objectives nor in how close they go to winning silverware in any given competition. Even so, how closely the teams are matched can bear no relevance at the end of a campaign when one picks up silverware and the other doesn't, even if they are a point behind.
It's simply a case of won or didn't win, and so it goes with the ongoing Messi vs. Ronaldo battle.
There's little acknowledgement of excellence or impressive consistency over the long haul for the other, be it team or player. It's simply a case of not enough, not good enough.
Consider: Messi won a league title, reached two cup finals and scored 59 goals in 2016. Ronaldo missed out on the same league title by one point, reached two cup finals and scored 55 times in the same year. It's within a whisker of being the same year for both players, except while both won the club cup final they played in—Copa del Rey for Barca, Champions League for Madrid—it was Portugal who won the Euros final and Argentina who lost the Copa America final.
On such small margins are trophies won and lost, and careers defined...at least by an overall view.
Should an overall view really define who has been best in a calendar year, who has been most deserving of a trophy for the best player? It should not; otherwise Pepe, a team-mate at club and country level of Ronaldo and Madrid's best defender in 2015/16, would be in the running for the same award.
What separates the best from the very-next-best, and indeed the merely very good, should be their individual actions, their performances.
Their own story.
Impact and inspiration
By common consent, the current Barcelona side is lacking something compared to a year or three or five ago. Perhaps squad depth, perhaps the relentless possession, perhaps an alternative tactical approach overall.
What it retains is enormous attacking prowess, and that in turn remains spearheaded by Messi. Whether operating as a playmaker, the man to initiate buildup play or to inject pace into the rhythm of passing, or as the architect to find seemingly nonexistent gaps in packed defences by slaloming himself into shooting range, he inevitably finds a way through.
Messi, time and again, lifts the Barcelona team to levels they don't often come close to when he's absent.
They are not a one-man team by any stretch of the imagination, but there is an obvious and uneasy difference in the side containing Messi to the rare lineup without him. He carries that burden beautifully.
Not everyone can appreciate him (or Ronaldo, or any other player), but that's perfectly fine. Football would be terribly dull without natural rivalries, and the essence of a rivalry is to blindly, arrogantly, unreasonably believe that one [team, player, manager] is flawed beyond reason.
But the games, the performances and the numbers speak for themselves with Messi every bit as much as they do with Ronaldo, and perhaps even more.
Sunday night's last-gasp free-kick leveller for Barcelona against Villarreal was only the latest example. It counts for precisely zero in the matter of FIFA's 2016 award, given that we're into the new year already, but it was a howitzer of a reminder that Messi has continually done this: come up big when Barcelona need him most.
Games and performances, goals and moments that won't be remembered down the years contributed to Barcelona's Liga title win with such frequency as to almost be worthy of a seasonal DVD of their own.
A 2-1 win at Malaga, courtesy of a spectacular flying volley as his team struggled to break down the home side. Without it, and the extra two points it brought, Barca don't win the title. Coming up with the moment to beat Atletico Madrid, so early on in the season after a titanic struggle in which his team were second-best...and then netting the equaliser en route to victory against the same opposition in the second half of the year.
There were more beside, of course, and each had the same end result: a big contribution toward another league title. With Argentina, the same can be applied as he scored one and assisted two in both quarters and semis of the Copa, only for his team to lose the final on penalties.
"Cristiano Ronaldo sprinkling the last bit of fairy dust on his 2016 like… 💯 #TheBest #SaltBae pic.twitter.com/NZX2GBN5AK
— Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) January 9, 2017"
Messi's determination and aggression was often the defining factor just as much as his skill and unerring finishing was, and all those moments of magic shouldn't be forgotten on an individual level just because the team fell—by inches, frustratingly, tearfully, marginally—short.
Consistency
Another aspect that bears note is Messi's incredible consistency, not just in terms of performances but his longevity and availability.
Both he and Ronaldo are famed for their almost mechanical completion of 90 minutes each game, each season, but as the Portuguese forward has found out of late, while their minds and skill sets might seem otherworldly, their bodies are human. Getting older is a process they must adapt to, positionally or with regard to game time, but in 2016, Messi has been the king of consistent.
After recovering from an early-season setback in 2015/16, Messi didn't miss a single Liga fixture for Barcelona from the final week of November onward. In the second half of the season, Barcelona's league minutes totalled 1,890. Messi tallied 1,845. After that early injury, the longest Messi went without scoring in league play was one game until April, when he was goalless for three fixtures, before ending the campaign with four goals and six assists in the final six games.
It isn't as if Ronaldo can't match it or is miles behind. Their numbers, as we saw, are similar.
If conquering the continent is the yardstick, then Ronaldo deserves every award coming his way; he did it twice, after all, and ended the year conquering the world with his team.
But FIFA's The Best series is an opportunity to break away from the collective, the overview, the symbolic. In an age where so much emphasis and importance is placed on No. 1, it is Messi who is most needed by his team, Messi who continuously wows on an individual level to greatest effect and Messi who is most deserving of the title of The Best.
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