Catalonia defeats Madrid

Euro Media ^ | 12/24/2017 | Lionel Messi

[tinyowl]

The parallels to the political situation are beautiful, regardless of whether Catalonians are exactly the culture we love. Messi - small and humble, always smiling or concentrating, at one with life. Ronaldo - always whiny, petulant, feminine-metrosexual, narcissistic, rigid.

If I ever have kids, may they be like Messi and not Ronaldo.

Barcelona won this morning 3 - 0. Sweet!

[tinyowl]

No comment. Enjoy the highlights if you didn't get up at 7am to watch El Classico live.

[neverevergiveup]

I'm a Barca fan, and am very happy, and also have great respect for Messi and the way he lives his life. That said, Ronaldo is also a great player, and gets more grief than he should. He's building a Children's hospital in Columbia, and is very charitable.

[dfwgator]

I’m a Barca fan, and I enjoy watching both Messi and Ronaldo.

[tinyowl]

Agreed that Ronaldo is a great player. I respect him for his skill and hard work and he may be the most altruistic person in the world for all I know (and I don't really care,) I just suspect I would not be drawn to him based on the on field drama, and of course I could be wrong.

I played soccer for many many years and still play. When I miss a goal or feel I am fouled, long before Messi or Ronaldo came on the scene, I intuitively behaved like Messi, not Ronaldo. It's almost like the extremes of the two ways you handle yourself on the field (well, there is a third - neither of them are nasty like Ramos, which is of course a valid style too.)

But as for my kids? I'd rather they be terrible at soccer and carry themselves like Messi than be great players ad yet be dramatic on or off the field in a whiny way like Ronaldo. I'd even prefer a mischievous Ramos. Luckily, my opinion doesn't matter :-)

But to your point, I'll take nothing from Ronaldo's skill or hard work. May that work never pay off against Barcelona.

[neverevergiveup]

I agree with everything you said, and think it's great you're still playing. Messi, to me, is absolutely the best player in the world now, if not of all time. It's not just his technical skills. He's also an incredibly smart footballer, with great field vision. I feel very lucky to see him play.

[tinyowl]

Agreed! And also you get a sense of who he is internally if you watch enough (after any game, Youtube will have highlights, but they'll also have 8 - 12 minutes of cuts only of Messi) ... the facial expressions after he does something good or bad or indifferent, how he interacts with his teammates. No PrimaDonna, no dramatics. He doesn't score for 4 games? No problem, he's assisting. Watch Ronaldo during a rough patch ... pouting, slow to congratulate his team mates on goals. That's fine - it's just that even if Messi weren't the better player, I'd admire him more.

And then it just adds to the Rebels vs the Empire that it's Catalonia vs Madrid. We are very lucky to have both of them including Ronaldo, if only to make it good vs evil, even if it's not really good vs evil.

[dfwgator]

But I still say.....Ronaldo Good, Messi Better, George Best!

[tinyowl]

A lot of people don’t know that Messi’s middle name is bestesteversothere, and that actually that’s his last name :-)

[RayChuang88]

I do think that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will be inexorably linked to each other as the greatest soccer players of the same generation. But whether they belong on the Mount Rushmore of the four greatest players of all time is still unknown.