Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are clearly the two best soccer players of all time. But it doesn’t end there. There can’t be two greatest of all time, there has to be one.

Messi is the better player. A lot of stats show that he is, even though Ronaldo is two years older and has been playing longer than Messi.  

The first and the biggest stat that shows Messi is better are all his awards. Messi has a lot more awards both individual and team. First up are individual awards. Messi has more Ballon D’ors (7) which is one of the most determining awards. The Ballon D’or is nominated for the best player of the year. Messi won it in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. Ronaldo on the other hand only has 5 Ballon D’ors. Other individual awards Messi has more than Ronaldo include FIFA World Player of the Year (6-5), European Golden Boot (6-4), man of the matches (306-175), World Cup top scorer (1-0), and Golden Boy Award (1-0). That’s a lot of individual awards but there are also a lot of team awards that Messi has more than Ronaldo like league titles (11-7), Domestic Cups (7-6), Domestic Super Cups (9-7), International trophies (4-2), and World Cup runner up (1-0). Those are all the awards that Messi has more than Ronaldo but then there are actual in game stats.

Some of those stats include assists (339-230), more goals to game ratio (0.79-0.72), goal contributions (1,114-1,046), outside the box goals (81-61), key passes (1,304-889), big chances created (387-176), successful dribbles (3,000-1,642), average rating (8.57-7.97), goals without penalties (672-671). 

All these stats are in favor of Messi and there are even more. Although there are  also some in favor of Ronaldo, Ronaldo has played more games and someday Messi will pass all the stats. People now have to start to admit that Messi is the better soccer player.