For more than a decade it has been the question that football fans around the world have been debating over – who is better, Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo? The pair are widely regarded as the best two active footballers in modern day football, while many believe they are the best to ever play the game. While fans of Diego Maradona and Pele may have something to say about that, there is no arguing with some of the numbers that both Messi and Ronaldo have been putting up in the last decade. If the debate about who is best was about the number of goals scored then there is not much to separate the pair.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have won countless trophies throughout their careers.
In 15 years at Barcelona, Messi has netted a staggering 603 goals in 687 games in all competitions, while Ronaldo has scored 601 goals in 806 games for four different clubs. Both players have won multiple Champions League and domestic league titles, while Ronaldo has won the European Championships with Portugal. Both stars have won five Ballon d’Or awards each, a record, and until last year when Luka Modric won it, they had shared the award every year for the previous decade. The two players, now well into their thirties, continue to amaze the world of football and they are not finished yet.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have won ten Ballon d’Or awards between them. And now a group of computer scientists from Belgium’s KU Leuven university claim to have found the definitive formula to determine who the better player is. As reported by Sporza in Belgium, professors at the university have teamed up with Dutch data specialists SciSports to come up with something called Valuing Actions by Estimating Probabilities (VAEP), which they say gives the answer to the eternal Messi-Ronaldo question. The formula considers the players’ all-round games and also takes into account their contributions on the pitch in both attacking and defensive roles. “The value of a soccer player is often determined by goals and assists,” Jesse Davis, a professor at the university, said.
Cristiano Ronaldo has won the Champions League five times.
“A goal is a rare event, however, because an average of 1,600 actions are estimated to occur in a match. Our model looks at each action – shots, passes, dribbles, tackles – and calculates its value.” They analysed data from the 2013-14 season up to Ronaldo’s Real Madrid departure at the end of 2017-18. And who came out on top? Messi. And it wasn’t close. The Barcelona star had a VAEP score of 1.21 per game, compared to Ronaldo’s 0.61. “In the first seasons, Messi and Ronaldo’s scores are very close to each other,” PhD student Tom Decroos, who helped with the research, said. “From the 2015/16 season, Messi has stepped away from his eternal rival.” Decroos went on to elaborate on how Messi differs from some of the modern greats when it comes to the formula. “We see a trade-off with most football players: either they make a lot of actions with a less high value – that’s the case with Paul Pogba, for example,” he said. “Or you have players who are less likely to hit the ball, but who have a big impact. That is typical of strikers like Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah and Ronaldo. “Messi is exceptional in this area: the Argentinian has a very high number of actions and they also have a high value.”
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