Not everyone who played or plays with Leo is an undisputed fan of his talent…
In 2024, epochal changes took place in world football. For the first time, neither the Argentinian Lionel Messi, who has eight victories in this prestigious individual award, nor the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, who took the coveted statuette five times, made it to the cohort of nominees for the Ballon d’Or. Two “football aliens” are no longer playing in Europe, and due to age, they are gradually moving to the moment when they will have to end their careers and say goodbye to active performances.
However, the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo will be talked about long after the Argentinian and the Portuguese have hung up their boots. And there will always be many reasons for this…
In particular, today we propose to mention three star partners of Lionel Messi, who considered and still consider Cristiano Ronaldo the greatest football player of all time and nations. Leo, of course, it was not very pleasant to hear that, but what can you do here – everyone has their own opinion, and it is better to know in the face of those who glorify your main opponent in the fight for all kinds of prizes and awards.
Lionel Messi played in the same team with Costa Rican goalkeeper Keylor Navas from 2021 to 2023. It was only one and a half seasons that the Argentinean spent side by side with Navas in Paris Saint-Germain, after which Keylor went on loan to Nottingham Forest, and in the summer of 2023 the Argentinean himself left the French capital, but the Costa Rican, on the contrary , returned and spent the entire 2023/24 season for the Parisians.
Before his move to Paris in 2019, Keylor Navas played for Real Madrid for five seasons (from 2014 to 2019). In Madrid, the Costa Rican managed to acquire great respect for the then main star of the “Blancos”, Cristiano Ronaldo, whose form and mood often depended on the result of one or another Real Madrid match.
Afterwards, not surprisingly, Navas was directly asked by journalists who he thought was the stronger player – Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, because Keylor was in the same team as both. And in general, the Costa Rican did not lie, but gave a very unambiguous answer, which surprised many, although, objectively speaking, his choice is still quite obvious, because Navas was in the same team with one of the “football aliens” for much longer.
“I played with both Messi and Ronaldo. They are the best players on the planet, but I think Ronaldo is still a bit better than Messi because he can do incredible things even when he is out of his comfort zone,” Navas said in an interview with DAZN.
Interestingly, Keylor Navas, currently 37, remains without a club after becoming a free agent in the summer, ending his association with PSG. So far, the Costa Rican has not been able to find a new team, but he obviously would not like to finish football just yet. Perhaps Cristiano Ronaldo could plead for his personal admirer in front of the Al-Nasr bosses and give Keylor the chance to be active in Saudi Arabia a little longer?..
Manchester United’s Argentine prodigy Alejandro Garnacho played quite a bit in the Mancunians’ camp with Cristiano Ronaldo during the Portuguese’s second spell at the club. Garnacho debuted in the Premier League only in April 2022, and already in November of the same year, Cristiano Ronaldo agreed on the early termination of cooperation with the “red devils”, and soon signed a contract with Saudi Al-Nasr.
It would be much more logical to assume that the No. 1 star for Garnacho will be his compatriot Lionel Messi, who in 2022 helped Argentina win the World Cup, which significantly raised the authority of the “white and blue”. Garnacho made his debut in the national team in the summer of 2023, and since then he has played seven matches, although Messi was in the application for only two of them. Perhaps the last factor played in favor of the fact that the star compatriot never became the main idol for his younger teammate.
In addition, it is well known that Alejandro Garnacho is a big fan of Cristiano Ronaldo. The Argentine prodigy of Manchester United considers the star Portuguese to be the absolute best football player of all time and for all nations. Garnacho is so fanatical about Ronaldo that he tries to imitate his idol even in scoring goals, and also tries to copy the Portuguese’s playing style and believes that to succeed in football you need to work a lot on yourself.
It is also interesting that when Garnacho was asked directly about who he considers the best – Messi or Ronaldo – Alejandro answered maturely beyond his years, de facto avoiding the need to make an obvious choice, although he emphasized that he was by no means indifferent to the Portuguese.