Champions League: The two ways to say goodbye to Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi | Champions League 2020

The Portuguese, who managed to flee from Real Madrid in time, is reunited with the Argentine, tormented and stoked at the only club of his career

Perhaps there is nothing more difficult than saying goodbye. Especially when your life depends, not only on your work activity, but on public exposure. Of those who debate about whether or not you are the best in history, about statistics and heat maps, about trophies won and to be won, about your smile, but also about your silence or your fuss. Also about whether you pay taxes where you owe and how you owe. Nothing is hidden.
Lionel Messi Y Cristiano Ronaldo they became a simple face

footballing performance in a global show that the industry had been able to take advantage of for a decade. But the highly competitive sport, relentless even with those who seem eternal, begins to look at both from above. Messi is 33 years old and in the club of his life, Barcelona, ​​there are those who regret not having allowed his escape last summer. Set to search for culprits, nothing catches more than a fallen angel. Cristiano is 35 years old. He managed to escape from Real Madrid in time when he stopped feeling he was his – the club refused to intercede in his affairs with the Treasury.

Florentine

, unlike

Bartomeu

He did open the door in exchange for 100 million. Keep winning

Scudetti

and scoring goals in Italy, wherever

Ibrahimovic

(39 years old) is the top scorer because he didn’t know how to say goodbye to this either (he tried at the American Elephant Cemetery). But personal records still motivate the Portuguese. Messi and Cristiano lost sight of each other on May 6, 2018, when Barcelona and Real Madrid drew two at the Camp Nou, with the Argentine and the Portuguese scoring a goal each. The League was for the Catalans. The Champions, for the whites. Since then, Messi has not scored again in a classic. And after the warning of the collapse of Rome, Anfield lived. Also Lisbon. Since then, Cristiano has not made it past the quarterfinals of the Champions League. Last season he was even eliminated by Olympique Lyonnais in the round of 16. The reunion will take place tonight on the same stage where they left it. The reason, a Barcelona-Juventus in which the two teams are already classified for the next round of the Champions League, and in which Koeman’s, with three points of advantage over the

nerazzurri

, they will try to defend the 0-2 of the first round to settle the league as first group. But if for something to transcend the night, it will be for the nostalgia of a time that will not return.

Nine seasons in full

The analysis of the nine seasons (from 2009/10 to 2017/18) in which Messi and Cristiano faced their greatness and also their ego – the Argentine imploded; Explosion the Portuguese speaks of a perhaps unrepeatable era. Both reached their fullness by being close, feeding back on the exploits of their rival to cross as many borders as necessary. Messi’s average number of goals per game in those nine dueling campaigns in Spain was 0.99 (472 goals in 476 games). Cristiano’s went even further and went up to 1.02 goals per game (450 goals in 438 games). Rosario was a total footballer. The Portuguese, an unparalleled auctioneer. From the barbarity of what was seen those days, the numbers remain. In the 2011-12 season, just to give an example, between Messi (73) and Cristiano (60) they scored 133 goals. The impact of the separation, yes, has affected both very differently. The move to Turn reduced Cristiano’s scoring average in his first season (28 goals in 43 games, with an average of 0.65). But by no means was that an advance of the definitive decrepitude, just a symptom that the Portuguese, due to overtraining, still had to adapt to a new reality. It required less collective effort and greater incidence in the area. In the 2019-20 course Cristiano already went to 0.80 goals per game. Although nothing like this start of the campaign, in which the Juventus forward has already hunted 10 goals in nine games (1.11). Messi, on the other hand, insinuated in his first season away from Cristiano that he did not need any nmesis to maintain his rhythm. In fact he scored 51 goals in 50 games in 2018-19. From there, however, the scoring numbers began to plummet. From the 1.02 goals per game, he went to 0.70 in the 2019-20 campaign (31 goals in 44 games), to the 0.53 that he now credits (seven goals in 13 games). Last season, Messi could only score three goals in the entire Champions League. In this competition, at least, he has already equaled that figure despite having rested in the last two games against Dynamo Kiev and Ferencvaros. The story will tell that Messi and Cristiano won 11 Ballons d’Or between the two (six the Argentine, five the Portuguese), that they accumulated nine Golden Boots (five the Argentine, four the Portuguese) and that they conquered Europe nine times with their clubs ( four Champions the Argentine, five the Portuguese). Also, it costs your life to say goodbye at the watchtower. And in the right place. Messi is where he does not want. Cristiano, where he thinks they want him.