🚨 Rodrigo De Paul on Cristiano Ronaldo’s message to Lionel Messi: “I remember somebody once asked me, ‘Who is the greatest, Messi or Cristiano?’ I said, ‘Messi is art. Cristiano is a competitive animal.’ He looked at me. ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’ I said, ‘Of course it does.’ He wanted me to choose one and insult the other. That is how this conversation has worked for almost twenty years. If you love Messi, apparently you have to explain why Cristiano wasn’t that good. If you love Cristiano, you have to find something Messi couldn’t do. I never understood it. I played with Leo. I know what he is. Sometimes in training he does something and afterwards you just look at the person beside you. ‘Did you see that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How?’ ‘I don’t know.’ That is why I called him art. Cristiano was different. Score. Celebrate. Come back next week. Score again. You think, ‘Surely this man will eventually become satisfied.’ He never did. That is why I called him a competitive animal. And maybe the greatest thing football did for our generation was make those two exist at the same time. People talk about their rivalry like they spent twenty years hating each other. I think we hated on their behalf much more than they ever hated each other. So when I saw Cristiano’s message after Leo’s farewell, I wasn’t surprised. ‘Leo, so many years defending your country and a story that will live on forever. You have all my respect for everything you’ve achieved with Argentina.’ Read the important word. Respect. Because Cristiano knows. Maybe better than almost anybody. He knows what it costs to carry a country for twenty years. He knows what it feels like when your country loses and millions of people look at you first. He knows what it is like to grow older while everybody keeps comparing you to a younger version of yourself. There are things Cristiano understands about Leo that even some of us who shared a dressing room with him probably cannot understand. Because there was only one other man living on that mountain with him. Were they rivals? Of course. They wanted the same trophies. The same awards. They chased each other for years. But rivalry doesn’t mean hatred. Sometimes the person competing with you is also the person who understands you best. Imagine being Cristiano Ronaldo, scoring fifty goals, then seeing Messi has done something ridiculous again. ‘Seriously?’ Then imagine being Messi. You win something, go home, and Cristiano is still there. Again. For years. Maybe they drove each other crazy. But they also kept each other company somewhere nobody else could reach. And now one of them is leaving. For most of my life, football had Messi and Ronaldo. Barcelona had Messi. Madrid had Cristiano. Argentina had Messi. Portugal had Cristiano. And everybody picked a side. Messi. Ronaldo. Ronaldo. Messi. We argued so much about which one was greater that I don’t think we noticed we were getting older with them. Now Leo has said goodbye to Argentina and Cristiano is one of the people saying goodbye to him. One day Cristiano’s turn will come too. Then suddenly the argument we thought would last forever will have nobody left on the pitch. So if a young player asks me again, ‘Rodri, Messi or Ronaldo?’ I’ll probably give him the same annoying answer. ‘Messi was art. Cristiano was a competitive animal.’ And if he says, ‘But who was better?’ I’ll tell him: ‘You’re asking the wrong generation. We were lucky enough to watch both. You can do the arguing.’” [ This is the source @ChinoUTD ]#messi #ronaldo #Soccer #creatorsearchinsights #capcut - @anyi.manchester.u