BARCELONA – Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. The two athletes who marked the world of football in the last 15 years, say goodbye to the decade still installed on an increasingly unstable throne. The emergence of players like Mbappé or Haaland, mainly, illuminates a change of order that both the Argentine and the Portuguese are reluctant to abandon closing a 2020 in which their figures have continued to shine exponentially.
The year of the coronavirus has had an exceptional significance in all orders, including sports, and has raised an unknown football, with empty stands and orphaned cracks of this inflated delivered to its excellence, in a fact that especially meant the Argentine. His “it’s horrible to play without people” is a perfect summary of the situation.
Cristiano Ronaldo has maintained his football position in a certain way unaltered. has continued to score goals, has won the league again with Juventus but could not take it further in the Champions League, closing the continental year with the assault on the Camp Nou, where he met his old rival in a match that was a clear winner … And still in 2021 with the same ambitions as before. Way to 36 times it seems that time does not pass for the Portuguese, although, of course, it is understood that in fact it does.
In the case of Messi, a few days before entering a different 2021 as he will have in his hand the sporting decision of his future at the end of the season, has been special in many ways. It has been the year of his public statements in which he has not left anyone indifferent, warning again and again of the problems of the club, the team, his distrust of a board and president with whom he faced in a way direct. Until that “I stay because I can’t leave” that so marked to leave all Barcelona.
Messi’s year will be hard to forget. Too many things happened, on and off the pitch, to make it clear that the Argentine crack suffered a terrible 2020 that is understood to want to leave behind as soon as possible.
It began with the dismissal of Valverde, from whom he dismissed sensibly, which led to his confrontation with the then, January, technical secretary Eric Abidal, continued with his lack of understanding with Quique Setión and the collapse of the Barça in a league that escaped after the confinement, continued with the Lisbon disaster that confirmed the worst omens around the Camp Nou …
And it ended, on August 25, with the announcement of his intention to leave the club under a clause in his contract, which, once expired, he could not use, doomed to remain in this Barcelona in constant earthquake .
In football, in the first person, the Barça captain has watched as his figure has become more earthy. Completed the 33, his goal-scoring performance has plummeted: of the 51 goals he scored in 2018 (in 52 games) and the 50 he scored in 2019 (in 58 games), in the last year, missing the game that the will close against Eibar, their numbers have dropped to 27 points in 52 appearances.
Barça have noticed this loss of goals exponentially as after the poker they scored against Eibar in February, after the confinement they scored four goals in ten games, of which the Barça team could only win six and which explains the loss of leadership and title.
It also happened in the Champions League: if he scored a goal that opened the victory over Napoli in the round of 16, his performance in Lisbon was little less than invisible, going on tiptoe on the worst night in European history. Barcelona against Bayern Munich; in the same way that it could not lead to his equipment in the elimination of Glass before Athletic of Bilbao.
Messi closes 2020 without clarifying whether his future will remain linked with Barcelona beyond the end of the season and observing how the division around his figure is growing among Barça club fans, the ascendant remains indisputable. .. but with the first voices warning of a decline in performance that should, some love, begin to rethink the future of the team under his leadership.
Raised on the altar as the all-time leading scorer in a single club after beating the legendary Pelé de l’Sants, Leo counts the last days of this 2020 placed at the top but aware of being in the countdown. Two decades after, as a child, he arrived in Barcelona ready to fulfill his dream, the future begins to take a different shape around him.
CRISTIANO RONALDO
In the case of Cristiano Ronaldo his figure has also begun to notice the passage of time … But if his football significance can be understood in decline his goal-scoring ability remains unchanged, as much as he seems in the first person: inaccessible to the discouraged and willing to keep fighting to stay on top.
The Portuguese striker closed the year maintaining his numbers: 42 goals in 40 games and being momentous in a Juventus with which he won the Scudetto again in July but could not avoid, in August, the disappointment of see out of the Champions League in the round of 16 against Olympique de Lyon.
Cristiano, Messi’s great rival for the last 15 years, has shown that his identification, his dedication, his passion and his commitment to football is still the same as on the first day, like that of the young man who started to be seen in Portugal, he exploded at Manchester United, he grew up at Real Madrid … And he continues to talk to Juventus.
It is evidence that we are nearing the end of an era. Mbappé and Haaland arrive leading a new batch of cracks that, sooner rather than later, will move the two greats of this 21st century from the podium. The crackers who maintained their challenge day by day, match by match, Golden Ball to the Golden Ball to become the two football references that for the longest time remained at the top. And that they continue to stay … Although their time is running out.