La Liga president Javier Tebas has appeared to indicate he believes Lionel Messi is a superior player to his long-term adversary Cristiano Ronaldo.
The two superstars had swiftly ascended to stardom in the opening seasons of their career, but their rivalry went into overdrive when they spearheaded Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively. The duo were two of the greatest players ever to step onto a pitch, and they led two of modern football’s greatest sides.
Ronaldo’s nine years at Los Blancos saw him obliterate the club’s goal scoring record with a scarcely believable 450 goals in just 438 appearances, before leaving for Juventus in 2018. Messi’s 672 goals across 16 Barca matches was not just the club’s highest ever goal tally, but more than tallies of the second highest, third highest and fourth highest combined.
The two players shared a remarkable sporting rivalry across more than a decade. They won 12 of 13 successive Ballon d’Or titles between them, with Messi edging out Ronaldo with seven individual honours compared to the Portuguese superstar’s five gongs (Luka Modric, in 2018, was the only player to break the sequence).
Conversely, Ronaldo leads Messi on Champions League titles won with his five crowns eclipsing Messi’s three (the Argentine officially was part of Barca’s winning squad in 2005/06, but did not feature in the latter stages) in Europe’s premier club competition. Messi has won more league titles but Ronaldo – who is two years his elder – has scored more goals at both club and international level.
La Liga chief Tebas responded when asked to comment on both stars having left Spanish football: "Well, I think Messi has to come back before Cristiano ... But they left and we're still at the highest level, right?"
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Speaking more on Messi, Tebas continued – in a dig at PSG and Ligue 1: "I think that Messi is not only missed in La Liga, he is missed in football, because the French league is what it is, right? I think that no matter how much he is at PSG, he is followed by far fewer people than when he was at Barcelona. Let's hope he has a great World Cup, because there we will all be able to see him again."
Tebas continued to expand on his point: "I don't see all the fans watching PSG play against Nantes, I don't see it. With Barça it's the opposite. I don't know if Messi will have one last show at Barça, that will depend on him, I hope he comes back, above all it would also be good for him to return to Spanish football, above all to the team that has always been the team that saw him developed.
"That it was a mistake even for him, in my opinion, to break that relationship, because it was a very beneficial long-term alliance for Messi and for Barça itself."
