BARCELONA – Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. The two athletes who have characterized the football world for the past 15 years are saying goodbye to the decade that still sits on an increasingly unstable throne. The rise of players like Mbappé or Haaland mainly highlights a change of order that both the Argentines and the Portuguese are reluctant to give up, closing a 2020 where their numbers continued to shine exponentially.
The year of the coronavirus has had an exceptional significance in all areas, including in sports, and has raised an unfamiliar football, with that fan’s empty stands and orphaned cracks dedicated to its excellence, in a fact that the Argentinian in particular meant. His “It’s terrible to play without people” perfectly sums up the situation.
Cristiano Ronaldo has kept his footballing position unchanged in a way. He has continued to score, has returned to win the league with Juventus, although he was unable to advance in the Champions League, ending the continental year with the attack on the Nou Camp, where he met his old rival in a match he was a clear winner. … and face 2021 with the same ambitions as before. On the way to 36 it sometimes seems that time is not passing for the Portuguese, although of course it is understood that in reality this is so.
In Messi’s case, a few days before he enters another 2021 because he will be in control of the sporting decision of his future at the end of the season, it was special in many ways. It has been the year of his public statements in which he has left no one indifferent, warning time and again of the problems of the club, of the team, of his distrust of a board of directors and president with whom he was directly confronted. Even that “I stay because I can’t leave” that left so clearly to all of Barcelona.
Messi’s year will be hard to forget. Too many things have happened, on and off the pitch, to ignore the fact that the Argentine star suffered a horrible 2020 that he is reported to want to leave behind as soon as possible.
It started with the resignation of Valverde, to which he took his leave, triggering his confrontation with January’s then-technical secretary Eric Abidal, he continued his lack of understanding with Quique Setién and Barça’s collapse into a League that escaped after incarceration. , continued with the Lisbon disaster confirming the worst omens around Camp Nou …
And it ended, on August 25, with the announcement of his intention to leave the club using a clause of his contract that he, which had already expired, was condemned to remain in this Barcelona where constantly earthquake prevails.
In terms of football, the Barça captain has seen in the first person how his figure has become more earthy. At the age of 33, his scoring performance has fallen sharply: from the 51 goals he scored in 2018 (in 52 games) and the 50 he scored in 2019 (in 58 games), in the past year, in the absence of the match it will close against Eibar, their number has dropped to 27 goals in 52 games.
Barça has noticed this loss of goals exponentially since he scored after playing poker against Eibar in February, after incarceration he scored four goals in ten matches, of which the Barça team could only win six and that explains the loss of the leadership and title .
The same thing happened in the Champions League: when he scored a goal that opened the victory over Napoli in the round of 16, his performance in Lisbon was nothing short of invisible, on tiptoe on the worst night in European history for Barcelona against Bayern Munich. ; in the same way that he could not lead his team in the elimination of the cup against Athletic de Bilbao.
Messi concludes 2020 without clarifying whether his future will remain tied to Barcelona beyond the season’s end and observes how the division grows among the fans of the Barça club around his figure, whose predominance remains indisputable … but with the first. voices warning of a deterioration in performance that, according to some, should rethink the future of the team under his leadership.
Raised on the altar as the highest historical scorer in a single club after beating the legendary Pelé del Santos, Leo talks about the last days of this 2020 at the top, but aware that he was counting down. Two decades after he arrived in Barcelona as a child, ready to fulfill his dream, the future around him is starting to take shape in a different way.
CRISTIANO RONALDO
In the case of Cristiano Ronaldo, his figure also begins to notice the passage of time … But if his football meaning can be understood to a diminishing degree, his scoring ability remains unchanged, just as he appears in the first person: not available for discouragement and continue to fight willingly to continue at the top.
The Portuguese striker ended the year maintaining his numbers: 42 goals in 40 games and being transcendental in a Juventus that won him the Scudetto again in July, although in August he couldn’t avoid the disappointment of being out of the Champions League in the second round of final against Olympique de Lyon.
Cristiano, Messi’s great rival for the past 15 years, has shown that his identification, his dedication, passion and dedication to football are still from day one, like that of that young man seen in Portugal exploded in Manchester United got great at Real Madrid … And it keeps getting people talking at Juventus.
It is proof that we are at the end of an age. Mbappé and Haaland arrive with a new series of cracks that, sooner than later, will displace the two greats of this 21st century from the stage. The cracks who maintained their challenge every day, match by match, Ballon d’Or to Ballon d’Or to become the two football references who stayed at the top the longest. And they keep staying … Although their time is running out.