Messi and Ronaldo’s golden era is over

Carlo Garganese

15 Feb 2022 14:32 GMT
4 min read

Whenever the Champions League knockouts arrive, usually the two names on everyone’s lips are Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

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Messi and Ronaldo have been the two best players of their generation for well over a decade, smashing almost every individual record available to them.

The dominance and greatness of the duo is best exemplified by their incredible goalscoring numbers each season since the end of the noughties.

Since 2008-09, Messi has not once failed to score less than 30 club goals in a season. In fact, in only three campaigns has he scored less than 40 goals. In 2020-21, Messi had his second-worst season during this streak. He scored 38 goals and went on to lift a record seventh Ballon d’Or.

As for Ronaldo, who has won five Ballons d’Or, he has only twice failed to hit 30 goals in the last 14 seasons. And even then, he managed 26 goals in 2008-09 in his last Man Utd season before joining Real Madrid and 28 goals in his first campaign at Juventus a decade later.

This season, though, the 34-year-old Messi and 37-year-old Ronaldo are finally starting to show their age. As it stands, they will do well to even reach 20 goals in all competitions.

Ronaldo has failed to find the back of the net in his past six games, which is his longest goalless streak in 12 years.

He has not scored in 2022 and his most recent Manchester United goal came against Burnley in the final game of 2021, a match in which he also contributed an assist.

But Ronaldo has been struggling for much longer than that. For well over three months, he has been a shadow of his former self. In the 17 games that followed his Champions League double in Bergamo against Atalanta on November 2, Ronaldo has only found the net in four of these matches.

He scored five goals in that time; away at Villarreal on November 23, a double over Arsenal on December 2, the winner versus Norwich on December 11 and the aforementioned strike past Burnley on December 30.

Two of those five goals were penalties, which means that Ronaldo has scored three times in open play in over three months. He also only delivered two assists during this period.

© ProShots - Ronaldo has 14 goals this season but they have dried up

While Ronaldo has been underwhelming for the last three months, Messi has failed to live up to his reputation for virtually the entirety of the 2021-22 season.

Messi made a shock move to PSG from Barcelona last summer on a free transfer after the Blaugrana were unable to financially and legally register a new contract with the Argentine hero.

Incredibly, Messi has only scored two goals all season in Ligue 1 from 14 appearances.

It took Messi three months to score his first Ligue 1 goal and then another two-and-a-half months to follow that up with a second league strike.

© ProShots - It took Messi three months to score his first PSG goal

All this despite the fact that he is lining up in one of the most exciting attacking tridents there has ever been alongside Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.

Although Messi has done better in the Champions League and has seven goals and eight assists from 20 games in all competitions, these numbers are way down on what we have seen from the Argentine throughout his career. The same goes for Ronaldo, who has 14 goals and three assists from 26 games this term.

So, having shared 12 of the last 13 Ballon d’Or trophies and scored almost 1500 goals for club and country between them during this reign, it seems as if the golden era of Messi and Ronaldo is finally over.