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During the peak of the white-hot rivalry between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, they exercised a near-monopoly on club football’s biggest prizes.
In a golden spell from 2005 to 2018, when both seemed to be engaged in a game of one-upmanship to decide who was the world’s best player, either Messi or Ronaldo won the Champions League nine times out of a possible 13.
But those days are an increasingly distant memory, with the two superstars now prolonging their careers in different sun-kissed but second-class leagues and, following results this week, further away than ever from recapturing their former glories.
On Wednesday night, on opposite sides of the world, Messi’s Inter Miami and Ronaldo’s Al Nassr were beaten in the semi-finals of the Concacaf and AFC Champions Leagues, respectively.
Within a few hours of each other, Messi brought up a decade without winning the top club honour in his regional confederation and Ronaldo made it seven years since he last lifted the European Cup.
At 37 and 40, the odds on either doing it again are only lengthening with each passing season. They may be raging but, slowly but surely, the light appears to be going out on their dazzling careers all the same.
Inter Miami and Al Nassr wait for on-field return on investment
The clubs which have invested huge sums in them have already reaped the off-field rewards of signing the multiple Ballon d’Or winners but are also running out of time to extract the maximum on-field impact.
Now in the slightly more forgiving environments of Major League Soccer and the Saudi Pro League, both men are still putting up impressive numbers: Messi has begun the new season with eight goals and three assists in 13 games in all competitions, while Ronaldo is on 33 goals and four assists from 38 games in his current campaign.
Yet neither could keep alive their club’s dream of winning their regional competition earlier this week. Inter Miami’s 3-1 home defeat by Vancouver Whitecaps completed a 5-1 loss on aggregate, while Japan’s Kawasaki Frontale upset Al Nassr near Jeddah.
Even GOATs can only do so much. And signing them is, after all, no guarantee of trophies. Juventus learned that the hard way when they bet the house on signing Ronaldo; rather than delivering the Champions League, it preceded the end of their domestic dominance.
Messi and Ronaldo bid to join select group
Both Concacaf, which governs football in Central America, North America and the Caribbean, and the AFC, which runs the game in Asia, will also be counting the cost of their star attractions missing out on their biggest club fixture.
Messi has 626m followers on social media platforms, while Ronaldo has more than 1bn. Despite their advancing years, both are in the top three influencers by audience in the world and generate the most value of any athletes, according to social analytics agency Horizm.
Neither is about to hang up their boots just yet. Messi is in talks over extending a contract with Inter Miami which expires at the end of this year, while Ronaldo is also expected to sign a new deal with Al Nassr – possibly involving a stake in the club.
And both will be acutely aware that only a handful of players – among them Neymar, Carlos Tevez and Ronaldinho – have won the Champions League and another regional equivalent.
Only a fool would bet against one of them doing it. And if one does, then their long-standing rivalry dictates that the other will surely have to try to match them, prolonging football’s most famous and enduring dance.
