Lionel Messi is 'divine' but Cristiano Ronaldo 'revolutionised football' - Ex-Juventus star weighs in on GOAT debate and insists Argentina and Portugal icons are 'opposites'

Ronaldo and Messi will go down as perhaps two of the greatest footballers to ever exist. The duo share 13 Ballons d'Or between them, with the Portuguese winning five times and the Argentine lifting the award an unprecedented eight times. They "shared the same stage for 15 years", pushing each other to push their own limits and engraving their names in football history for eternity. 

Ronaldo and Messi dominated world football for nearly two decades, before going their respective ways away from Europe. The 40-year-old now plies his trade for Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, where he has already plundered over a century of goals. He's eyeing a final flourish with Portugal at next year's World Cup amid his hunger to complete 1,000 career goals. 

Messi, meanwhile, has 'completed football' after lifting the only trophy missing from his cabinet in 2022: the World Cup. After leaving Barcelona in 2021, he spent two middling seasons at Paris Saint-Germain, before heading to the MLS with David Beckham's Inter Miami. 

Speaking to Tuttosport, Bernardeschi said: "They're two different worlds. Like Cristiano, Messi is something you struggle to understand as a player. But they're opposites: Messi catches your eye, he does things that seem unreal, he has an aura that doesn't belong in this world. Cristiano has another characteristic: he revolutionized football and sport in general. Messi, like [Diego] Maradona, seems divine. If athletes today pay attention to every detail of their preparation, it's thanks to Cristiano."

Ronaldo could feature in the AFC Champions League 2 on Wednesday evening against Iraqi side Al-Zawraa, while Messi can next be seen in action against Chicago in the early hours of Wednesday.