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Cristiano Ronaldo Is Obsessed With Lionel Messi, Twitter Thread Shows

Cristiano Ronaldo Is Obsessed With Lionel Messi, Twitter Thread Shows

“I’m not going to answer the question, everyone already knows that I’m better than Messi.”

Alex Reid

Alex Reid

Cristiano Ronaldo is accused of being obsessed with Lionel Messi in a Twitter thread which shares Ronaldo's quotes about the Barcelona No 10.

Starting with the premise "Cristiano Ronaldo's Messi-related inferiority complex" the tweets from @CrewsMat19 show a long history of the Portuguese superstar, who turned 36 earlier this month, commenting on the player he's forever compared to.

"I'm the best player in the world, the second best player in the world and the third best player in the world," Ronaldo reportedly said in 2008 - the year he won his first Ballon d'Or. "There are some more good players in the level behind me like Kaka, [Fernando] Torres and maybe Messi a bit, but I did all it takes to be the best."

Other quotes attributed to Ronaldo include: "I'm not going to answer the question, everyone already knows that I'm better than Messi." And from 2012: "I should've won the last three Ballon d'Ors, but it doesn't depend on me."

There's also a quote, attributed to Ronaldo's former teammates Ryan Giggs, stating: "Ronaldo is obsessed with being [better than] Messi, there are no two ways about it."

Naturally the thread got a huge reaction on Twitter with people either actually praising Ronaldo for his competitive mentality or accusing the Juventus ace of fuelling the rivalry.

The truth is probably somewhere in between. Ronaldo is, even his admirers would admit, obsessed with being the very best - and Messi has been the played who's often stood in the way of that recognition.

Also when Ronaldo played for Real Madrid for nine seasons, the ferocity of the club's rivalry with Barcelona naturally made the comparisons between the two modern greats even more intense.

However there has definitely been a warming of the relationship in recent years, particularly since Ronaldo joined Juve in 2018. The mutual respect has increased and Ronaldo even invited Messi for a dinner together in 2019.

But has Ronaldo been driven by an inferiority complex to Messi in the past, as this Twitter thread claims? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image credit: PA Images

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Topics: Football News, Football, Lionel Messi, Twitter, Football twitter, Cristiano Ronaldo

Alex Reid is a writer at SPORTbible who’s previously strung words together for FourFourTwo, Boxing News, The Guardian and, yes, Cruise International (it’s about big ships, not Tom). Interests range from football and boxing to real sports like WWE and darts. He is not a cage fighter.

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@otheralexreid