Lionel Messi Voted Greatest Sportsman Ever

Lionel Messi can't go five minutes without being dragged into a debate about whether he's better than Cristiano Ronaldo or not but now the Barcelona forward has been voted the greatest sportsman of all time!

Greatest of all time, GOAT. It's a big statement to make and it gets tweeted a hell of a lot of times about different people.

So we decided to find out exactly who the best ever is, was and maybe always will be - unfortunately we didn't include Bret Hart in the conversation.

After a short discussion in the office we landed on 16 names. Serena Williams, Muhammad Ali, Phil Taylor, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Sachin Tendulkar, Michael Schumacher, Ronda Rousey, Michael Jordan, AP McCoy, Pele, Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

It was difficult enough coming up with just 16. Most sports don't have a definitive best ever and there's a lot of sports, some didn't make it like snooker or American Football, but we did our best.

After four quarter finals the finalists were Ali, Federer, Jordan and Messi. After an hour of voting the Argentina forward came top of the poll, beating the boxer by a mere 2%

This one has caused a lot of controversy, of course the Ronaldo fans aren't too happy, and even in the office we're struggling to agree who should have won between ourselves.

Messi has won pretty much everything in the game and broken so many records, especially for Barcelona, but he's never won anything with his national team, losing three finals in a row.

I imagine they'll be lots of argument about the winner. Of course a football bias, an astonishing amount of Messi fanboys and the fact that Ali was before most of our followers time will have contributed to the win. However when Messi does one day hang up his boots and we look back on his career there's no doubt he'll be talked about as one of the greatest sportsmen of all time.

There's a quote about how it's impossible to say who the greatest ever, it's just nice to be in the conversation. This lot certainly deserve at least that.