Lionel Messi told he'd have 15 Ballon d'Ors if he had Cristiano Ronaldo's workrate

Lionel Messi has been told he'd have a near impossible number of Ballon d'Or wins, if only his workrate was as good as Cristiano Ronaldo's.

For the past 15 years, the end of year awards in world football have been dominated by the two forwards, who have broken a ridiculous amount of records between them.

Messi picked up his seventh Ballon d'Or back in 2021, on the back of winning the Copa America and is likely to win an eighth come the end of this year, for winning the World Cup, having just won the FIFA Best award last month.

Ronaldo's last such award came in 2017, and he's unlikely to pick up another after admitting defeat on his career and moving to Saudi Arabia, especially as he's not even scoring in 'easy' games.

One black mark against Messi winning the Ballon d'Or this year is PSG's elimination from the Champions League, at the last 16 stage, to Bayern Munich on Wednesday night.

Following that game, Thomas Muller took a dig at the Argentine, claiming he was no problem to Bayern but that his long time rival had been their issue in the past.

Now Patrice Evra is the latest person to compare the two in a weird way, claiming that the former Barca star would be swimming in awards if he worked harder.

"I want to explain why I say Ronaldo every time," the former Manchester United full back said when asked about who he favoured on Rio Ferdinand's FIVE YouTube channel.

"It's not because he's our brother it's because I'm in love with work ethic.

"I feel like Messi, god just gave him a talent and Cristiano had to work for it. He had the talent but he had to work for it. If Messi had the same work ethic as Ronaldo, he would probably have like 15 Ballon d'Ors today.

"I'm just in love with people working hard so that's why I pick Ronaldo over Messi."

Messi has seven Ballon d'Ors to his name already. Image: Alamy

In order to have 15 such titles to his name, the 35-year-old would have had to have won all of his plus all the ones Ronaldo has got.

That would take him to 12, he'd then had to have beaten Karim Benzema to 13, and Luka Modric for 14th and finally his 15th would have had to be ahead of Kaka back in 2007.

As good as Messi is, as much work as he might have put in, there's also plenty of argument that he shouldn't even have won as many as he has.

Wesley Sneijder certainly can feel somewhat hard done to from 2010, when he won the treble with Inter Milan and helped get Netherlands to the World Cup final.

Topics: Football, Champions League, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Al Nassr, Patrice Evra, Paris Saint-Germain, Ballon d'Or

Ryan Sidle

Ryan is a journalist for SPORTbible with over eight years of experience. Passionate about all sports, he mainly covers football and F1 - Daniel Ricciardo once spent an entire interview referring to him as 'Ryan Gosling,' still his proudest moment.

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