Lionel Messi vs. Cristiano Ronaldo, Week 3: Suck on these 5 goals, haters

We’re happy to introduce to you Lionel Messi vs. Cristiano Ronaldo, a running competition between the two greatest footballers the planet has ever seen. “Who’s better, Messi or Ronaldo?” is a constant debate in soccer circles, so we’re going to settle it by deciding who won the week, every week. At the end of the season, we’ll have a tally and there will be no question about who had the better campaign.

Both players were sensational in Week 3 of the La Liga season, but there’s a clear winner.

At times during the second half of last season, Ronaldo started to look a step slow. In the first two games of this season, he looked slower. So people started looking at when attacking players start to go downhill, and it’s generally when they hit the magic combination of 30 years old and 700 pro games played. Ronaldo meets both criteria. This is the point at which he should probably start declining.

But all Cristiano went out and did on Saturday was score five goals in a 6-0 win over Espanyol, with his hat trick coming inside the first 20 minutes. He finished off fast breaks, crosses and passing moves. It was everything you could have possibly wanted to see from him. But the best part might have been his one assist.

Look at the poor goalkeeper. He has to hold his position because he thinks Cristiano will shoot, because duh, he always shoots. But when he realizes that’s not what’s going on, his life changes in an instant and he can hardly get his legs under him, and stumbles as he realizes how utterly screwed he is.

You have to be so good to force a goalkeeper to take that starting position instead of covering the cross, and you have to be just as good to actually execute that pass. I enjoyed this more than the goals.

Between playing 90 minutes on Tuesday on a downright atrocity of a pitch and missing training to be with his girlfriend during the birth of his second child on Friday, Messi was only available to play for 30 minutes against Atlético Madrid. He made the most of them. With the match tied 1-1, he finished off this spectacular exchange of play to fire his team to all three points.

Look at the passing here. Luis Suarez’s contribution to the goal might be even better than Messi’s. And Jordi Alba’s ball in to start it, too, man, this is just so beautiful. How do people play soccer like this? They haven’t even played together that long. This isn’t like Xavi and Andres Iniesta’s “we’ve been BFFs since we were zygotes” thing, Messi and Suarez have been playing together for less than a year. Goodness.

This game as a whole, by the way, was incredible. Atléti were at their bunker and quick counter best, and deserved to take the lead. But even at home, putting in a great performance, with Messi on the bench for the first 60 minutes, they couldn’t get a point. Barcelona are absurd right now.

A no-brainer, even if Messi did score the winner against a top five team in the world. You might think that nothing matters more than the “W,” but you’re wrong. Don’t @ me.

This column was conceived after the season started, so brief explanations of the retroactive scoring. We’re counting preseason because there are 38 weeks in the season, and we’re going to need a tiebreaker when this thing inevitably ends 14-14.

Preseason: Messi

Simply by virtue of not yelling at his coach and calling his training exercises pointless. Also, won a UEFA Super Cup.

Week 1: Messi

Week 2: Ronaldo

Week 3: Ronaldo