El Clásico: Cristiano Ronaldo can never do enough to quiet doubters

Cristiano Ronaldo is not the same player he was the last time he stepped on the pitch to play a Clásico. He has the same skills and limitations that he had on April 2, but his standing in the game has changed. His status among the all-time greats is no longer in question, even from those who bleed blaugrana.

He can’t reasonably be criticized for failing to bring his best in Clásicos ever again. Two minutes after Sergio Ramos was sent off in the last Clásico, Ronaldo came up with the game-winner. Seven weeks later in the Champions League final, he scored the winning penalty against Atlético Madrid. Shortly afterwards, Ronaldo went on to exercise his greatest footballing demon by winning Euro 2016 with Portugal, finally capturing a major honor with his country and making the tournament’s best XI. He was injured in the final, but was by far the best player on the pitch in his team’s semifinal against Wales, outshining his Real Madrid teammate Gareth Bale.

All of that has cemented Ronaldo’s legacy, but nothing could possibly quiet the short-term doubters that pop up for every big game. He will be asked to prove himself again on Saturday because his playing style and personality cultivate an unhealthy attitude among fans that always leaves them needing to see more. We, as a soccer culture, are never satiated.

It’s easy to be left satisfied by Lionel Messi’s performances even when he isn’t at his best. His love for the game and desire to win aren’t in question, but he doesn’t put those feelings on display like Ronaldo does. Messi can go entire games without showing a tiny flicker of emotion. Ronaldo can’t go five minutes without exhibiting utter joy or frustration, on his face and in his body language, for the world to see.

When Messi is having a bad game, we forget about it for 30 minutes at a time.

“Hey, when’s the last time you saw Messi touch the ball near the box?”

“Huh? Wow, you’re right, it’s been a while hasn’t it?”

And then we get back to watching the game. Maybe if Messi has a real stinker, this thought will occur to us a couple more times.

The game ends. Messi did nothing.

“Messi really didn’t show up today did he?”

“Nope, not his day.”

And then we move on. But we can’t ever move on from Ronaldo having a bad game — it’s always right there in front of our faces. He waves his arms, he stomps, he looks disgusted. He yells at the officials, his teammates, his coaches, himself, and God above. Everything that goes wrong is taken personally, and that personal grievance is aired out in front of the camera. Messi’s disappointment is not public. Ronaldo’s couldn’t be more out in the open. This forces us to confront Ronaldo’s frustration and how we feel about it almost constantly, for entire games that don’t turn out the way he planned. Madridistas, for the most part, love his passion. To many others, he looks like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

Messi also plays in a way that makes it very easy for fans to make excuses for his (extremely infrequent) poor performances. He’s often a facilitator rather than a finisher — dictating tempo, creating space for teammates, and racking up secondary assists that don’t go on the scoreboard. Also, sometimes he’s crap, because even the greatest players in the history of every sport are crap one out of every 10 games or so. Everyone accepts this as an inevitability, save for the small number of dedicated Messi cult members who insist that you’re ignorant and watching the game improperly if you don’t see how he dominated a game without scoring and assisting. This claim is impossible to refute without painstakingly breaking down a full game tape, and it’s true often enough that no one bothers.

Ronaldo does not play this way. It is very rare that he’s one of the top players on the pitch without scoring or assisting. He’s a pure finisher of plays and the greatest one that’s ever played the sport; that is the entire point of Ronaldo. He has good games as a defensive player, or as a facilitator, but they’re rare. For the most part, if he’s not scoring or assisting, he’s not making a big impact.

If Barcelona wins on Saturday without Messi getting on the box score, he will have been unselfish and done the little things right. If Real Madrid wins without Ronaldo getting on the box score, he will have been carried by his teammates after failing to bring his best to El Clásico yet again. It’s not impossible for either of these things to be true, but the actual truth is usually a lot more complicated than these narratives that dominate our conversations about Messi and Ronaldo.

These are the perils of being Cristiano Ronaldo, a player who has very little subtlety to his game. Appreciating him fully has very low barriers to entry. Unlike Messi, what you see is most of what you get with Ronaldo, even to the untrained eye.

This does not make Ronaldo inferior to Messi. Placing more value on skills that are difficult to see than skills that are easy to see is as stupid as it is snobbish. When it comes to finishing plays close to the net or making individual goals out of absolutely nothing, Ronaldo is the greatest to ever live. These are skills that should be valued just as much as Messi’s — and Johan Cruyff’s, and Alfredo di Stefano’s, and Diego Maradona’s, and Pele’s.

But those skills are never assumed. Players who earn legendary status as intelligent players who make their teammates better are assumed to still be great until they prove they’re not repeatedly, over the course of multiple years. Earning the title of Legendary Facilitator, Space-Maker, And All-Around Footballing Genius is like the mafia — it’s really hard to get in, but once you’re in, you’re in for life. You have to really screw up to get kicked out.

Ronaldo has never tried to get into that club. He plays in a way that requires him to prove he still has his greatest skills every single game, and in this edition of El Clásico especially. With Bale out injured, with Madrid six points ahead of Barcelona in the table, with worry about his inevitable decline after playing over 800 career games, and with him getting a new five-year contract anyway, the pressure is on him to score. Just like it always is.

It doesn’t matter that he scored the winner in the last Clásico and won two trophies in the three months following. It doesn’t matter that Ronaldo is now one of the undisputed all-time greats. We’re still constantly asking him to prove he’s good enough to justify his attitude, his playing style, and his status.