Football / Soccer / Calcio / Futebol / Fußball

Arteta is right, IMO.

Lionel Messi has won everything on club and national level. He has had a legendary career with a statistical output in terms of goals and assists that currently say 821 goals and 361 assists in 1047 appearances. That’s more goals and assists than any other player.

As a comparison to his by many perceived rival, Cristiano Ronaldo have more total goals (867), so you could argue Cristiano is a better goalscorer if you simply care about totality. But Ronaldo has played 150 (!) more matches than Messi though. And even with 150 more matches than Messi, the Argentine has 114 more assists. As written before Messi has 361 assists while Ronaldo has 247.

My opinion: Messi is the most complete of the two as he is a better goalscorer in terms of efficiency.

As a side note if you let him play 150 more matches and end up with the same amount played as Ronaldo Messi would have more total goals also. But I don’t think one should discredit Ronaldo’s longevity. I just feel like Messi would surpass his total amount of goals with 150 more matches.

But as things stand, Messi has both a better goal/match ratio and a better assist/goal ratio.

But IMO Messi is more complete and is greater than Ronaldo because he has more total goals and assists (1182 goals and assists) compared to Ronaldo’s total amount (1114 goals and assists). And he has a better total in 150 less matches! That’s absurd from Lionel Messi.