Transparency Item: The views expressed in this article are the opinions of the writer.
How I’ll miss the greatness of Inter Miami CF forward Lionel Messi and Al-Nassr FC forward Cristiano Ronaldo, the two men who unequivocally dominated the sport throughout multiple decades.
Their greatness on the pitch should never be downplayed or overlooked, and their sheer existence within each other’s timelines gave us some of the greatest years of any sport on the planet.
Although both are still active, I think we can all agree that their careers are approaching retirement and have massively calmed down.
It’s unbelievable to think of FC Barcelona’s dominance in Spain during Messi’s prime years and Ronaldo’s time as the new “Mr. Champions League” is a thing of the past.
If you were born in the early 2000s like me, seeing these two as the face of football and worldwide sports was just the norm; it’s all we ever knew.
Since each of their decisions to leave European football, it seems that there’s a massive hole in the sport’s marketing.
From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, anytime you thought of the UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, LaLiga, UEFA Euros, or Copa America, they were on center stage; they became the face of football.
But if we were to look away from marketing and at the actual sport, that’s when you see how inescapable they truly were.
During their shared reign in Spain with Barcelona and Real Madrid CF, their respective teams dominated the Champions League leaving little room for other teams to compete in LaLiga.
Since Messi’s initial season with Barcelona in 2004-2005, Atlético de Madrid was the only other team to win a league title outside of Barcelona and Real Madrid.
From 2008 to 2021, anybody besides Messi and Ronaldo winning the Ballon d’Or was unthinkable. Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modrić being the only player to take the award from the two in 2018, following an extremely successful campaign with both club and country.
So now that they’re retired, is it possible to think that European football is more equal?
Don’t get me wrong, they were two of the greatest players in any sport in world history. In no way am I celebrating their departure from the center stage of the world’s biggest sport.
Their work in football is unrivaled, and their careers look like they were crafted in a story, with stats that look like they came out of a video game. They were too good, they made the game unfair.
Now that they’ve both left European football, everything is up for grabs. We don’t have the same expectations year after year for the Ballon d’Or, European Golden Boot or even the cover of EA Sports’ FIFA—which has been rebranded as EA Sports FC.
Contrary to what people might think, Real Madrid doesn’t have the chokehold on the Champions League it once had with Ronaldo. Yes, they have won twice since he left, but they went from being regulars in the finals to having only made it twice in six seasons.
Barcelona’s dominance as a top team has also taken a decline since Messi’s departure. While Messi’s departure from LaLiga is more fresh than Ronaldo’s, the effect it left on the club’s competitiveness in the Champions League is apparent.
Barcelona has maintained a certain level of success in LaLiga, but we can’t fairly judge his departure from the league with Ronaldo’s until we have more time to really see how Barcelona fares without him.
So now, we reach a new chapter.
The focus has shifted to England, where the title race between Manchester City F.C., Arsenal F.C. and Liverpool F.C. has been the talk of the town for the past few years.
The Champions League remains a wild card, with Real Madrid maintaining the presence they set long before Ronaldo, as far back as the competition’s very beginning. But like I pointed out, their presence in the final of the competition hasn’t met the expectation we once held.
If we look at who’s ready to take the mantle and be the new Messi or Ronaldo, we have some candidates to consider, but it comes with a long-term issue: players don’t hold the same longevity and dominance Messi and Ronaldo did.
Sure, we have players like FC Barcelona forward Robert Lewandowski, Manchester City F.C. midfielder Kevin De Bruyne and Liverpool F.C. forward Mohamed Salah, but even they, some of the best players to ever play the game, aren’t Messi or Ronaldo.
We have younger players like Real Madrid CF forward Kylian Mbappe and Manchester City F.C. forward Erling Haaland who might have the potential to compete for a decade at the highest level of the sport. I think we can all agree they look like they’re on their way to be all-time greats, but not to the level of Ronaldo or Messi.
So again, I’ll ask: is it now equal?
While I don’t believe the sport has reached true equality due to certain teams dominating their domestic leagues for the past five to 10 years, I definitely think it’s closer.
Now, when I say true equality, I don’t mean every team in every league having the same opportunity. Who wouldn’t want three to five teams to make it a real competition to win the league, or to make the Champions League and be competitive. For seasons to really go down to the wire and for repeat championships to be a rare occurrence, shouldn’t we all, as fans of the sport, want that?
While that begins a whole different conversation of owners and all the inner workings of a football club, the point stands: equality is closer than it was last decade.
As I pointed out, domestic leagues are still not as competitive as other major sports such as the National Football League, National Basketball Association or Major League Baseball (which hasn’t seen a repeat champion since the New York Yankees in 2000).
European football fans are aware of the nature of the sport. In Europe’s top five leagues, two or three teams closely compete for their domestic league title, and in some cases, you have one team winning the majority in the past decade.
Messi and Ronaldo added to a long history of success for both Barcelona and Real Madrid, but they didn’t create it.
However, my point on the Champions League still stands. No team has made back-to-back appearances in the Champions League final since Ronaldo with Real Madrid in 2018.
The top competition in club football has now become more even.
Individual competitions and player awards have become more attainable, and the new face of the sport could very well change by the season, something that would’ve been laughable in the 2010s.
There is no doubt that a new chapter has arrived in European football, and it gives new hope that wasn’t there in the 2010s.
But man was it amazing to watch those two go at it for over a decade and give us some of the most amazing years any sport has ever seen.
__________________
Follow the Graphic on X: @PeppGraphic
Email Nick Charkhedian: nareg.charkhedian@pepperdine.edu
