5 reasons why Cristiano Ronaldo, not Lionel Messi, is the Mr. Champions League

#4 Stats don’t lie

Juventus v Torino FC - Serie A

There is a very popular quote in the world of football that goes something like: ‘Stats are like mini-skirts; they reveal a lot but hide the most important parts.’

While the general gist of the saying is true, especially in the case of midfielders, stats do say a lot about forwards. Let’s have a stat comparison between the two in the Champions League.

Messi has scored 112 goals in the Champions League while Ronaldo has 126 to his name in Europe’s premier competition. But it gets even better as we start to break it.

Ronaldo has 65 goals in the Champions League knockout stages, of which 42 are from the quarter-finals to the final itself – that is just 4 goals less than what Lionel Messi has in knock-out stages overall (46 goals).

Ronaldo has 13 goals in the semis while Messi has just 6. In the finals, the Portuguese has 4 goals, which is double of what Messi has.

Finally, Ronaldo has won 5 Champions League titles with two teams while Messi has 4 with Barcelona.