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Raul Gonzalez 71, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi 69 – these are the goal-scoring tallies of the three greatest Champions League forwards in history. The latter two are sure to eclipse the former, aptly surnamed Blanco, in the coming weeks. Ronaldo and Messi play the game in a separate realm, oblivious to the law of averages, blissfully ignorant of the travails of mere mortals who fight in vain to have a season that’s half as fruitful as theirs.Unlike some players, who have been accused of being flat-track bullies, the two of them, or indeed all three of them, haven’t shied away from the biggest of stages, the grandest of occasions. It has been during the Champions League nights that these three legends of the game have shone the brightest.It is incredibly difficult, bordering on the impossible, to compare them and adjudge one as the greatest of them all. It is like comparing Jimmy Connors and Ken Rosewall, James Hunt and Nikki Lauda or Liu Xiang and Dayron Robles. But compare and contrast, and if possible, select the best among the best, we must.Nothing gives a fan of the game more closure than finding out who is the best in the business. Taking a list of criteria, statistics, match situations and what you may call circumstantial evidence into account, let’s find out the greatest Champions League (not the European Cup) forward of all time.
#1 Goals per game ratio
Raul managed to score an admirable 66 goals in 131 Champions League matches for the Blancos, and five in 11 appearances for the German giants, Schalke. He displayed remarkable consistency during his 14-year stint with the Spanish capital outfit, scoring a minimum of two goals every season, with his most prolific season winning Madrid their eighth European title in 2000. 71 goals in 142 games meant the former Spain No. 7 scored 0.5 goals a game – exactly a goal every alternate game.
Like Raul (till the last stages of his career), Lionel Messi too carved a niche for himself in the European stage with a single club – FC Barcelona. The diminutive La Masia graduate has grown, played for and conquered the world with the Blaugrana. Ever since he made his debut against Udinese as an 18-year old in the 2005/06 season, Messi has set the European stage on fire, and with remarkable ease too.
Scoring a massive 69 goals from just 89 games at an astonishing ratio of 0.77 goals per game against the European elite, the questions and criticisms as to how and why he won four Ballon d’Or titles are essentially flawed.
Cristiano Ronaldo on the other hand has played for, and been the best player of, two different clubs – Manchester United and Real Madrid. Taking the intangibles of adaptation time, and his purely Nani/Navas-like role on the wings for a significant period of time at Old Trafford, giving his ratio a slight leverage over that of the other two is only fair.
That said, the considerably higher number of penalties scored by him evens things out here. Ronaldo has scored an incredible 70 goals in 106 games in the competition, with 52 of them coming for Los Blancos and a sizeable 17 for the Red Devils. But the fact that he has scored only a solitary goal more than La Pulga, having played 17 games more, cannot be ignored.
Winner – Lionel Messi
#2 Goals in knockout stages
After scoring against Juventus in the quarterfinals of his first season in the competition, the next time Raul managed to find the back of the net during the knockout stages of the competition was four years later, in the 1999-00 season. He scored a brace against Manchester United, prompting Sir Alex to call him “the best player in the world”, and scored in the final against Valencia.
He scored only a further nine goals post-Christmas over the next 10 years, taking his tally to 11 knockout goals for Madrid and three for Schalke. A total of 14 goals in the knockout stage gives him a figure of 20%.
Lionel Messi’s first knockout goals came at the age of 20, when he scored a brace against the Scottish Champions, Celtic, in the 2007-08 season. Playing as a right-winger, his switch to the false-nine position paid dividends to both player and club, as heaps of goals followed with him scoring that iconic header against Manchester United in the 2009 final.
Another iconic performance followed next season, with him scoring four against Arsenal. He scored a brilliant brace against Real Madrid in the semi-final in 2011, before repeating history by scoring again in the final against the Red Devils. However, it was in the next season that he obliterated all previous records, scoring five in a single tie against Bayer Leverkusen in the knockout stages. More goals followed in the latter stages of the next two seasons, taking his current tally to a total of 31 goals in the knockout stages of the competition, for a proportion of 45% knockout goals.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s first knockout goal came in his fourth season at United against Roma, who were given a 7-1 drubbing (they like that score, don’t they?) by the Red Devils. He also scored the all-important goal against Chelsea in the final at Moscow the following season. It was only after his move to Madrid though that Ronaldo changed from being “a soloist to a genuine goal-scorer”, as Brendan Rodgers put it.
More goals came with Los Blancos, as he scored in both legs against his former team in 2013. And then, he scored an unbelievable eight goals in the knockout stages last season, culminating in the penalty against Atletico Madrid in the final. With a total of 33 goals scored in the knockout stages, Ronaldo has a knockout-goal figure of 47%.
Winner – Cristiano Ronaldo
#3 Quality of opposition
As per the UEFA Club Coefficient ranking system, 13 of Raul’s goals for Madrid in the competition came against the top eight clubs in Europe at that time. He scored two more against Inter Milan, the then defending champions, for Schalke.
Raul frequently managed to run riot against two heavyweights of the European game, Manchester United and Bayern Munich. In fact, he faced the Bavarians more than any other team, playing 12 times against them, and scoring four. Also, who can forget his wonder goal against United in April 2000? Other important goals came against Barcelona, Juventus, and Bayer Leverkusen.
Lionel Messi just edges ahead of the Madrid legend, scoring 14 of his goals against Tier 1 opposition, with his goals against Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City not being included because of UEFA’s god-forsaken and intelligence-questioning algorithm. More importantly though, he has scored twice in the final on two separate occasions against United, and also scored one of the great Champions League solo goals against Madrid at the Bernabeu. And then, there’s the four-goal haul against the Gunners.
Cristiano Ronaldo ties with his former Real Madrid team-mate on 13 goals against Tier 1 opposition, with his penalty against Atletico Madrid being the last one as of now. His first goal against the European elite was, in fact, on the biggest of stages as he scored against Chelsea at Moscow in the 2008 final. His memorable braces against Arsenal and Bayern Munich are equally good, as was his leap of faith and the poignant celebration that followed after he scored against United at the Bernabeu.
More goals against elite opposition are expected of the latter two in the coming seasons.
Winner – Lionel Messi
#4 Assists, other contributions and versatility
It is in these facets of the game that Raul loses out the most to his competitors. Playing the game predominantly during an age when target-men and poachers were in vogue (like Ruud van Nistelrooy, David Trezeguet, Filippo Inzaghi and his old team-mate, Fernando Morientes), an incredibly high number of Raul’s goals were scored from inside the box, many of them highlighting his sense of anticipation and instinct.
However, relatively speaking he lacked pace, wasn’t as technically brilliant as the other two are, wasn’t very good in the air and didn’t contribute much outside of scoring goals. Former Madrid coach Angel Cappa once said of Raul, “If you analyse his discernible qualities to understand what he is, if you put together a checklist, there's little there. But he had such will that it transformed him into a player much better than he actually was.” He couldn’t have put it any better.
Lionel Messi already has a mind-blowing 20 assists, in addition to 69 goals. And it is only this season that he has played as an out-and-out playmaker. So expect the number to soar over the next few years, as two or three goals per game might turn into a goal and an assist or two per game. His incredible haul of five assists and 14 goals in the 2011/12 season was beaten only by Ronaldo’s even better record of five assists and 17 goals last year. But Messi’s goals have predominantly been one-dimensional, at least stat-wise, with a whopping 57 goals being scored with the left foot, and the same number being scored from inside the box.
Cristiano Ronaldo, on the other hand, is the epitome of versatility – he isn’t a jack of all trades, he is a master of them all. Right foot, left foot, headers, free-kicks – he has everything in his armoury. And this can be seen from his statistics – 49 goals with his right foot, 11 with his left foot and 9 with his head, which is a significant improvement over the Barcelona No. 10.
Also, Ronaldo has three more goals from outside the box than Messi. But the latter just trumps the former on the assists front. While Messi has 20, Ronaldo has only 16, and the gap is only going to get bigger, one feels.
Winner – Ronaldo (by the closest of margins).
#5 Verdict
Selecting the best player among these three is difficult, to say the very least. Raul was voted only second to the great Alfredo Di Stefano as the greatest player in the world’s “Greatest Player of All Time” list. Some achievement, indeed.
Lionel Messi is Argentina’s and the world’s successor to Diego Maradona – simply, one of the greatest players of all time.
And Cristiano Ronaldo is football’s answer to Hollywood – good at everything, machine-like precision combined with magnificent skills, a real all-round finisher and a modern-day great. It is safe to say that along with Messi, he is up there with the two greatest Champions League forwards of all time.
But the award for the greatest Champions League forward of all time should surely go to the Argentinean maestro. He may lack the all round footballing ability of Ronaldo, but what he does, no one does better. With his current transition from being a forward to playmaker, he has ensured that irrespective of whether Ronaldo scores more goals, Messi will contribute to more goals – assists, through balls and a bit of defensive nous added to his game.
Also, who is to say that he cannot be on par with Ronaldo as far as goals are concerned? After all, Messi has age on his side, with two full seasons more than Ronaldo, guaranteeing at least 10 more Champions League goals. Like Ray Hudson said when Gerry Armstrong called Messi “world class” after his sublime free-kick in the Clasico in 2012-13, “He isn’t world class Gerry. He is Messi class.”
