The words seem to have lost none of their weight over time. José Mourinho is not only known for his work as a coach, but also for not hiding what he thinks.
Now, a video of him speaking and differentiating Cristiano Ronaldo from Lionel Messi in 2012 has regained relevance due to a ‘like’ from the Portuguese star on the clip.
What did Mourinho say?
More than a decade ago, the 63-year-old Portuguese coach compared Ronaldo’s career to Lionel’s during an interview with the newspaper A Bola. At the time, ‘Mou’ was coaching Real Madrid and had CR7 on his team, but he also knew what it was like to face Messi’s Barcelona.
Ahead of the 2012 Ballon d’Or, Cristiano scored 58 goals in the calendar year with Real Madrid, while Messi had broken the world record with 91 goals in the calendar year (79 with Barça, 12 with Argentina). For that reason, the Argentine won the award.
However, before announcing the winner, Mourinho did not hesitate to defend his player and put him above the ’10’, assuring that CR7 deserved more credit due to the competitive conditions and defensive work he had to take on, unlike Leo.
Now, this video has resurfaced after @cr7historical shared it again on social media and it was revealed that it has Cristiano’s ‘like‘.
“I still say it’s harder to be Cristiano than Messi,” Mourinho said. “Messi grew up in the team he plays for, with the teammates he plays with. Cristiano came to England to a giant team in crisis, just losing. He had to grow in the last two years with this team under construction.”
“Messi plays as a number 9 in about 50 square meters, closer to the goal and with less defensive work. Cristiano, on the other hand, is a winger,” he added. “How can a winger score the same number of goals as a center forward? A winger who defends, who ends a game in the 94th minute running after Pedro in a goal-scoring situation. A winger who, in set pieces, reaches his own area 20 times because he is very important to the defense. A player who is not protected by anything or anyone… It is much, much harder to be Cristiano, let’s stop joking,” said the coach, pointing out that Messi also received greater protection from referees.
CR7’s digital gesture was enough to bring fans back to the eternal debate about who has had a more successful career and why. Others recalled Mourinho’s most recent words, from 2019, saying that Leo “is the God of football.”
Meanwhile, this statement and CR7’s gesture only serve to demonstrate that the debate among soccer fans continues to be very active despite the fact that both legends are in the final years of their professional careers, and that every little gesture or movement they make continues to be a topic of global conversation among their followers.
While it is difficult to determine who is the best soccer player of all time and a consensus is unlikely to be reached, there is no doubt that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are part of the debate.
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