Mian Abdullah

SKZMDC'24

[Squawka @Squawka]

Most final third passes completed in the World Cup quarter-finals. 🦶

[Barça 1899 Stats @barca1899stats]

📊 Most Big Chances Created in FIFA World Cup History Since 1966

23 🇦🇷 Lionel Messi (97 key passes)
14 🇦🇷 Diego Maradona (71)
12 🇩🇪 Joshua Kimmich (29)
11 🇧🇷 Zico (30)
10 🇷🇸 Dragan Stojkovic (28)
10 🇩🇪 Mesut Ozil (48)
10 🇮🇹 Francesco Totti (29)
10 🇪🇸 Andrés Iniesta (27)
10 🇫🇷 Antoine Griezmann (39)
10 🇩🇪 Thomas Häßler (39)

[Sholy Nation Sports @Sholynationsp]

🇦🇷 Lionel Messi’s 2022 and 2026 World Cup campaigns look almost identical 😳

📊 2022 World Cup:
👕 7 games
⚽️ 7 goals
🎯 3 assists
😮 21 chances created
😳 7 big chances created
💨 15 successful dribbles

📊 2026 World Cup:
👕 6 games
⚽️ 8 goals
🎯 2 assists
😮 21 chances created
😳 7 big chances created
💨 15 successful dribbles

He’s 39 years old right now! 🐐

[Mohammad Adnan @adnaaan433]

This is how the top 2 goal scorers of this FIFA World Cup are receiving passes from their teammates.

Lionel Messi vs Kylian Mbappe Pass Receiving Stats Comparison

[Neal 🇦🇺 @NealGardner_]

The more I think about it, the more astonished I am by what Messi has produced at this World Cup.

Forget the fact that he’s going toe to toe with Mbappe again, at 39, which is already unprecedented beyond belief. I urge you to actually consider the context of the teams.

Mbappe plays for arguably the most formidable attacking side since OG Brazil, with two genuine Ballon d’Or level players alongside. Argentina, meanwhile, are more reliant on Messi than ever.

I mean, seriously, Julian scoring that worldie last night was probably the first time an Argentine attacker bar Messi has actually produced a moment of brilliance all competition. Now compare that to France’s dynamics…

The point of this isn’t to dimish Mbappe, he’s probably the most inevitable WC player I’ve ever witnessed, but what Messi has managed to produce at this World Cup is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever experienced in all of sport.

[Neal 🇦🇺 @NealGardner_]

Make no mistake, until Julian’s moment of magic in the 112th minute, it was the same story for Argentina. Messi and hope.

[Appie Culé @appiecule]

I’m going to take my time with this one. If you’re busy, bookmark it and come back later.

Do you know the biggest problem with Cristiano Ronaldo? It isn’t that he never won the World Cup. It’s that he spent years telling everyone what separates legends, only to change the standards once he couldn’t reach them himself.

After winning Euro 2016, Ronaldo made it clear that winning a major international trophy was what completed a player’s legacy. At the time, Messi had just lost another international final and was going through the toughest period of his career. Those comments only added to the narrative that Messi could never be the greatest because he hadn’t won with Argentina. For years, that became the standard. Messi was called a bottler, while Ronaldo was praised as the player who had proved himself internationally.

Nobody wanted to hear about context. Nobody cared that Messi had dragged Argentina to a World Cup final in 2014 with a squad many considered weaker than the Portugal teams Ronaldo has had over the last decade. The only thing that mattered was that Ronaldo had won a major trophy with his country, and Messi hadn’t.

Then Messi won the Copa América. Suddenly, the goalposts moved. We were told one Euro was worth more than multiple Copa América titles because South America supposedly wasn’t competitive enough. That became the new excuse.

Then Messi won the World Cup. The excuses changed again. It was “fixed.” It was “scripted.” Then came, “A career can’t be defined by seven games.” Funny how nobody was saying that before the tournament, when many believed it would finally be Ronaldo’s chance to win it.

Now Portugal have been eliminated from the World Cup, and Ronaldo posts about Euro 2016 again. That’s what I find ironic. When international trophies favored Ronaldo, they were the ultimate measure of greatness. When Messi caught up, people started ranking competitions differently. When Messi surpassed him by winning the biggest trophy in football, suddenly the World Cup wasn’t supposed to define a career anymore.

That’s the contradiction.

The difference between Messi and Ronaldo was never just about goals, assists, or trophies. It’s about consistency. Messi never needed to diminish Ronaldo’s achievements to elevate his own, nor did he ask football to change its standards because they no longer favored him. He simply kept playing until he won everything there was to win.

League titles. Champions Leagues. Ballons d’Or. Golden Boots. Copa América. Finalissima. World Cup. Every major trophy that was ever used against him eventually became part of his legacy.

Cristiano Ronaldo will always be one of the greatest footballers to ever play the game. But this is exactly why I believe Messi is the greatest. He didn’t ask football to rewrite the standards.

He met every single one of them.

[Sid @314_MFC]

We know this breed to its core

[JA @DamnItWasFun]

Notice how he framed his entire argument.

He talks about the leagues Ronaldo played in, but conveniently leaves out context whenever it doesn't support his conclusion. He calls La Liga "widely regarded as corrupt" without providing a single piece of evidence. Yet the league he holds up as the gold standard—the Premier League—is the only one of the major leagues where clubs have actually faced major corruption and financial rule charges. Notice how that standard only appears when it helps his narrative.

Notice what else he leaves out. He praises Ronaldo for winning Serie A with Juventus but never mentions that Juventus had already won the league seven consecutive times before Ronaldo arrived. That context suddenly disappears because it weakens the point he's trying to make.

Then he claims Messi "failed woefully" at PSG. Again, notice the selective storytelling. He doesn't mention that PSG failed to win Ligue 1 the season before Messi arrived, then won it in each of Messi's first two seasons. He doesn't mention that while Messi's goals dropped, he remained one of Europe's best chance creators, consistently produced elite performances, and finished among the highest-rated players in the league. Those facts are ignored because they don't fit the narrative.

This is how Ronaldo fans engineer these narratives. Leave out context. Ignore inconvenient facts. Redefine success and failure depending on who the player is. Repeat it often enough and hope people never check.

This is also why Messi's GOAT case is fundamentally different. Messi fans don't need to diminish Ronaldo to make Messi's case. They can simply list Messi's achievements and let them speak for themselves. Ronaldo fans, on the other hand, constantly find themselves downplaying Messi because Ronaldo's case so often depends on reducing what Messi has accomplished.

That's why Messi is regarded by so many as the greatest footballer of all time. His legacy stands on its own. It doesn't require rewriting someone else's.

Notice the pattern. That's what this does: it skews the narrative by replacing context with selective storytelling. And that's also why Ronaldo cannot be the greatest of all time. Football is a team sport. You cannot be the GOAT of a team sport through an argument rooted in individualism and the idea that one player is somehow bigger than the game itself.

[Squawka @Squawka]

COMPARED: Erling Haaland vs. Harry Kane vs. Lionel Messi vs. Kylian Mbappé per 90 at the World Cup. 🕶️

#FIFAWorldCup

[SAM 🇦🇷🐐 🇦🇷 @LexNotLuthur]

Ronaldo helped create a generation that thinks belittling other people’s achievements while constantly glorifying your own is a way to establish dominance. What a poor thing!🙂‍↔️

[CHIKEZIE @Kezmag_]

"Some people choose Cristiano Ronaldo over Lionel Messi because Ronaldo is taller, more muscular, and more handsome. Those are personal preferences, and everyone is entitled to them. But when it comes strictly to football, I don't believe Ronaldo ranks among the top 20 greatest players of all time.

During my time at Chelsea, we never built our game plan around stopping Ronaldo. He was treated like any other top-class opponent because we trusted Ashley Cole to deal with him.

However, facing Barcelona was a completely different challenge. Every tactical meeting, every training session, and every discussion centered on one question: How do we stop Messi? He was the player we feared the most because he could change the outcome of a match in an instant.

The truth is, no single player could mark Messi. It often took several players working together to limit his influence, and even then, he would still find a way to dribble past them, create chances, score goals, and dominate the game. If you found yourself one-on-one with Messi, you were almost certainly in trouble.

This is not meant to disrespect Ronaldo. He is one of the greatest footballers of his generation and has achieved things that few players ever will. But football is about much more than scoring goals. It is also about dribbling, creativity, vision, playmaking, assists, and controlling the rhythm of a game. In all of those areas, Messi has consistently set the highest standard.

That is why, for me, comparing any player to Messi is simply unfair.

— Mikel Obi

[Barça 1899 Stats @barca1899stats]

Just look at this old man stats
Insane 🐐🤯

World Cup 2026 Golden Boot Race
🇦🇷 Leo 🇫🇷 Mbappe 🇳🇴 Erling 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Kane

⚽ Goals: 8 • 7 • 7 • 6
🅰️ Assists: 1 • 2 • 0 • 1
🎯 Pen. Goals: 0 • 1 • 0 • 2
🛡️ Def. Actions: 7 • 1 • 8 • 9
🎯 Acc. Passes: 155 • 135 • 30 • 51
🔑 Key Passes: 16 • 12 • 6 • 4
✨ Big Chances Created: 6 • 1 • 1 • 1
📊 xA: 2.44 • 0.29 • 0.84 • 1.02
🪄 Dribbles: 10 • 9 • 1 • 2
❌ Big Chances Missed: 3 • 5 • 5 • 3
🥅 Shots: 29 • 26 • 18 • 19
💥 Fouls Won: 13 • 5 • 3 • 7
🏃 Avg. KM: 7.5 • 8.4 • 9.3 • 9.9

[• @gnf_ogo]

2014 mannnnn 2014 wtfff

[Dr. Shubham Misra शुभम मिश्रा🧠⚛️🇮🇳🇺🇸 @Shubham_Neuro]

Amidst all the unnecessary noise, there's actual data that strongly indicates what an absolute freak Leo Messi has been in the last three World Cup editions.

He is an anomaly, an alien, one of his kind!!! 🐐❤️
#FIFAWorldCup #Messi

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

Have you noticed that non-football platforms like Wimbledon have been posting about Messi under different guises?

I will tell you how the UN, CAS, IOC, WTA, MUMU, FIFA, ETYWR, and NATO formed an alliance that mandated all the platforms to advance the Messi agenda.

This World Cup is rigged but it is even deeper than that. Interesting days ahead.

[Appie Culé @appiecule]

Real Madrid fans aren't happy with Portugal's full-backs, Nuno Mendes and João Cancelo.

Does anyone remember the full-backs Messi spent most of his career playing with? The legends Gabriel Mercado and Acuña.

Those two looked like they had no necks—they'd hit the gym before every game just to train their traps, then step onto the pitch and put in some of the worst performances you'll ever see.

Messi even lost two straight Copa América finals to Chile because of them.

[Nwankudu Osinachi @Osinachi_W]

I've always maintained that Messi's playmaking is one of his greatest strengths.

The fact that he scores an absurd number of goals has made people underrate just how elite he is as a creator.

Even if you stripped away most of his goal scoring ability, he'd still go down as one of the greatest players ever based on his playmaking alone.

The fact that he combines all-time great playmaking with all-time great goalscoring is what makes him the greatest to ever do it.

[Greg Brady @gregbradyx]

It’s so weird that FIFA, by this idiot’s “marketing” theory, DID NOT want any of the host nations to make it past the Round of 16, & made certain Brazil & the Netherlands didn’t advance, either….so we could watch….Egypt. Everyone loses at things, but losers complain when they do.

[WahabStatsHub @WahabStatsHub]

Messi is so great that an entire fanbase has to convince people the World Cup is rigged for him instead of accepting that a 39-year-old has 8 goals in 5 matches. 😭

🇮🇷 Iran's late winner against Egypt ruled out by VAR... but it's rigged for Messi.
🇨🇴 Colombia's stoppage-time winner against Portugal ruled offside... but it's rigged for Messi.
🇬🇭 Ghana denied what looked like a clear penalty against England... but it's rigged for Messi.
🇪🇨 Germany's controversial goal against Ecuador allowed to stand... but it's rigged for Messi.
🇺🇸 Balogun's red-card suspension overturned before the knockout stage... but it's rigged for Messi.
🇭🇷 Croatia's last-minute goal against Portugal ruled out... but it's rigged for Messi.
🇦🇷 Messi is 39 years old and has scored 8 goals in 5 matches... but it's rigged for Messi.

At some point, maybe accept that controversial refereeing decisions happen in football.