Yes, I've played elite level sport where my particular job was running with a ball at feet at around 30kph+ multiple times a half.
6 ft 4, 95kg.
The tactical information given to me through a 7 day, not 3 minute period sufficed, as did the occasional squirt of electrolyte water per half.
My performance would not have been improved at all by a hydration or tactical break.
Pretty much like 99% of players over a 150 year period playing the most popular and most played sport on the planet by far.
So maybe you can tell me. When was the last time you put your fucking dorittos, big gulp and chicken wings down long enough to know what professional sportsmen need rather than advertising executives or couch potatoes who need to be told 6 times in 20 minutes to buy a Jeep Cherokee, Whopper or diabetes medication instead of just enjoying the sport?
Outfield players to play every minute for their nation at the 2026 World Cup AND play every minute for their club in the league last season (Europe's Top 7 leagues only)
🇳🇱 Virgil Van Dijk
~list ends~
Might be a hot take but he really started his decline in 2016, first year at juve was his last good year. Been a detriment to whoever he plays with since then, catastrophic in the 2020s
@AttorneyF_ Ronaldo fans inventing scenarios to feel better — meanwhile they're lucky Messi chose Argentina over Spain at all. He picked the harder road and still delivered. That's the opposite of manufactured greatness.
This is one of the rare times I'm going to totally disagree with you, somewhat disappointed even. This entire take is a masterclass in psychological projection and a massive, desperate rewrite of football history. You're talking about a "missionary smugness" and a "manufactured narrative" to cope with the fact that the debate didn't end in a media lab it ended on the pitch.
It's a projection for me. To claim Ronaldo fans are just "content with their preference" while Messi fans are "zealots" is hilarious. The entire Ronaldo movement is built on an aggressive, highly online cult of personality that filters the entire sport through raw individual statistics. For a decade, the narrative from that camp was simple and uncompromising: “Goals are the only objective metric. Numbers don't lie”.
But the moment Messi matched the goal scoring volume while maintaining vastly superior playmaking, dribbling, and trophy metrics, the goalposts didn't just move they were completely uprooted. Suddenly, analyzing the actual phase of play, chance creation, and spatial awareness became labeled as "intellectual arrogance" and "smugness." It's not a superiority complex to point out that one player dictates the entire tactical structure of a match while the other relies on it, it's just basic tactical literacy.
The argument that the 2022 World Cup was hollow or hand delivered because people felt Messi deserved it is the ultimate coping mechanism. Nobody handed Messi 7 goals, 3 assists, and a masterclass performance in the greatest final ever played. He earned it by dragging his team through a grueling tournament under intense pressure.
When the footballing hierarchy meaning actual legendary players, managers, and peers who understand the game, said Messi deserved a World Cup, they weren't talking about a political handout. They were acknowledging the sporting injustice that the most complete footballer to ever live might walk away without the ultimate prize.
Trying to link a brief, emotional international retirement in 2016 to a global conspiracy that fixed a World Cup six years later in Qatar is pure really an unintelligent move. The alarm bells didn't sound to "manufacture a legacy" the legacy was already cemented by four Champions Leagues, multiple Ballon d'Ors, and record breaking statistical seasons at Barcelona.
You claim that what held him back was his own failure on the pitch, completely ignoring that he carried a chaotic, dysfunctional Argentina federation to three consecutive major finals before finally getting a stable managerial setup under Scaloni.
People aren't "waking up" to anything, you’re just trying to intellectualize your own footballing heartbreak. The "asymmetry" you’re feeling isn’t a media conspiracy or a religious dogma. It’s just the harsh reality that when the ultimate footballing arguments were settled on the biggest stage on earth, your narrative ran out of road. You can call the consensus smug all you want, but reality isn't a narrative—IT'S JUST WHAT HAPPENED.
Lots of Boomers seem to be remembering the summer of 1976 with rose tinted spectacles, & think that they ‘just got in with it’
Let’s have a look at what the newspapers of the day had to say in 1976….
🧵
Is the UK worse off because of Brexit? Ten years on since the Brexit referendum, we've looked at this question in detail. The video is produced by Katerina Karelli - and it's longer than our usual explainers. I hope you find it helpful.
Okay let’s remove penalty goals shall we?
Messi at the World Cup— 14 goals
Ronaldo at the World Cup— 7 goals
Messi overall— 802 goals
Ronaldo overall— 793 goals
This is not the road you want to go down.