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Neville and Carragher spar over the Messi/Ronaldo GOAT debate

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As Ronaldo made his spectacular debut last weekend, Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher sparred over the Ronaldo/Messi debate. 

Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville are making sure the Ronaldo/Messi debate stays as relevant as ever with their latest pundit work. It happened during the Monday Night Football show with Gary’s initial thoughts via The Daily Mail: “I’ve always ignored the Ronaldo and Messi question, it’s a bit of a fantasy and both need to be enjoyed. I was asked this morning by a gentleman who was driving me in: If you could pick any player in history to come off the bench and win you a game, who would it be? It would absolutely be Cristiano Ronaldo.

“I do think he’s the greatest football player that has ever lived. That is not a bias. Messi is a ridiculous player who’s scored an obscene amount of goals. It’s incredibly similar (on the stats) apart from the wrong-footed goals, the headers, and the penalties. That takes me to a point whereby he’s more complete in terms of the most important part of the game. What tips me is the international record, the most goals of all-time, and the five Champions Leagues with worse teams than Messi’s.”

Carragher respectfully disagrees with Neville. 

But given his status as Manchester United’s eternal rival, Jamie Carragher had his side of the debate to defend with the following response: “Ronaldo is not the greatest player of all time. I’m going to say it’s his mate here (Messi). It doesn’t matter how a ball goes in the net, Messi has more goals than Ronaldo. Messi is also a playmaker, he can run a game, Ronaldo can’t do that.

“Talk about who you want coming off the bench, Messi has scored more goals coming off the bench, so that’s a ridiculous thing you’ve said there. Ronaldo does things other players can do, Messi does things we’ve never seen before. In terms of the goalscoring that’s not right. There’s been a lot of fanfare about Ronaldo from ex-players, I just think you’ve just got carried away.”

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