The two players both missing out on a World Cup win, unless either wins in 2022 is also noted and discussed. Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg offer a deeply reported account of the intertwined sagas and legacies of two of the greatest soccer players of all time--Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo--examining how their rivalry has grown from a personal competition to a multi-billion-dollar industry, paralleling the stunning rise, overwhelming excesses, and uncertain future of modern international soccer. Very thoroughly researched with funny anecdotes, it was a very eye-opening and entertaining read. This book is largely about the business side of soccer and the impact of “NFL style” marketing, social media, Covid-19, wealthy oil investors, and budget mismanagement. If the business side of soccer sounds boring, it isn’t. Today I am on Team Messi only because I always cheer for the elder statesmen of sports. Once all these icons retire and there are no contemporaries of mine left competing, it will be harder for me to relate to professional sports, as I find myself more and more calling most of the competing athletes by the endearing term “kid.” Just as in my childhood cheering on Michael Jordan and the last twenty years being firmly entrenched on Team Brady, Ronaldo and Messi are beyond generational talents. They are international icons who drive the sport both on the field and at the bank. Seeing how they have modernized football into a 21st century game has been a thrilling ride. I just hope the World Cup final today is as thrilling as Ronaldo and Messi clash at the height of their careers. There’s also a very good analysis of how Messi’s final contract at Barcelona effectively broke the entire club, as its gargantuan wage terms tipped the numbers over into 110 per cent of the organisation’s revenue. When he eventually lands at PSG, they make an optimistic attempt to turn him into a fashion plate, adding Christian Dior as a partner and making Messi “trade his jean shorts for cashmere coats and tailored trousers”.

Lastly, very curious to see how things evolve from here. With teams like Man City and PSG and others operating with a different economic framework and the Spanish clubs really struggling to figure out their new formula - how does the Champions League competition change? Should there be a super league? The country league structure has so many flaws, it seems. The fact that things are so dynamic and could change (even the fact that international competition has dimmed in prestige in the last couple decades) is both unsettling to me and very interesting - so much tradition yet so much fluidity. Audiobook) (4.5 stars) Interesting that I would read this book right before the World Cup Final where Messi led Argentina to a World Cup Championship over France (3-3, 4-2 penalties) where Messi scored two in-game goals and hit one of 4 penalties for Argentina in the shootout. This was the same tournament where Ronaldo would only score one goal on a penalty in the group stage before Portugal fell to Morocco in the Quarterfinals. The book finished up before the World Cup, and before the tumultuous 2022 for Cristiano Ronaldo. Still, looking at these two players is to look at the greatest player vs. player rivalry in football, and arguably one of the top rivalries in all of sports.After finishing the epilogue, I saw that Argentina beat Croatia in the World Cup semifinal to advance to the final. I wonder if the authors would tweak the epilogue in hindsight. Both men got their start as so many soccer stars do, from humble beginnings where they fell in love with the soccer ball, and drove themselves to use their talents to rise to the top of their respective professions. While soccer does not set up for mano a mano engagements, these two would compete for the top spot in the sport. That they spend the prime of their careers on rival teams in Spain only adds to the legend between the two. The reporting of this work does much to help the reader learn about these two mega-stars. Even in America, which is far from soccer mad, most have heard the names of Rolando and Messi, but many do not know the full tales. It is quite the sports tale, and one that most Americans could easily compare with Bird vs. Magic in the NBA or Everett vs. Navratilova or Federer vs. Nadal in Tennis. This book is worth the read even just to get an evolving profile of Florentino Perez, how he became rich, and his tenure as El Presidente of Real Madrid. More details about the Ronaldo and Messi entourages as well as the financial debacle that is post-Messi FC Barcelona was also worth the time. The World Cup final is here. For a sports fan this past month has been a dream. I struggle when baseball season ends and the NFL is primarily one day a week. This month, I have been watching the football of the rest of the world for the past month and bonding with my husband and son, who are fanatics, in the process. Even I know Messi and Ronaldo, how could I not, so I wanted to get this book read in time for the final game, which is starting as I write. I had been on Team Ronaldo for most of the month until his nation got eliminated. Usually I am on Team Ronaldo only because in his broken English he encouraged “another Goat” to stay out of retirement. That aside, my husband has always rooted for Brazil, so by default I would not root for Argentina, and that has kept me off of Team Messi. For today, I have joined Team Messi, only because he has said that he is done with international competitions after this World Cup, and it is always a moving moment when an athlete goes out on top.

The amount of profligate spenders who’ve infiltrated the game (mainly Middle Eastern and Chinese actors) seems like a huge net negative on the sport. Not only have they bid up prices on assets to crazy levels but they also are not at all motivated to break even, so they’re skewing the very laissez-faire business to a race to the bottom. Seems like the era of homegrown talent is out and so many of these huge signings don’t pan out. Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg offer a deeply reported account of the intertwined sagas and legacies of two of the greatest soccer players of all time—Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo—examining how their rivalry has grown from a personal competition to a multi-billion-dollar industry, paralleling the stunning rise, overwhelming excesses, and uncertain future of modern international soccer.There seem to be some learnings around superstars/rivalries as part of a team vs individual (e.g. tennis) but I don’t know enough to compare these guys to Lebron or others to understand the meaningful differences in wealth generated, power vis a vis club owners or leagues, etc. vs. the NBA, NFL, tennis, etc.

The book’s overriding theme is how their career arcs personified the radical transformation of football from a mere sport into a formidable tool of global soft power, which means lots of material about the behind-the-scenes machinations that powered their careers. In the summer of 2008, as Real Madrid try to unsettle Ronaldo at United by planting stories in the press, an outraged Alex Ferguson tells him: “If I do that [cave in to their tactics], all my honour’s gone, everything’s gone for me, and I don’t care if you have to sit in the stands… I will not let you leave this year.” A nice fill-in-the-blanks deep dive for _the_ sporting rivalry that has dominated my football watching years. What I enjoyed most is that the authors pretty much avoided waxing lyrical about the greatness of these 2 players on the pitch, and focused solely on the business, media and corporate forces that shifted and emerged through the Messi-Ronaldo era. Reading this book felt like a very good primer for someone like me - a person just getting into soccer and wanting to know more about it. I learned a great deal from it, and while I doubt that their army of fans would discover anything new, I would imagine this is one of the first times that all this information has been collected into one specific book. I could very well be wrong about that.

With the 2022 World Cup almost certain to be the last for both of these figures, Messi vs. Ronaldo offers a deeply researched look at their legacy and grapples with the impact that their talents have had on the game for better and for worse. Much more than a retelling of the dual accomplishments of these great players, this is truly a biography of a rivalry, one that has become a crucial lens for understanding the past, present, and future of global soccer.