Yesterday's Cristiano Ronaldo's hat-trick for Manchester United against Tottenham has seen the Greatest Of All Time (G.O.A.T) debate be re-ignited yet again. The football world has always been in the state of indifference of who is better than the other between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. There have been other great players who have come before the two with Pele and Maradona being the ones worth been mentioned in the same stature not forgetting Ronaldinho but arguably,  Cristiano and Messi are the best in the world in this era. 

The two share together 12 Ballon d'Or with Messi having 7 and Ronaldo 5. The Ballon d'Or is arguably the most coveted award in the world of professional football. Lionel Messi who currently plies his trade at Paris Saint Germain is Barcelona's highest goal scorer of all time with 678 goals while Cristiano Ronaldo holds the same status at Real Madrid with 450 goals. At the international football level, they have each won their respective continental show-pieces with Messi winning the Copa America last year and Ronaldo winning the Euro competition in 2016. None of them has however been lucky enough to win the World Cup with Messi playing in the final with Argentina against Germany in 2014 where they were defeated 1-0 at extra time while Ronaldo has gone as far as the semi-final in 2006 where Portugal were eliminated by France in a 1-0 victory. Football lovers across the world look forward to see if any of their two favourite players will lift the cup in Qatar this year.

Ronaldo has 5 Champions League titles to his name; one with Manchester United and four of them with Real Madrid while Messi has four Champions League titles all of them with Barcelona. Interestingly, they both have 8 UCL career hat-tricks. Ronaldo has 59 career hat-tricks in total while Messi follows closely with 55 of them. Although age is now catching up with them, the two super stars will go down in history as the players who gave the football world a ‘golden age’ or better still, we might just be yet to see the best of them as they approach their football sunset years.