This seems backwards to me, are you saying that Real Madrid this season is dragging Roanldo down? Bale and Benzema seem to be having a much better season that Ronaldo and when Real Madrid wins it is because of them more often than not.

And just to say, and I don't want to kill the messenger, but the old "Messi can't do it without XYZ" excuse has to die. Yes, Messi doesn't play on a team full of inept losers, they are great players. Can they win games without Messi? Of course. Could they win all those trophies? Probably not even close.

People used to say that all the time about Messi because of Xavi and Iniesta. Because they were brilliant and people thought they were making Spain win and Argentina had Messi and they were pretty awful. Then Spain got blown out of the World Cup and Argentina went to the final, clearly largely because of Messi. Then Xavi stopped playing very much for Barcelona and Iniesta had an off-season, and Barcelona still won the trophies. Now people look back and say "it was Neymar and Suárez supporting Messi." But for last season, it was really the opposite most of the time. Suárez was absent because of his ban for two months and then took another two months to start scoring regularly. Neymar had lots of ups and downs and a lot of those ups were clearly supported by working very closely with Messi. Messi again dragged Argentina into another final.

This season, Messi was injured for two months and Barcelona did well, so people additionally take this as evidence that Messi is just being elevated by his team. (Just to be clear here, because I know people will jump on this point, I know Messi is elevated by his colleagues, my point is that he elevates them as well.) However, a team that can't win regular league matches against mid-table teams and the easier CL group matches without Messi can go nowhere in the long haul for trophies. Neymar and Suárez were great in the Clásico, but Real Madrid was horrible and played even worse than many of those mid-table teams.