Lionel Messi.

People will argue Cristiano Ronaldo, and I can understand why, if you’re arguing purely through a goalscoring perspective. But Messi does more than that. Take a look at the two player’s respective heat-maps. Messi scores and assists more goals than Cristiano Ronaldo despite having an average position 30-40 yards away from the goal while Cristiano likes to hang in his opponents box. There is nothing wrong with this, Cristiano is a pure goalscorer. But Messi is more.

People will compare Messi’s creativity and dribbling prowess to Maradona or Pele, but Messi excels in both better than the two mentioned, while also being a more clinical goalscorer than both by a mile. A majority of Pele’s goals came in Brazil 40 years ago, where his competition was much worse than Messi’s. This is true for two reasons. For one, football has evolved into a much more technical, tactically advanced, and overall more difficult game. Also, Messi’s European competition is much more difficult than what Brazil had to offer.

Another facet of Messi’s game is his passing skill. It’s quite underrated, but as a player who finishes as his league’s top scorer year in and year out, Messi plays as a midfielder who controls the tempo of the midfield and creates chances from deep with sublime passes that rival any players.

Finally, Messi is incredibly consistent. While his main rival CR7 can have months of cold spells, Messi is incredibly consistent for Barcelona and Argentina.

People look at Messi as a pure-goalscorer, and while he succeeds at this better than anyone, he is also the world’s best creator, dribbler, midfielder, passer, consistently. To anyone who watches him week in and week out, and to many legitimate football players, managers, pundits, etc, I.E. people who know a lot about the sport, it’s undisputed.