Mark the first week of February 2024 on your calendar. It will be the “last dance”, the last match between Lionel Messi (36) and Cristiano Ronaldo (38), footballers who marked a football era. Unless you are mistaken, they will meet at the World Cup in 2026, led by Argentina and Portugal. On that day, Inter Miami and Al-Nassr will meet in Riyadh as part of a mini-tournament (Riyadh Season Cup) in which Al Hilal will also participate. The tournament will be played in a league format, so everyone against everyone, and the exact schedule will be announced later.
The Croatian national team member Marcelo Brozović will be directly involved in the “last dance”, as Cristiano Ronaldo’s teammate, and if that match was played a few months later, perhaps Luka Modrić would also participate in it, given that all the participants in the tournament are potential clubs for continuing his career. But only next summer.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have so far met 37 times on the field, the Argentine is somewhat more successful (17-11 wins), while nine of their matches ended in a draw. Messi also celebrated in their last clash, when he and PSG beat (5-4) the combined team of Al-Nassr and Al Hilal led by Ronaldo.
There will always be a debate about who is greater, it will always depend on the subjective opinion of the individual, but everyone must agree that this duo changed the sport and set boundaries that will be hard to break in the foreseeable future.