Early-season rumors of Cristiano Ronaldo's demise—following a slow start by his goal scoring standards—have been greatly exaggerated. The Real Madrid goal machine has burst into life in the spring with 14 goals in nine end-of-season games. His killer instinct, including hat-tricks in the knockout stages of the Champions League against Bayern Munich and Atlético de Madrid—has helped his club to a first league title since 2012 and a berth in Saturday's Champions League final.
Yet for all his feats—which include a major international tournament victory with Portugal, something that has eluded his nemesis, Argentina's Lionel Messi—Ronaldo is often omitted in football conversations about the greatest of all time.
The names that trip off the tongue most regularly tend to be Messi, Pele and Diego Maradona. Do we underestimate Ronaldo's achievements? Should he be numbered among this pantheon of stars? Or even above?
The doyen of football writing, Brian Granville, who began covering FIFA World Cups at Sweden in 1958, provides some historical perspective. He ranks Pele and Alfredo Di Stefano above the rest.
Di Stefano, a player who is often omitted from these lists, transformed the history of Real Madrid by spearheading the club to five European Cup wins in a row. He scored in each final, culminating with a hat-trick in a 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960. Comparisons are odious, : Granville said. "People forget about Di Stefano. He utterly inspired that Real Madrid team. Ronaldo is essentially a brilliant attacking player. Di Stefano commanded practically the whole field. One moment he was clearing under his own crossbar in that amazing game against Eintracht Frankfurt, the next minute he was in midfield sending another player through to score. He was total football before anyone else played it.
Pele was a very different player to Ronaldo. Pele was extraordinarily acrobatic. He was only about 5'8". He could head goals that a 6'3" player would be proud of. He had tremendous ball control. He did things like using other players' legs to play off. He was very quick to see opportunities. As a 17-year-old, he got a hat-trick in the World Cup semi-final, two goals in the final, absolutely astounding. I'd put him as No. 1 and Ronaldo in the top 10. I wouldn't go beyond that.
Nestled in between the prolific, modern-day achievements of Ronaldo and Messi and the golden age of Pele and Di Stefano, lies Maradona. The 1986 World Cup-winning Argentina captain left an indelible mark.
There was something transcendental about his footballing ability. He was an artist, fashioning works of art during a brutal, violent era of football when attacking players—often unseen by TV cameras and unprotected by referees—were subjected to incessant fouling. During a World Cup game against South Korea in 1986, for example, Maradona got punched in the face and was left "screaming in pain" when another one of their players spiked him so hard his studs went through Maradona's socks and bandages, as per his autobiography Touched By God.
Over a stop-start, 21-year professional football career, Maradona's trophy haul—chiefly the 1986 World Cup win and a couple of Serie A titles with NEPALI—is paltry compared to Ronaldo's. The self-destructive elements to Maradona's personality, though, add to his fascination for football fans. There is something more romantic about Maradona compared with the remorseless, self-made nature of Ronaldo.
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