Not as clear cut as Ronaldo vs Kaka last year but I still feel Messi outpreformed Ronaldo in both games despite being on the losing side.

has to be messi!!
although barca lost the game over two legs i think messi had a bigger part to play in both games. Ronaldo is the best player in the world but not over these two legs. In the first one messi ran the show for the 60mins he was on the pitch. We have to remember that was his first start for 2months. While messi was playing great, it wasnt ronaldos night. He spent most of the match complaining and as much as i like him, he was crap. In the second game ronaldo did play better then he did in the first game but i would stil say messi was better. Messi was creating stuff but eto'o was messing it it up. If messi had someone to link up with barca might have scored. Ronaldo also created opportunities but not as many as messi.
If you look at the stats from both games it will show that messi was better.

Messi was the better player over 2 legs. What annoys me about Barca though, every time they got on the ball, they looked for Messi. Needed to vary their game abit

Messi was definitely superior to all the players on the pitch over 2 legs and created all of Barca's chances. He didn't score, but none did with the exception of Scholes.

Messi easilly.

Not much point in having a thread on this because nobody could argue that Ronaldo was better. Messi cleary was better than Ronaldo.

Yeah there was no contest in it, every time Messi got the ball you expected something to happen and generally it did. No goals but he ran the show for Barca and rarely put a foot wrong.

Ronaldo was much improved from the first leg, he did nothing going forward but at least played for the team and didnt get caught up in his own importance. Even though he didnt play great I would still respect him more playing like that than playing great but with a sh!t attitude

If I was playing over the 2 legs and in the Barca team when Ronaldo was attacking, I would think "Id have him for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper and tea."

If I was playing over the 2 legs and in the Manchester United team (never gonna happen) when Messi was attacking, I would be thinking "Im gonna [beep!] my pants"

No contest.

i don't want to tell white lies.. but please give ronaldo a break..

Messi obviously, but he saw alot more of the ball and Barca relied on him too heavily and it didn't pay off.

Rio was better than Messi, as was Tevez.

Ronaldo had a far more difficult task than Messi. If Messi had been left to play up front on his own against Rio and Wes he would have looked as ineffective as Eto'o did. Instead he was allowed to play out wide right and NOT expected to chase back and defend. Ronaldo would have probably been MORE effective than Messi had he been deployed in the same wide role for United. For all of Messi's intricate 'nice on the eye' dribbling skills he actually created zilch for his attacking team mates. He was marshalled well by an excellent United defence. In contrast, Ronaldo looked far more effective than Barca's Eto'o who was deployed in a similar role to Ronaldo. Messi and Ronaldo were deployed in different roles, and each contributed to the game restricted by the limitations of their supporting colleagues. The goal came from Ronaldo's attacking play, and he created other good chances for Park, Nani and Tevez with his supporting attacking play. What did Messi actually produce......other than one shot on goal easily saved by VDS.

15 against 1.
need i say any more. well i will
i find it funny how biased a fan can be. did you watch the same match. You point out that messi didnt track back. Im pretty sure he done more tracking back and winning the ball back then ronaldo did. Who was moaning like a girl!. Ronaldo is a great player, but when he has bad games you can keep defending him. Your picking out all of messi's bad points and talking about all of ronaldo's good points. very balanced and non biased opinion

Yes Jac I'm in the minority and yes Jac we are talking about opinion.......and no matter which team you support it is very difficult to remain completely objective and unbiased as far as your own team is concerned. I'm sure that you are no different with your views on Newcastle.

What I have attempted to do is to offer a point of view in support of Ronaldo because everyone else has opted to support Messi, and yet......no-one has actually convinced me that he did anything effective to alter the result of the game. Come on...give me the stats....convince me Messi was better than Ronaldo.

Every time he had the ball he did something, fair enough they didnt have many chances but if Eto'o was playing well and the United defence wasnt as solid then there would have been plenty of chances. When he got the ball, he constantly beat players and played some great balls into the box, the problem was that it was always a United player that got there first.

Ronaldo on the other hand, against very average defenders, didnt do anything productive and despite not getting much of the ball he still just stood about instead of helping the team. You can argue that he didnt have to track back but if hes non-existent going forward then surely he should have at least helped the team out instead of standing around moaning all the time.

He was much better attitude wise in the second game but still overall theres no contest between who had a better game. And anyway, as the Foo said, Rio & Tevez were better than both and Id add Brown and Scholes to that as well

fair enough on your point of defending him but just because he is your player doesnt mean you should defend him all the time. When a Newcastle player has a bad run of games, i will not defend him just because he is a Newcastle player (im not sayin ronaldo has had a bad run of games).
Part of me knows what your talking about. When i hear people on here saying stuff about michael owen, i do feel like defending him. However, no one can call ronaldo a bad player, which is what people say about owen.
The score shows that messi didnt do anything that effective, but that doesnt mean he wasnt more effective then ronaldo.

Does anyone know a site you can get stats from, or do they know what the stats were??

http://telegraph.jumpmediagroup.com/PlayerStat.aspx?p1id=5127&p2id=3789

thanks. you cant argue with that....

Oh yes I can. The stats for the Man Utd v barcelona game show that Messi had more of the play than Ronaldo, yet Ronaldo created more chances and more clearances from defence, and was responsible for creating the goal. That makes him more effective than Messi in my opinion.

As a United fan I can admit Messi was the better individual. However he wasn't the best player on the pitch and was on the losing team.

What he created wasn't that dangerous and with the amount of possesion he had, he should have come up with more end product. His best chance was 'one for the cameras' from VDS and the only other one I can think of was an awful slice wide from a few yards out. Nearly every cross of Messi's was low into the box and cleared by the 1st or 2nd defender. However he was a hassle and opened us up at times.

I think United got it tactically right not to involve Ronaldo as much as they usually do. Barca must have put so much effort into planning on how to deal with Ronaldo, which in the end wasn't required. Still, he was a threat at times and had a good game. A more professional performance than we are used to - less tricks, more passes.

show me the video of the goal in which ronaldo passed it to scholes. are you sure you watched the same match?. The stats show that messi made more passes, had more shots, had more shots on target, more tackles, less fouls against. and others which i cant remember. plus messi played for 30mins less then ronaldo in the first game, yet he stil has better stats. Messi had more of the play which shows that he didnt go hiding, everything went through him, because he was the main player. How is this a negative?
You said show me the facts, and now you have seen them you are still defending him. There is no chance i can change your mind. This is pointless!

How do you get to player stats for the game?

you see the dropdown boxes at the top. you change the team, the competition to CL and select the player then the match.

Theres a menu at the top, you have to wait for it to load every time you change something..

It's not pointless. The point is we are having a debate about the topic. That's the whole purpose of this forum, to bring out different opinions and points of view. I am not so blinded that I can not see your reasoned arguments and accept that you might be right and I could be wrong. Messi is a a genius of a player and he looked the business over the course of the two games, in contrast, Ronaldo was NOT is usual devastating individual self, but he contributed more to team play whilst being played out of position. My point is that Messi, in spite of his skillful play, produced nothing as an end result, in contrast Ronaldo kept 2 and 3 defenders occupied, he took the pass from Ferdinand and ran at the Barca defence, he lost the ball to Zambrotta, who was forced into an error because he was surrounded by 3 red shirts.