A wide winger was never built to be football's top scorer ever. A wide winger was never built to be football's top assister. That is the job of strikers. In his first 200 games, Ronaldo only scored 89 goals. He was not a striker. He was a trickster. A kid doing stepovers on the wing while the striker waited in the box. That is why the goals per game ratio argument is a lie. Messi has been a striker, a false 9, the main man since he was 13 at La Masia. He was born in front of goal. Ronaldo spent his first 5 years as a wide winger. Built to cross, track back, defend. Scoring 0.45 goals per game while Messi was scoring 0.79 from day one. Today Ronaldo sits on 981 career goals, Messi on 934. So take away Ronaldo's entire childhood as a winger. Take away 200 games of his life where he wasn't even trying to be a goalscorer. And his second career, the one that started at 27 as a pure monster, STILL has more goals than most strikers will ever dream of. He saw Messi win an award for scoring the most goals in a calendar year, then he took it personal. He outscored him for 4 consecutive seasons. And that's when people started saying football isn't about goals. Because when Ronaldo was finally ready, when he was finally ready to compete with Messi in his own craft, he beat him to it.