The two world soccer stars met this Thursday in a friendly match in Riyadh, won 5-4 by Paris Saint Germain.
Who knows if it will be the last confrontation of two legends who have marked more than a decade of world football, but the ‘last dance’ between Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo bathed in millions in Riyadh, revived in its 37th installment an eternal duel of two of the best players in history, who have exalted each other and who extended their goalscoring pique until the last second of a game that PSG won (5-4).
They have won 75 titles, they have distributed twelve Ballon d’Ors. Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo won everything at the club level and what is shaping up to be their last confrontation lived up to the spectacle of other great fights. The result was the least of it in a packed King Fahd Stadium. The duel between two born winners dazzled during the hour they were on the pitch.
Messi wanted to show from the beginning who is the current king. After achieving the dream of his career with the conquest of the World Cup in Qatar. The dream brooch After three minutes, in an action from PSG’s fearsome trident, Mbappé found Neymar and the bounced pass to uncheck Leo, who overcame the goalkeeper’s exit with a touch of quality.
There was no better incentive for Cristiano Ronaldo to return to a level that he had not exhibited for a long time. He responded immediately with a shot from Keylor Navas. In that reunion he was full of affection with former teammates like Sergio Ramos, whom he measured in every action.
The fans went crazy with a pipe from Cristiano to the rival after a heel dribble. PSG came out with an eleven with which they could perfectly play a big game, except in goal, where Donnarumma rested. Without the competitive tension it was the perfect setting to shine. And Cristiano, in his debut in Saudi Arabia, with the captain’s armband of a team that mixed players from his club, Al-Nassr, with those from Al-Hilal, did not stop trying until he left his mark.
While a growth in the competitiveness of football was reflected in which Cristiano lands as a new impulse, after a goal disallowed by Mbappé after a dribble stopping Messi’s time, Cristiano left one of those prodigious jumps in the search for the shot from a lateral free kick and Keylor measured wrong. With his elbow he hit the left cheekbone of the Portuguese star. Clear penalty.
With a swollen face and pain, Cristiano shot. Infallible to the network. They were moments in which the PSG found the doubt after an expulsion by direct red of the Spanish Juan Bernat. Clara, cutting off a counterattack, ignoring the ball and being the last defender of her team. However, in inferiority the quality of Fabián Ruiz appeared to invent the second, putting Marquinhos on a tray.
Nothing would make the team led by Marcelo Gallardo give up, who left an emotional hug and a few words of admiration for Messi when he was substituted. Before the break, in added time, without wanting the pulse to end, Cristiano responded again. Neymar had missed a penalty, caused by himself and with Leo’s gesture of letting him shoot, when Ronaldo put the equalizer back. Hungry in the header that he repelled the post and to go to the rebound to send the ball into the net.
In numerical inferiority, PSG took the game. It was the least. Sergio Ramos scored at will after an action by the player who wants to take over from Messi and Cristiano. When Mbappé accelerates nobody can follow him. He starts, leaves the defender behind, brakes and starts again to give the goal to Sergio Ramos.
The exchange of goals continued thanks to a header after a corner at the near post by Jang, which tied the tie at three. The equality lasted only four minutes. A handball inside the area became the penalty with which Mbappé joined the scoring festival before leaving the field with his idol Cristiano, with whom he left images of complicity, Messi and Neymar. They had been 61 minutes of enjoyment.
The end of the match left the fifth goal for PSG, scored by Ekitike, and the fourth for Talisca’s Saudi Arabia team for the final 5-4. The indelible image was left by Messi and Cristiano, in a gesture of affection and respect for the memory, of a legendary duel that will be eternal.
EFE