Germany stun Portugal in Euros quarterfinal
This is another match where all the football fans around the world got to see what it means to play on the biggest of big stages and exactly what I mean when I say that Ronaldo is a Champions League player, Cristiano Ronaldo is not.
Nuno Gomes finished from close range to give Portugal hope but they failed to defend another Schweinsteiger free-kick and Michael Ballack headed their third.Portugal substitute Helder Postiga pulled one back in the dying stages but there was to be no grandstand finish.
“We changed the system a bit with five in midfield and one striker less, we were very compact.”
“Especially in the first half I thought we played fantastically against a very strong
Coming back to my point, after Germans got the two goal cushion, everybody was counting on C.Ronaldo to produce something special when it mattered most but again he disappointed as did he when he played the Champions League Semi Final and Final.
I think it should now be clear to all C.Ronaldo fans that, the fact is, that he cannot perform on big stages. There are two reasons for it. One, he plays for fame not for the team or country, because of this mentality, he always wants to do everything by himself (of which he is not capable of) so that people notice him and he can be the golden boy of football.
Second, although most pundits say that his technique is quite good, I do not agree with them because when you look at C.Ronaldo, you can clearly see, a guy who has learned everything he does on the field, I mean like cramming, he has just learnt that if he performs this move then this will happen and when things don’t go the way he has learnt then his performance level falls.
I believe, C.Ronaldo is the one of the luckiest players of all time (behind Inzaghi) to get this amount of goals in a season, all his goals were made because of team effort apart from his free kicks, from which he scored at a 1 to 10 conversion rate.
Now, because C.Ronaldo’s game is so heavily dependant on speed rather than skill, if affects him a lot then the other good players when there is pressure on the field and very little room to work with, this is where I think Messi and Robinho are way better than him.
I admit, Messi and Robinho do not spank teams like Levante, Everton, West ham like Cristiano does, although they do, do it , but they don’t do it quite as often as Cristiano does. In big matches like against
Now, a lot of Cristiano fans, say that “no he is a good player, the thing is that he is marked heavily in big games”, I tell them, that if he cant even handle that, then why and I ask why the hell do you consider him to be the best in the business and compare him with the likes of Figo, Best and Ronaldo.
Ronaldo and Figo are players who owned Champions League, they all got marked heavily but they had the skill, the brains, the vision, the respect that they were able to perform under extreme pressure situations. Now I ask all of Cristiano’s fans, what did Ronaldo, Zidane and Figo had what Cristiano does not has right now, yeah you guessed it, it’s touch, it’s natural vision of the game.
Look at how Messi commanded the games he played in the Champions League Semi Final against Manchester United, he is just 20, 3 years younger than Cristiano and yet Messi plays like a 27 year old. All the players of the world , praise Cristiano so much because of his popularity and because they want to be at peace with the media, if a player such as Van Nistelrooy comes out and states the obvious truth about Cristiano then it would damage his reputation instead of Cristiano’s.
I, on the other hand, do not have that problem so I am free to say whatever I see, and what I see is that Cristiano is not the best player in the world. Lionel Messi, Gerrard, Lampard deserve way more than this showboat boy. I know Real Madrid wants to sign him but as now we can all see, it all for marketing purposes nothing more.
In tough games like the one last night, Germany against Portugal, look at what Ballack did, he raised his game to conquer a game of such intensity, that’s what all good, no not good, best players do. Ballack took the game by the scruff of its neck and made the midfield his by getting involved in every move that
Whereas, Cristiano just got lost and could not cope with the marking off Mertesacker and company, Cristiano’s only significant contribution of the game came when he was slipped with a perfect through pass , which he setup nicely but then disappointed with his finish only for Nuno Gomez to strike the ball into the Germany goal.
If Cristiano gets the FIFA World Player Of The Year Award (which most likely he will, I hope he doesn’t) then that would be a disgrace to the level at which is football is currently played throughout the world as FIFA World Player Of The Year, represents the best football player on the planet and really the player who gets it, becomes the ambassador of the game and this would be unfair as Messi, kaka, Gerrard are better player’s than Cristiano.
I think, now it is clear that C.Ronaldo is not a big game player, he is more of a, big name player more than anything else. The Champions League Final, Champions League Semi Final and
One more thing I forgot to mention was , the reason Messi always shines in games such as these( Critiano was by far not the best player for Portugal last night on the pitch). You see, although Messi has dazzling feet and pace just like Cristiano or even better, he does not rely just on that, he relies on his vision, his first touch, his angles at which he stops and runs, stops and runs, his little one two’s that he does all the time in tight matches and that he knows his game.
He picks his battles wisely rather than just picking up the ball and trying to entertain the crowd with his trickery. Instead of humiliating the opposition, he goes about his business in a very professional way, yes, he dives a lot, but now days, players like Lionel Messi do not have any other choice, if they do not take a dive, the opponents would rip them apart.
Messi beats players, C.Ronaldo just tries to humiliate them and tries to show that he is a smart guy rather than doing his job effectively, he does it inefficiently but attractively, if you know what I mean.
I would love to hear your comments about Cristiano’s performances in big matches and whether he is the best player in the world or not?
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