The story of the greatest rivalry in football history began with an awkward moment at a Zurich ceremony in 2007, when Pele mistakenly handed Cristiano Ronaldo the wrong trophy.
Kaka had just won the Fifa Player of the Year award, but it was Lionel Messi and Ronaldo flanking him on stage that would prove most significant for the decades ahead.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter had to intervene and ask the pair to swap trophies, with both players visibly unimpressed by the confusion on stage.
For the following ten years, Messi or Ronaldo won every Ballon d’Or and Fifa award going, with 20 of the 29 European player of the year awards since 2007 going to one of them.
With approaching 2,000 career goals between them and 85 trophies for club and country, the pair will forever stand among the most decorated players in the history of the game.
Angel di Maria, an Argentina World Cup winner who played alongside both men, captured it simply in BBC Sport’s documentary Rivals: Messi v Ronaldo.
“Two players like them, competing at that level for so many years, fighting over the Ballon d’Or and scoring that many goals… I don’t think we’ll see it again,” Di Maria said.
The rivalry deepened considerably when Ronaldo’s world record £80m move to Real Madrid in 2009 placed him directly opposite Messi in the most intense club rivalry in world football.
In the nine seasons the pair competed together in Spain, Ronaldo scored 450 goals in 438 games for Real Madrid, while Messi contributed 471 goals in 476 games for Barcelona.
“For Cristiano it was Lionel Messi and for Lionel Messi it was Cristiano. ‘I need to beat this guy’,” said Txiki Begiristain, director of football at Barcelona between 2003 and 2010.
Journalist Sid Lowe captured the intensity of those years, noting that “game-winning goals were their route to one-upmanship” and that “everything they did was must-see.”
Their personal battle was symbolised memorably in 2017, when Messi scored a 92nd-minute winner at Real Madrid and famously removed his shirt and held it up to the crowd.
Just months later, Ronaldo mimicked the exact same celebration when he scored in the Spanish Super Cup at Barcelona, with Guillem Balague stating: “If you needed proof of how much it meant to beat each other, those are the pictures.”
The debate over who is the greatest has never been settled, and those closest to both men remain firmly divided on the question even now.
“It has to be Ronaldo,” said former Manchester United team-mate Rio Ferdinand, while ex-Barcelona player and manager Xavi insisted: “Messi is the best there has ever been.”
Deco, who uniquely played with Ronaldo for Portugal and Messi for Barcelona, offered perhaps the most considered view of what made both men so extraordinary.
“They are special. They are totally different from the rest. It’s not normal to be on this level all these years,” Deco said.
Spanish football expert Guillem Balague offered a neat distinction, saying: “For me, Messi is the best player in history and Cristiano is the greatest goalscorer in history.”
Off the pitch, both men transformed into global commercial empires, with Ronaldo topping the Forbes Money List as the world’s highest paid athlete for a fourth consecutive time, earning $300m, while Messi is third with $140m.
With Argentina and Portugal potentially meeting in the latter stages of this summer’s World Cup, football’s greatest rivalry may yet have one final chapter left to write.
