Cristiano Ronaldo vs Lionel Messi: Career stats comparison at age 38

The Argentine superstar recently turned 38.

The topic of how the two compare at the same age has been raised. Lionel Messi is unlikely to ever overtake Cristiano Ronaldo in the all-time goalscoring rankings, but his perennial adversary has a slight advantage because he is more than two years younger.

We’ve made the decision to conduct some math and compare Messi’s entire career statistics to Ronaldo’s at the exact same age as Messi’s 38th birthday.

It seems Messi has scored fewer penalties than Ronaldo, but has recorded additional goals and significantly more assists. Since Ronaldo’s 38th birthday, the World Cup winner has amassed 150 more assists and 46 more goals.

But it’s important to keep in mind that Ronaldo played at the highest level in Europe until he was 38 years old.

Only a few weeks after his second stint at Manchester United, the 40-year-old Portugal international had left Europe to sign with Al Nassr, a Saudi Pro League team.

By 38, Ronaldo had only made three appearances for Al Nassr and had only scored one goal, while Messi, on the other hand, had played for Inter Miami in the United States for the past two years.

Messi would still rank favorably at this age, only three goals behind Ronaldo if we exclude goals made outside of Europe, and more than a hundred assists ahead, even if you subtract all of his goal efforts for the MLS team (50 goals, 24 assists).

Lionel Messi at age 38

Games: 1108

Minutes played: 90,872

Goals: 866 

Assists: 384 

Penalties scored: 110

Hat-tricks: 59

Free-kicks scored: 68 

Minutes per goal: 104 

Minutes per non-penalty goal: 120 

Minutes per goal or assist: 72 

Cristiano Ronaldo at age 38

Games: 1148 

Minutes played: 93,106 

Goals: 820

Assists:  234

Penalties scored: 147 

Hat-tricks: 60 

Free-kicks scored: 58

Minutes per goal: 113

Minutes per non-penalty goal: 138

Minutes per goal or assist: 88

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