Paul Scholes gives his verdict on Cristiano Ronaldo vs Lionel Messi debate

Scholes played with Ronaldo and won plenty of trophies at Man United

When Paul Scholes was asked to pick between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in the long-standing GOAT debate, he didn’t hesitate. Before Ronaldo’s £80 million departure to Real Madrid, Scholes spent six years playing with him at Manchester United from 2003 to 2009.

Between 2006 and 2009, the two won three consecutive Premier League titles. During Scholes’ first stint, Ronaldo scored 118 goals in 292 games.

On the heels of the victory and incredible season, Ronaldo earned the first of his five Ballon d’Ors, and they also won the Champions League in 2008.

Scholes, meanwhile, believes that Ronaldo is still beneath his longtime adversary Messi. Scholes lost two finals to Messi in Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, but the United icon didn’t realize the Argentine star was an all-around football player until years later when he thrashed Spurs at Wembley in the Champions League.

“Watching Messi against Tottenham at Wembley made me think about the Messi and [Cristiano] Ronaldo debate again,” Scholes said, speaking on ESPN.

“Messi, but Ronaldo is brilliant. Ronaldo is sensational at what he does, with pace and power. He scores, he takes free-kicks. But as an all-round footballer, Messi – wow, his passing – has absolutely everything.”

In 2008, Scholes defeated a youthful Messi in a Champions League semifinal matchup with Barcelona, netting the game-winning goal for Manchester United to advance to the final against Chelsea.

He has acknowledged publicly, however, that he did his best to avoid the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner in order to prevent embarrassment. Scholes described how difficult it is to play against Messi in a 2015 column for the Standard.

“I am not ashamed to admit that in the games against Barcelona I spent a lot of the time just hoping he would take up positions as far away from me as possible,” Scholes wrote. Elusive is the word that immediately springs to mind when I think about Messi’s style of play.

“You think you have an eye on him and then – blink – he has gone, only to reappear somewhere else in space, with the ball. When you try to face up to him and make a tackle you know what it is he is going to do with the ball. The problem is staying with him.”

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