Messi or Ronaldo? Pep Guardiola has settled the GOAT debate without hesitation

Pep Guardiola is undoubtedly one of the greatest football managers ever and has provided a definitive answer over who is better out of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Guardiola, who has achieved immense success with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, has managed throughout the Messi-Ronaldo era.

And, of course, the Spaniard coached Messi at Barcelona between 2008 and 2012, giving him a unique insight into what makes him tick.

Messi scored a ridiculous 221 goals in 219 games under Guardiola’s tutelage, transforming his game when he moved into a false nine role and becoming the best player in the world.

It was during this period that Messi and Ronaldo went head-to-head, with both players scoring a ridiculous amount of goals and winning trophies with indecent haste.

Many of football’s most authoritative voices, including Sir Alex Ferguson and Zinedine Zidane, have anointed Ronaldo as the greatest footballer ever.

But for Guardiola, the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner Messi has always been the greatest ahead of all the competition – including Ronaldo.

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“Everyone has an opinion but nobody can doubt that he [Lionel Messi] is there, with the greatest of all time,” Guardiola said in a press conference after Messi became a world champion.

“For me, I said many times, he is the best.

“It would be difficult to understand that a player can compete with what he has done in the last 50 to 70 years.

“With the people who saw Pele or [Alfredo] Di Stefano or [Diego] Maradona, their opinions are often sentimental.

“If he [Messi] had not won the World Cup, my opinion about what he has done for world football, it wouldn’t have changed absolutely anything. Of course, for him it’s the final achievement of an incredible career.”

The 37-year-old was close to linking up with Guardiola again at Manchester City in 2020.

But the move didn’t materialise and he ended up staying with Barca for another season, before signing for PSG on a free transfer.

Still, Guardiola holds Messi in the highest regard. When asked if goal machine Erling Haaland is ‘the most complete forward’, he told beIN Sports: “The most incredible forward that has ever seen is Messi. I never saw something like that.”