From the google.com, myth is a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
It goes further to describe it as a widely held but false
belief or idea!
Wikipedia.com put it as any traditional story consisting of
events that are ostensibly historical, explaining the origins of a cultural
practice or natural phenomenon.
The word “myth” is derived from the Greek word ‘MYTHOS’ and
it simply means “story”. Myth can be deine as ‘sacred story’, or ‘tale of the
gods’. It is sacred narrative because it holds religious or spiritual
significance for those who tell it.
Professor A.A. Anderson, contrasts the two words, “mythos”
and “logos” with ergon, a Greek term for action, deed and work.
My own perspective put as the stories that concerned “gods”
and “heroes” that only resulting in questioning rather than providing answers!
By these assertions comes MYSTERY! Mystery is something that
is difficult to explain, clarifies, and definitely out of the normal human
understanding.
Shattered records, creating another one immediately, another
comes in torn the record to shreds and recreated another one! The situation
involves can only be compared to video games soccer; a situation whereby you
are in ecstasy by scoring so many amazing goals in time that is surreal! No
matter how, you will be awe-inspired to try and recreate that in real life but
it is impossible!
Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi popped in to do the unimaginable;
they break barriers that seem unbreakable! There have been many goal-scorers
that graced the football fields like Alfredo Di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas,
Romario, Ronaldo Da Lima, and many more!
According to Peter Staunton of Goal.com, “The laws of the
game cannot be altered simply because one player or another is simply too good
for the rest. There is no way to handicap the best because the rest aren’t of
their standard.
It means that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the only
two Tigers in town playing against prey. They have between them been so good
for so long that it is almost impossible to keep the achievements of those who
have gone before them or come along during their respective careers in
perspective.
Ronaldo and Messi have made us reassess the definition of
what a great player is and what a great player does.
There is a natural tendency on the part of listeners to rank
the music of their youth as the best. The same happens with footballers. A few
years ago, if you’d asked anyone who was a teenager in the 60s who the best
footballer was the answer would have been George Best or Pele. A child of the
70s would have offered Johan Cruyff. Those who grew up in the 80s might have
said Michel Platini. A 90s child was spoilt for choice with Ronaldo and
Zinedine Zidane chief among the best of that age. A few years later and it was
Ronaldinho running the show.
Then something seriously disorientating happened. Cristiano
Ronaldo and Lionel Messi came of age. They were objectively better than any
player who’d gone before.
They have over the course of a decade rendered redundant all
prior individual footballing achievement. It is as if the records set by
players like Alfredo Di Stefano, Paulino Alcantara, Gerd Muller and everybody
else were set solely to be destroyed by Ronaldo and Messi.
The rate of improvement that both have given to the art of
goalscoring should have taken decades or centuries. Donald Lippincott, an
American, ran the first IAAF 100 metre world sprint record in 1912. He did it
in a time of 10.6 seconds. The current record was set by Usain Bolt in 9.58.
That’s an improvement of around 11 per cent in 97 years.
Raul was Real Madrid’s record goalscorer before Ronaldo came
along. He scored 323 goals in 741 games. By all accounts that is astonishing.
The consistency, the stamina required to play 741 games for Real Madrid is
tough enough but to add a goal roughly once every two games is something else
altogether.
Ronaldo knocked off 324 goals in 310 games. That is an improvement
of more than 100 per cent – not across centuries or decades – but just a few
short seasons after Raul set the record.
Messi shattered Alcantara’s Barcelona goalscoring record in
2014 which had stood for 87 years.
It is pointless to try to list the other records they hold
between them. Suffice to say, it’s everything. For club, country, in
continental competition, in domestic competition, and whatever. The names on
the top of every goal scoring list once read like a cornucopia of all-time
greats. Now it’s just Ronaldos and Messis everywhere.
Between them they have won the last nine Ballons D’Or –
Messi has five and Ronaldo four. They have been runner-up nine times between
them too. Once upon a time players dreamed of winning it once – like
Ronaldinho, Best or Zidane - or maybe twice like Ronaldo, Di Stefano or Franz
Beckenbauer.
The truly great might have got their hands on three like Platini, Cruyff or Marco Van Basten.
But four? Five? Impossible
Consistency is the wrong word for Ronaldo and Messi. Consistency
puts into the mind an idea of a player who can be merely relied upon to perform
for a long time. A diesel wagon. There isn’t a word big enough to describe the
extra-terrestrial efforts they have put in over the past decade or so.
What they are doing cannot be seen as the new standard.
There is not a man alive who can touch either of them. When all is said and
done and Ronaldo’s back in Portugal and Messi in Argentina, we will have to
readjust our expectations of what it means to be a great player.
No one will ever thrill us like they can. We will be
cheering for players we know are not good enough to lace their boots. That is
the saddest thing. One day we’ll wake up and this dream will be over. The
records will be forever untouched and so too will our sense of wonder.
It isn’t enough to say Ronaldo
and Messi have improved football.
They have changed it. This isn’t like Arsene
Wenger teaching English players to eat properly and look after themselves.
Eventually, everyone can do that and catch up. It’s not like Pep Guardiola and
his sweeping tactical changes.
Eventually, too, ideas become redundant and things change. Messi and Ronaldo – they’re so far ahead of anything that’s gone before and
impossible to match for anyone coming after.
Xavi Hernandez, fomer team-mate of Leonel Messi and one of
the finest midfielder of his era has this to say: “
In the future, everything will be more equal amongst the best players.
Though now they try to sell the story of the battle between Messi and Cristiano
Ronaldo, those of us who know football, know there is no comparison."
"When Messi ends his career, there will be Neymar, Eden Hazard and
five or 10 players at a similar level, but none with the unquestionable
superiority of Messi."
How
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi rewrote the rulebook
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