Creator Messi has edge over finisher Ronaldo

The Portuguese ace has all the attributes of an ideal player, but Barcelonas Argentine forward towers above him in a crucial area

He has the film-star looks. He is tall – 1.86 meters, or about 6-foot-1 – strong in the upper body, slender and swift below the waist.

He has skill to burn and the desire of a peacock to display it bravely, often under aggressive attempts to kick him off his game.

The fact that Ronaldo might not be the best soccer player on earth – and that a comparative lightweight, Leo Messi, consistently beats him to the world player awards – spurs the Portuguese to seek self-improvement.

But what is inside the superstar? What would you find if you could break down the components and analyse them under laboratory conditions? In Ronaldo’s case, there is now a documentary trying to do exactly that.

“Castrol Edge Presents Ronaldo Tested to the Limit” is a commercial film. Nobody would get access to conduct such experiments on a player of his stature without the commercial imperative.

Even so, the made-for-television documentary has some compelling insights. Ronaldo breaking glass panels by kicking a ball at 130 kilometers, or 80 miles, per hour; Ronaldo shooting literally in the dark; Ronaldo with electrodes attached to all parts of his body and Ronaldo wearing an eye contraption said to measure the speed at which his brain reacts to movement, are all fascinating setups.

The British university researchers and sports biomechanics analysts who spent weeks devising tests for the documentary had one full day with the star in Madrid. They worked him more than his coach, Jose Mourinho, might.

Stripped down, it was easy to show that he has the long legs of a sprinter, the leanness of a distance runner, yet the enhanced upper torso of a light-heavyweight boxer. High-speed cameras confirm what we see of him in performance when his feet move at speeds that even the most practiced of defenders find bewildering. In one eight-second burst, he is filmed performing 13 moves, step-overs and spins.

He wears an eye-tracking device that uses infrared technology to detect what he is actually looking at during this test. “He did not look at the ball,” said sports researcher Zoe Wimshurst, now of the University of Chichester in England and herself a junior international player in field hockey.

“He was looking at the feet of the opponents and subconsciously assessing opportunities and moves.” The tools available to the scientists can measure human reaction time down to 200 milliseconds. So when a proficient amateur player is asked to volley or head a ball driven toward him – with the light switched off at the instant the player providing the cross strikes the ball – he misses it by a good yard.

Ronaldo makes contact and scores a goal with each of three attempts at the same experiment. “It’s almost as if he is doing the maths in his head,” Wimshurst explained. “Although he probably couldn’t describe it.” This much, Ronaldo agrees. He knows that his reaction time is part gift, and part the result of countless times practicing, practicing, practicing.

His anatomy and his mind-set are gifts from his parents, though neither of them was an athlete. His love of the ball, and pronounced love of what he can do with it, are products of a childhood obsession that appears to have been self-generated even before Sporting Lisbon scouted him and took him from his Madeira Island home when he was 12.

Already obviously gifted, already willing to accept expert instruction, and crucially left alone to develop his individuality, the boy had entered the university of pro soccer.  The scientists, and the rest of us, are trying to play catch-up.

We are amazed, but not surprised, that he can strike a still ball at 20 metres with a force that shatters glass plates and with a speed measured at 130 kilometers per hour. The so-called Ronaldo knuckleball, where he hits a free kick with the flat of his foot rather than caressing it with his instep, still confounds even the researchers because he manages to impart swerve and spin, laterally as well as vertically, on the ball, as it deceives goalkeepers through the air.

And at that point in the fascinating hourlong documentary, a viewer might think: Thank God for the mystery. Thank goodness this is still a sport and not a science. Thankfully, indeed, it is also a team sport in which players’ performances are subjective. Ronaldo is mighty close to a record of scoring a goal for every one of the 93 games he has played for his latest club, Real Madrid.

However, he is not, as Castrol’s commentary would have us believe, the ultimate player. Messi exceeds him because Messi creates as many goals for others as he scores for himself.

How do we know this? Castrol employs the statisticians who compile world rankings for FIFA. According to the September rankings, Messi is on top on account of the 66 goals he has scored or assisted in 46 appearances over the past 12 months for Barcelona.

Mario Gomez, of Bayern Munich, edged Ronaldo out of second place because, while each scored seven hat-tricks over the year, Gomez had a significantly higher ratio of goals per attempts.

Flaw in the ratings
And there is a flaw in the Castrol ratings, just as there will always be flaws in applying science too intrusively to art. The rankings proudly proclaim to assess the best players in the game – but data is compiled only from the top five European leagues.

That means Neymar, the young Brazilian, is not included. It means his compatriot Leandro Damiao, who has scored 39 goals over the past 12 months for Internacional in Brazil, and who is hot at the moment with 14 goals in 13 games, is anonymous, according to the ranking.

As to crafting, or even cloning, a perfect player. Castrol cannot do that, but Ronaldo has given it his best attempt. He has a son, Cristiano Jr, born just over a year ago to a surrogate mother, and now being raised by Ronaldo’s mother and sisters in Portugal.