Cristiano Ronaldo flatly refused to answer a question about Lionel Messi after Portugal’s victory over Uzbekistan on Tuesday, cutting off the reporter with a shout of “vale”—go on—as soon as the Argentine’s name was uttered to request a new line of inquiry from a different journalist.
Shortly following the final whistle of Portugal’s World Cup opener against DR Congo, a frustrating 1–1 draw which saw Ronaldo toil away without success for 90 minutes, the scoreless skipper stormed straight down the tunnel. He would later reemerge for some curt media duties.
Ronaldo was unsurprisingly more willing to talk on Tuesday, buoyed by a record-breaking two-goal display in a 5–0 thumping, but he would not be drawn into any sort of comparison with his greatest rival.
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“Yesterday,” one reporter began in the postgame mixed zone, “Lionel Messi scored two goals, [Kylian] Mbappé...” at that point, Ronaldo span his head to the other opposite side of the scrum of media and repeated: “Vale”—“Go on”—to get another question quickly asked.
Messi, as the journalist was reminding Ronaldo, has enjoyed a stunning start to the defense of Argentina’s World Cup title, following up an opening-game hat-trick with a brace against Austria to become the competition’s all-time record goalscorer. While Ronaldo can lay claim to a goal in six different World Cups (Messi failed to find the net in 2010) his haul of 10 tournament strikes pales in comparison to his rival’s high watermark of 18.
It has been a question of Messi vs. Ronaldo for the past two decades. The two greatest talents of their generation rose to prominence just as the social media age began, with both factors ultimately turning the team sport into a battle of individuals. Each player has admitted that competing directly against the other pushed them to new heights, but Ronaldo was in no mood to make the same observation on this occasion.
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