There is a strange symmetry to July 10. On that date in 2016, Cristiano Ronaldo won his first major trophy for Portugal. On that same date in 2021, five years later, Lionel Messi won his first senior trophy for Argentina. Two of the greatest players in history, two men who had won almost everything in club football, and both had spent years answering the same accusation: yes, but what have you done for your country?
For both, the wait had been its own long story of finals lost. Ronaldo had cried as a young man after Portugal lost the Euro 2004 final at home, and had gathered semifinal and quarterfinal heartbreaks in the years since. Messi’s was crueler still: a World Cup final, two Copa America finals, defeats that piled up until, after one more penalty miss, he announced the national team was over for him. Then, of course, he came back. The almost-man label followed them both, precisely because they were too great for any single loss to be forgiven.
Ronaldo’s release, when it came, was not the one anyone had scripted. Eight minutes into the Euro 2016 final against France, a collision wrecked his knee. He tried to continue, could not, and left on a stretcher in tears in the twenty-fifth minute. So the night that was meant to crown him became a night he had to watch, pacing the touchline like a second coach, as Eder struck a low shot from distance in extra time to win it. Portugal became European champions for him, around him, and without him on the pitch. It was, perhaps, more powerful because of that. The team had learned how to suffer.
Messi’s release came at the Maracanã, of all places, against Brazil, at home. In the twenty-second minute Angel Di Maria took a long pass and lifted it delicately over the goalkeeper, and Argentina held that single goal through a tense, nervous final. When the whistle went, Messi dropped to the grass, and his teammates ran to him, not just to celebrate with him but to celebrate him. It was Argentina’s first major senior title in twenty-eight years, and his first, and it came against their oldest rivals in their own cathedral.
Neither day was really an ending. Ronaldo added a Nations League and stretched his career past forty. Messi went further, turning 2021 into a springboard for the Finalissima, and then the 2022 World Cup, the missing piece that became the defining one. The rivalry that had been argued in goals and Ballons d’Or for a decade took a different shape after these two July 10s. It did not settle who was greater; fans will argue that until the sun burns out. But it removed the laziest objection from both careers at once.
What lingers is the symmetry itself. Ronaldo crying on the grass in Saint-Denis, then lifting a trophy he could barely help win. Messi dropping to the grass at the Maracanã, then buried under teammates. Two men told for years that their countries were the missing line, both finding the answer on the very same date, five years apart.
🎙️ THE PODCAST GOES DEEPER. The full episode has both paths to the trophy, the finals in more detail, and the 37 times Messi and Ronaldo actually faced each other. That’s the 10-minute version.
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Yesterday: 9 July 2006, Italy win, Zidane walks.
Tomorrow: 11 July 2010, Spain beat the Netherlands to win their first World Cup.