Lionel Messi has been adjudged as the better player than Cristiano Ronaldo as per supercomputer.
Picking out one between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo is a headache for a neutral because of stellar performances over the last decade. In that duo, one is currently representing Barcelona, while the other was plying his trade to Real Madrid for nine years before sealing a move to Juventus last summer.
The Argentine and Portuguese share five Ballon d’Or’s, which is a metric to judge the world’s best player. Owing to the tie on that accolade, professors at KU Leuven University and Date Experts at SciSports have come up with a formula to decide the better player between these two.
Professor Jesse Davis explained how their system works, saying, “The value of a soccer player is often determined by goals and assists. A goal is a rare event, however, because an average of 1,600 actions are estimated to occur in a match.
“Our model looks at each action – shots, passes, dribbles, tackles – and calculates its value.“
Using data of the two players from the beginning of the 2013/14 season to the culmination of the 2017/18 season, when Cristiano Ronaldo swapped Juventus for Real Madrid.
Messi ended with Valuing Actions by Estimating Probabilities, or VAEP, score of 1.21 per game with Ronaldo scoring just 0.61 per game.
Tom Decroos, a PhD student who was involved in the research, explained, “In the first seasons, Messi and Ronaldo’s scores are very close to each other.
“From the 2015/16 season, Messi has stepped away from his eternal rival.
“We see a trade-off with most football players: either they make a lot of actions with a less high value – that’s the case with Paul Pogba, for example.
“Or you have players who are less likely to hit the ball, but who have a big impact. That is typical of strikers like Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah and Ronaldo.
“Messi is exceptional in this area: the Argentinian has a very high number of actions and they also have a high value.“
Interestingly, Real Madrid’s new signing Eden Hazard had a score of 0.64 – bettering former Real Madrid’s number 7 Cristiano Ronaldo. Since the dribbles and other metrics are brought into consideration, the Belgian is the better of the two, as per the report.
“Ronaldo is a classic scorer. His value is mainly determined by his good shots. Hazard is more involved in the game. His value is more spread over passes, dribbles and shots.” Lotte Bransen of SciSports explained.
The Supercomputer telltales at Lionel Messi as the best player. He has bettered his fierce rival Cristiano Ronaldo, who is third in the list.
