UNLESS you think that there is an absolute and flawless measure for good, better and best between footballers - and if you do, you are a mug - then Lionel Messi is love at first sight (and happy ever after) while Cristiano Ronaldo is a film noir femme fatale - dark, flirtatious, dangerous but always drawing your gaze.
It's the only way to separate them. Who do you prefer, which style makes your pulse race, which player would you choose to spend €100 million on if you were in charge of Melbourne Victory's transfer budget?
This has already become an epic battle between two talents who will slug it out for years, rivals at team, international and, above all, personal level.
Advertisement: Story continues belowThe two geniuses will divide audiences just like Palmer did against Nicklaus, Botham against Border, Fischer against Spassky or Ali against Frazier.
And although the two young men happen to be model professionals, the personal side matters almost as much as that of the team. Each is heartily sick of being compared to the other.
The fact that it is a World Cup summer and some dopes actually believe that one great player can still win a tournament ''on his own'' has only increased the hype.
For the record, Portugal qualified without a single goal from Ronaldo in the group or the knockout stage. Argentina, scraped through with the fanatical fans calling for Messi to be dropped (the clowns) because he ''cares more about Barcelona than he does about his country''.
Even the all-time greats have to suffer a little rain in their lives. But the hype has also increased the degree to which each player is always pushed and prodded into comparing himself to the other.
Ask either, as I have done, and they will talk about ''respect'' but show no animation, no appreciation.
Messi just doesn't care while Ronaldo, by his personal admission, doesn't simply want to be proven just as better than Messi, he wants to become acknowledged as the greatest player of all time.
The adoration towards Messi stings him. Messi is in his way.
Five times over the past couple of years, the two talents have gone head-to-head on field. Even for those of us who admire Ronaldo, it is impossible to ignore the sequence of results. Messi's team has won three times, drawn once and lost once (against Manchester United and Real Madrid). Ronaldo hasn't scored once against Barcelona (even missing a penalty) while Messi has two goals in those duels.
That doesn't mean that Ronaldo's recent biblical flood of goals count for less, or that he didn't merit winning every individual prize available to him in 2008. It's just that Messi, rather than Ronaldo, embodies football in its purest state.
Ronaldo would put that notion down to envy. "There is jealousy about me because I'm the most expensive footballer in the world, because I've won all these awards or because I earn more money than this guy or the other. I won't let that envy affect me - it's life. I guess that jealousy like this exists in all walks of life."
Gerard Houllier and Arsene Wenger thought young Ronaldo was good - but not good enough to lose their heads or wallets over. Interest flourished, talks were held, nothing happened.
It even took United's players to finally persuade Sir Alex Ferguson that the show-pony in the Sporting Lisbon strip was a must-buy. When he hit England, his play was one step forward, two steps back. Literally. There were the step-overs, the failure to deliver to Ruud Van Nistelrooy's runs, the initial willingness to throw his body around and that mean-spirited moment in Portugal that helped get Wayne Rooney sent off - like Rita Hayworth in Gilda, alluring but dangerous.
Messi was two-foot-nothing and not growing when Barca first saw him. He was just 12 and when coach Charly Rexach and agent Josep Maria Minguella took him over for his first trial at the Nou Camp, there were some technical staff who said: "He'll do for table football but he'll never make the professional game."
Rexach recalls: "We organised a trial match with every player significantly older than him. We also arranged days of very difficult and complicated technical tests because he was a foreigner, it was a huge step-up for him and he was such a tiny guy. Unless he was, literally, brilliant, we weren't going to sign him.
"It was a 15-day trial and 14 of them were a waste of time. Day one was the game and it was just a recital, none of us had ever seen anything like it. He took the ball in the face of any threat, beat everyone near him, played outstandingly and looked head and shoulders better than everyone, even those whose shoulders his head couldn't reach. " There, you see. Love at first sight.
Fabio Capello, then managing Juventus, went backstage after Barca's season-opening Gamper Tournament in 2005 and asked his former player, Frank Rijkaard, then coaching at the Nou Camp, for a price for Messi.
"While I was a player or since becoming a coach, I have never seen such talent at such an age - his future will be extraordinary" the Italian said at the time. Love at first sight.
"Cristiano is the taller, stronger more all-round player," Gerard Pique, who has played with both, told The Age this week. "Leo is the more decisive player, the one who does something out of nothing. He makes impossible things happen."
Xavi Hernandez told The Age: "Leo is out on his own, the No. 1 - the most remarkable footballer I've ever seen or played with. He's incomparable.'' The list goes on.
It is part of the human condition that even if we find true love, the sultry, dangerous, dazzling, haughty ones will always draw our attention. They'll do everything to ensure that. And then we'll pass on.
Long live Messi and all he stands for. Best of luck to Ronaldo but I'll steer clear, thanks. I've found true love
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