Lionel Messi doesn’t like being compared to Cristiano Ronaldo, but we’re doing it anyway

Everyone seems to come down on one side of the Lionel Messi v Cristiano Ronaldo debate... except the players themselves.

Messi said this week that he hates comparing himself to Ronaldo, despite the friends being regarded as fierce enemies by the media, casual fans, and basically anyone who hasn't met them. There's even a website, MessivsRonaldo.net, dedicated entirely to comparing the pair across every season since the pair made their respective professional debuts. And now, with El Clásico looming, daily fantasy football game www.oulala.com have come up with this infographic comparing the pair this season. Messi has missed a decent chunk of the campaign with the injury suffered against Las Palmas before the turn of the year, and lags behind his rival (stop calling him that - Ed.) in terms of goals and, more predictably, shots. But the Argentine leads the way as far as conversion rates are concerned, while - as we might have anticipated given the respective reputations of the pair - he has created one-and-a-half times as many chances for team-mates per game. Based on our extremely non-scientific methods, we're backing Ronaldo to score a hat-trick in Saturday's game, with Messi scoring two and creating one for Luis Suárez. How did we arrive at that conclusion? Call it intuition (i.e. we made it up).