Are Messi and Ronaldo all-time greats?

Some people have a criterion which is to say that you can only be an all-time great if you have won the World Cup. After today, that World Cup win clearly ain't gonna happen to either of them.

I think this is retrograde thinking. It comes from a time when football players stayed in their own country their entire career and nobody else had ever even heard of them until they played in the World Cup. These days the Champions League knock-out stage is a higher standard than the World Cup because you get all the best players pooled together in a single competition. Yes, there are some great national teams but very very few happen to be balanced. France specialise in producing athletic players, Spain in passing midfielders and Argentina in strikers. Also, Brazil can't exactly go out and sign a full-back from another team if they have a weakness in that position.

Messi and Ronaldo are superstars at the highest level of club football and have been for a decade. Both post crazy goal-scoring stats that otherwise only exist in computer games and have also demolished some of the best teams on the planet. It shouldn't count against their record that neither has been born into a great national team. Messi is the best club footballer of all-time and Ronaldo's career is almost as good.

Yes, they are all-time greats.