Ronaldo has chance to settle debate about who's the greatest player of our time

In Sunday’s Euro 2016 final between Portugal and France, Cristiano Ronaldo has a chance to do something that could finally settle the debate about whether he or Lionel Messi is the greatest player of our time: lead his country to a major international title.

Ronaldo and Messi are obviously both otherworldly talents. Each has a trophy cabinet overflowing with Champions League medals, domestic cups and league titles. But fairly or not, the truly great players are judged by what they do on the grandest stages of all.

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The European championship is one of those stages.

Messi may very well be the best soccer player of all time. But having announced his retirement from international competition last month, he may never lead Argentina to the kind of glory Ronaldo could lead Portugal to Sunday at Stade de France.

Whether Messi is better than Ronaldo or vice versa has, in many ways, always been a matter of opinion anyway. It may come down to the fact that many people prefer Messi because he’s more likeable and comes off as more of a “good guy” despite the fact that he’s just been sentenced to 21 months in prison for tax evasion.

But if Ronaldo does manage to win the Euros with Portugal, he will not only have succeeded where Messi has failed – and made himself a virtual shoe-in for this year’s Ballon d’Or award as the world’s best footballer – he could also thrust himself into the same conversation as Maradona and Pele about who the greatest player of all time is.

Standing in his way is a formidable France side that seems to be peaking at just the right time – a team that just eliminated world champion Germany and is led by the tournament’s top scorer and the host nation’s golden boy, Antoine Griezmann.

But Ronaldo is used to being cast as the villain and will have no qualms whatsoever about putting an end to France’s fairytale. Just as he had no doubts about slamming the book shut on the unlikely underdog story of Wales.

It’s pretty rare for individual players to lead teams to major tournament titles.

Maradona did it at the 1986 World Cup. Michel Platini did it in the 1984 Euros. However, few players have done anything like it since. Zinedine Zidane was the standout player of France’s 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 triumphs, but Zizou benefited from playing on a talented French team that was built around him.

Ronaldo, on the other hand, is playing on the most unexceptional Portugal side we’ve seen in over a decade. Until Wednesday’s 2-1 victory over Wales, the Portuguese had yet to win a single match in this tournament inside of regular time and had literally drawn their way through the group stage.

It would be exaggerating to say that Ronaldo has single-handedly hauled Portugal into the final. But the Real Madrid superstar has come up with the big moments when needed. Without him, Portugal would probably have never even got out of its group.

The stage is set for the former Manchester United winger to deliver what could be the performance that defines his legacy and, quite possibly, settles the debate about who is the greatest player of our time.

Because if Ronaldo can actually manage to haul an aging Portugal team containing the likes of Bruno Alves, Ricardo Quaresma, and Ricardo Carvalho to a European title, it really could go down as one of the greatest individual feats in soccer history. Especially when you consider that Messi has taken a far superior Argentina team to three consecutive finals – the 2014 World Cup, 2015 Copa America and 2016 Copa America Centenario – and on each occasion failed at the final hurdle.

At 31, Ronaldo isn’t getting any younger. It’s apparent he’s no longer the player he was. His ability to dribble through defenders and run past opposing players looks to have diminished. But with his athleticism, technique and drive to be the best, he has demonstrated he can still impose himself on big games.

Euro 2016 has not been an easy tournament for him. Ronaldo has missed a penalty, been criticized for his wastefulness in front of goal, insulted the tournament’s most beloved underdogs and hurled a reporter’s microphone into a lake in a temper tantrum.

He has also punched the ground in frustration, dove, kicked, tracked back more than usual, scored three goals, made three assists and basically done everything within his power to drag Portugal kicking and screaming into the final. On Sunday, he has a shot at transcending all of that and going from someone who will be remembered as a top player to becoming a legend.

Because if Cristiano Ronaldo succeeds in leading a Portugal team that its coach even admitted isn’t really very good to victory over heavy favorites in a European championship final, 20 years from now no one is going to really care about how nice of a guy he was.

In fact, in the end, it might even be this less likable side of Ronaldo, this compulsion to be the best that so often boils over into petulance, that drives him over the line to succeed where “nice guy” tax-evader Messi has failed.