There are football debates that seem to have no end point, even when the protagonists have already written several pages of their history. The comparison between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo is one of them, although for Morgan Rogers there was a concrete experience that changed his perception: facing the Argentine in the 2026 World Cup semifinal.
The Chelsea midfielder, who started for England in that match played in Atlanta, acknowledged that for a good part of his life he had the Portuguese as his main reference. However, direct contact with Messi allowed him to grasp a level that, as he explained, was even hard to imagine during his best phase. "Ronaldo was my favorite, but I played against Messi in that World Cup semifinal. He is 39 years old, I couldn't believe it, I can't imagine how he was in his prime", Rogers candidly shared on the show CFC Unlocked.
Far from limiting himself to a matter of personal preferences, the English footballer particularly highlighted the difficulty of trying to control the Argentine captain. "I imagine it being absolutely impossible to do anything (to stop him). Literally, you can do nothing, it's impossible. It was almost like that in that match against Argentina too, there was nothing you could do", he stated.
The current situation of the Rosario player also particularly caught the attention of the 24-year-old midfielder. "Now he is 39 and has just retired from international football. That was his penultimate match, so imagine what he was doing in his prime", he noted.
While Rogers did not overlook his admiration for Ronaldo, he acknowledged that that experience against Messi changed his view of the Argentine. Additionally, he added another name to his list of great references outside of the Bug and the Flea. "My personal choice would be Neymar. For me, there's nothing he can't do on a pitch. So those are my three, simply because of the era I grew up in", he explained.
