Ronaldo was the better player, I'd agree but your whole point is utterly absurd and stinks of someone who hasn't a fecking clue. The reason we only won the league cup was because Rooney got injured not because it was Rooney leading the charge to success. If Rooney doesn't get injured we very likely win the league and go further in the CL where Fergie chose to play a visibly injured and limping Rooney ahead of Berbatov. You'd know all this if you ever actually watched us instead of Wiki-ing results. In essence, if Rooney had the same quality support cast Ronaldo did (i.e Rooney himself) we'd have won the league and reached the CL final as well. You're essentially blaming Rooney for getting injured.
He also scored only goal and won us the 2008 FIFA Club World Cup final against LDU Quito, mind you.
How can you go above world class? Are you talking about master of the universe class or slayer of dragons? Rooney is not in the same class as pele,maradona,messi,ronaldo(brazil),c.ronaldo,zidane,giggs,scholes to name a few.Bold statement.
Ronaldo became above world class and Rooney was world class for a few seasons. Just because he is pretty much a decent rotation option now, doesn't mean he wasn't world class in his peak years
I thought we were finalist without him in 2011? And hadn't been a great Barca side we would have won. That team was build on Rio Vidic partnership and not Ronaldo. In fact Ronaldo in 2008 missed his penalty and nearly lost us the final to Chelsea.Ronaldo any day of the week. Without him we would never have got close to winning the CL, and I reckon we'd have struggled to build the platform needed to win the EPL titles we did as well.
Which is stupid. We lost the league on Goal difference in 11-12 and by a point in 09-10. If you seriously think thats due to Rooney then your intelligence needs to be seriously questioned. Especially when you consider that Rooney spent a good few weeks injured in 09-10 and we were in the driving seat in 11-12 only for our defence to concede goals for fun towards the back end of the season.
Btw Ronaldo has won the league once at Real Madrid so far being their main man and in the 2 CL finals he played he scored one goal (a penalty, fourth goal in a 4-1 win). So by your own criteria, Ronaldo has been underwhelming at RM in terms of success than, say, Bale who scored the goal where they led atletico in 2014.
Which is again stupid based on your own senseless logic. You claim that Rooney underachieved because he has scored 250 goals vs 260 thats expected (13x20). Drogba stayed at chelsea for 9 full seasons and scored 164 goals meaning he is short of 180 goals too (9x20) and Rooney is superior.
How can you go above world class? Are you talking about master of the universe class or slayer of dragons? Rooney is not in the same class as pele,maradona,messi,ronaldo(brazil),c.ronaldo,zidane,giggs,scholes to name a few.
This is conjecture though, there's no way of proving it.
I did watch your matches and Rooney's all round performances were not comparable to Ronaldo's. The supporting cast point is undermined by the fact that one of the main reasons for the spike in Rooney's goalscoring was Valencia's deliveries from the right.
I thought we were finalist without him in 2011? And hadn't been a great Barca side we would have won. That team was build on Rio Vidic partnership and not Ronaldo. In fact Ronaldo in 2008 missed his penalty and nearly lost us the final to Chelsea.
Obviously, Ronaldo is a better player than Rooney. No one is actually arguing against that. The point that people are arguing against is the absurd notion that we didn't win the title or CL because it was Rooney was spearheading the attack. How is it undermined? This is another bizarre point. There was a spike in goal scoring because he was playing as CF. He scored a lot of goals and someone assisted them. Whoops! Rooney was a much better support cast to Ronaldo than that what followed. In fact, we only lost one game in 08 with Rooney on the pitch and that was a freak of a game against Portsmouth. And Valencia wasn't even the highest assister to Rooney so that's another bullshit point in any case. The fact that Fergie chose to play an injured Rooney should tell you all you need to now about the trust he had in the rest. If Rooney doesn't miss our 2 biggest games of the season, we probably win the league and progress the CL.
He also missed a pen in the semis and was overall very underwhelming in the knockout stages. We may or may not have won the CL without him but to suggest we wouldn't have gotten close is obviously complete rubbish.
And yet how many times did he score a goal against a direct title rival that actually major sway in who won that season?
Solely blaming one player is not at all what this is about. However, losing the league one goal difference in 2011-12 would not have happened if you hadn't collectively failed to show up away at City. Is your talisman and best player not partially to blame for that? Aren't those the moments when great players step up? I think it was a week or two earlier that Ronaldo scored the winner at Camp Nou to essentially win the league. These are the margins we're talking about when comparing very good players to great players. Not how many goals they can score against West Ham or Almería.
Come on, winning the Spanish league is a completely different thing altogether to winning the English league. There hasn't been a truly great team win the Premier League since Ronaldo left in 2009. One title is a disappointment but he's competing against one of the best club sides ever and a top 4 in Europe team. His record in the biggest game in world football is still outstanding. He's still scored a winning goal in a Copa del Rey final. He's still twice top scored in Champions League winning campaigns taking quarter and semi-finals against some of the best teams in the world by the scruff of the neck
By the logic that Drogba scored in pretty much every cup semi and final he played, as well as a title decider against you he's clearly a superior big game player, which is the point I was making.
Goal per game record between the two is almost identical (excluding Drogba's second spell at Chelsea for obvious reasons). Rooney's is one every 2.19 matches, while Drogba's is one every 2.17.
I agree with you that there are plenty of players called world class that are not but my point is that the elite players like Messi,Ronaldo,Zidane,Maradonna and so on are really the only ones worthy of being world class.Definitely slayer of dragons. It all depends in your definition of world class and since people nowadays rate any decent player doing a decent couple of seasons as world class, I struggle to put players like Ronaldo in the same bag.
