Ronaldo on his way to leaving a bigger legacy than Messi behind

After bagging yet another brace for Real Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo set a Champions League scoring record to surpass the accolade jointly held by three men, including a certain Lionel Messi. Soon, the Portuguese will undeniably better his Argentine rival in all facets of the game.

In notching for the 15th and 16th time in the current Champions League campaign against Bayern Munich, Ronaldo beat Messi, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Jose Altafini’s best scoring efforts in a season and dumped the defending champions out of the competition in the process.

The former Manchester United flyer is now 4/7 to land the trophy with Madrid, which would be his second winner’s medal and the club’s 10th.

Since the start of last season Ronaldo has been playing with an ulterior motive though. Naturally, he wanted to help his team win games, but he also craved recognition as the world’s best player, unequivocally.

He went some way to achieve that when he reclaimed the Ballon d’Or trophy from Messi last year, who had won it for four straight seasons.

Despite that achievement though, fans found it difficult to separate the two modern footballing phenomenons.

But while Messi seems to be going off the boil, Ronaldo is going from strength to strength and his latest move past the Barcelona forward in the record books indicates it’s the Los Blancos man who’ll leave the game with the greater legacy.

A missing piece in the puzzle for both men is the World Cup and with Ronaldo’s current form considered, it’s he that should be the subject of Ladbrokes customer’s Brazil betting.

The 29-year-old is 14/1 to be the tournament’s top scorer, some way off the 8/1 favourite’s price afforded to Messi.

Portugal are a 22/1 shot to claim the ultimate prize in international football, again a tantalising option compared to the 9/2 surrounding Argentina.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.

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