The World Cup’s sent everyone football mad. Sorry, sorry – “soccer mad,” as say the legions of USA fans whose top tier national league features fifteen teams with ‘FC’ in their name. If World Cup 2026 has taught us nothing else so far, it’s at least amply demonstrated that football fans love a friendly debate.

The greatest debate of our time, of course, being the Ronaldo vs Messi conversation. Two evergreen titans of the sport, pushing themselves and each other to new heights for their whole careers, both with trophy cabinets it’d take 45 minutes to drive through. Who’s the better player? You could point at all sorts of metrics, like Messi’s totally legitimate 2022 World Cup win, Ronaldo’s vast charitable donations, or cold, hard numbers like goals (Ronaldo), assists (Messi), or goals per game (Messi).

With both players approaching the end of their incredible careers, the events of this World Cup could well settle this debate. But with ticket prices as they are, few of us will actually be in the venues to witness the matches in person, so we can’t rely on that. We need a methodology right now to settle the Ronaldo vs Messi debate. A really, really ridiculous methodology.

Please welcome to the stage – Football Manager 26. It isn’t just a mega-detailed sports management sim with a database even bigger than your roommate’s chore rota spreadsheet, it’s also a very cool sandbox, if you’re willing to play around with that database a little bit.

Long story short: we’re taking control of Argentina and Portugal in FM26’s World Cup, cloning 11 Messis and Ronaldos and playing them in all positions, including goalkeeper, and having each team coached by Messi and Ronaldo too for good measure. Surely after such a scientific and rigorous simulation, there shall be no voices of dissent. The debate will be silenced. The team that performs better shall prove the identity of the true GOAT.

The Setup

I begin by creating the closest approximations of Leo and Cristiano as managers that the game allows: both generational superstars as players, they’re inexperienced as managers but their disciplined nature should stand them in good stead.

Ronaldo’s managerial tendencies are towards entertaining, attacking football with a strict sense of discipline. Is that a contradiction? That’s for him to figure out. As for Messi, he also favors attacking play and discipline, with an energetic approach.

In real life, both players have spent most of their careers playing in variations of a 4-3-3 formation, so that’s what I’ll be using for both sides. Tactically this is going to be an even playing field; no one’s going to Otto Rehhagel their way to the final here.

Creating 11 Messis and 11 Ronaldos is a long and tedious process, thanks to FM26’s in-game editor. I export the real players’ stats, then apply them one by one to each national squad’s best XI, then change their height, position ratings, and, of course, their names.

That means that Argentina’s goalkeeper this tournament stands 171cm tall, both teams will be playing four attackers across the back, and with an average age of 39.5 years old, no one on either side has a pace stat above 11. There is a very real chance that both sides could be eliminated in the group stages. I don’t know what I’ll do if that happens.

The Group Stages

Then again, maybe we’re underestimating the old timers. Argentina begins their campaign with a 5-1 victory over Algeria, with goals from Messi, Messi, Messi, Messi, and Lionel Messi. The pressure’s now on the 41-year-old Portugal XI to set a similar tone in their opener against DR Congo.

In reality it proves to be a far nervier affair, ending 2-1 in Portugal’s favor thanks to goals from Ronaldo and Ronaldo, the team reduced to ten men after Ronaldo’s dismissal at the 77th minute. Perhaps age is catching up to the veteran clone hivemind in the sweltering north American heat. Or maybe it’s just taking a while to find that team harmony in the laboratory of unidentifiable fluids and bizarre instruments where the CR7 clones have been synthesized in test tubes.

The rest of the group stage shows a clear divide between Argentina and Portugal. The former wins all three of their fixtures easily, while Portugal draws with Uzbekistan and, more shockingly still, ships five goals to Colombia, barely scraping a qualifying spot in the round of 32 by virtue of their third place finish in the group. It’s advantage Messi as we enter the knockout matches.

Aeons pass. Civilizations rise and fall. Gaseous clouds form, cool, liquify and compact over billions of years to form planets, then burn out. Finally, Football Manager 26 has simulated the five days between the last playable fixture and the next one, and it’s time to proceed.

The Knockout Stages

Tough fixtures for both sides await, as Argentina meets an underperforming Spain while Ronaldo x11 has another chance to wink at England. These two matches could decide it. The GOAT. Forever.

Portugal’s lineup against FC It’s Coming Home is unchanged: Ronaldo in goal, Ronaldo, Ronaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldo forming the back four, a midfield trio comprising Ronaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldo, and Cristiano Ronaldo occupying the striker spot. Interestingly, a different Ronaldo has scored all of Portugal’s (three) goals thus far. The weakness seems to be in defense, where none of the backline have more than a half-star of positional competence.

The Ronaldos look nervous as they line up against England, who have a lot more quality than the Uzbekistan and Colombia sides they just failed to beat. And they’re right to be. You might want to sit down for this, CR7 fans. And then close this page and do something else and forget this article ever existed. Because Ronaldo loses 5-0 to England.

Anything less than a 6-0 loss for the Messis against Spain now will confirm the diminutive Argentine football savant as the GOAT. It’s unbelievably tense.

The Messis’ advantage so far seems to be Leo’s suitability in defensive roles. Despite only being effective in attacking midfield and striker roles on paper, he’s somehow got 2.5-star positional effectiveness in all defensive positions. I have no idea how he’s making all those headed clearances, but fair play to the guy. And the Messi keeper - well, surely the Golden Glove’s going his way. Just as long as they don’t lose to Spain.

It all comes down to this. A rivalry spanning three decades. They just have to not lose to Spain.

They lose 4-1 to Spain.

I wish I could report a more satisfying, glorious, emphatic conclusion, but FM26 has decreed that both sides go out in the round of 32. It doesn’t even appear that Argentina played badly, and to their credit they did get on the scoresheet, thanks to – well, you know who.

But Spain had all sorts of advantages, including players over 171cm tall, a goalkeeper who spent his career in goal and not in attacking midfield, and numerous options under 38 years of age. In the end, those little advantages made the difference.

There were also administrative problems. For example, I checked numerous times for the menu option to buy Argentina a penalty in each of their knockout stage matches, but I couldn’t find it in FM26’s new UI. Weird.

The Verdict

So, what those results tell us, absolutely categorically and with no room for counterargument or picking holes in the methodology, is that actually Messi is a better player than Ronaldo all along.

Apparently Football Manager 26 believes that he’s more versatile across the pitch, would make a better keeper, and ultimately fosters a deeper sense of team cohesion than his 187cm Portuguese peer. And who are we to argue?

Don’t despair, Ronaldo fans. At the time of writing, it is very possible that the two could meet in a World Cup knockout match in real life. He could atone for his virtual clones’ failings on the real pitch, although personally I’ll have to dig deep to forgive him for that 0-5 performance against Colombia first.

Phil Iwaniuk is a veteran hardware smasher and game botherer who has written for the likes of PC Format, Official PlayStation Magazine, PCGamesN, The Guardian, Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and IGN. He won an award once, but he doesn't like to go on about it.