Editors’ note: This article was first published on April 24, 2020 and has since been updated.
Despite now playing their club football on different continents, old foes Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will face each other once again on Thursday when Paris Saint-Germain travel to Saudi Arabia for an exhibition game.
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The friendly, officially known as the Riyadh Season Cup, will take place in the Saudi capital and will pit PSG against a side made up of players from Ronaldo’s Al Nassr and reigning Saudi Pro League champions Al Hilal.
Al Nassr coach Rudi Garcia has confirmed that Ronaldo is set to make his first appearance in Riyadh against PSG after the Portugal captain was forced to miss his first two domestic games for his new club due to a suspension carried over from his time at Manchester United. Therefore, this match will be the first played by Ronaldo since making his move with a full league debut set to follow against Ettifaq on Jan. 22.
Messi and Ronaldo last shared a pitch in December 2020, since when Ronaldo has changed clubs twice and Messi has won the World Cup. No wonder, then, that sources have told ESPN that there were more than 2 million online requests for tickets for the match at the 68,000-capacity King Fahd International Stadium.
Should both superstars take to the pitch in Riyadh, it will be the first time they have come face-to-face in over two years (772 days to be precise) with both players having moved on since their last meeting.
Indeed, Al Nassr will be the fourth different club that Ronaldo has represented over the course of 36 meetings between the pair since their maiden clash in April 2008, while Messi is now on his second team having left Barcelona to join PSG in the summer of 2021.
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Head-to-head
Messi leads the head-to-head record with 16 wins in competitive matches to Ronaldo’s 11, while there have been nine draws in matches involving the pair. Messi also has one more goal to his name in their encounters, having scored 22 to Ronaldo’s 21, but it is on the assist count that he really comes into his own with 11 goals created compared to just one from his rival.
The duo have played against each other five times in the Champions League knockout phase: both legs of the 2007-08 (Barca vs. Manchester United) and 2010-11 (Barca vs. Real Madrid) semifinals, as well as the 2008-09 final in Rome in which Messi scored for Barca in a 2-0 win over Ronaldo’s Manchester United.
Ronaldo may be the Champions League’s all-time top scorer with 140 goals overall, but his brace of penalties against Barca in the 2020-21 group stage was the first (and so far only) time he’d ever scored in the competition while sharing the pitch with Messi, who has scored three times in European clashes against teams featuring Ronaldo.
Crucially, Messi is still playing in the Champions League, although his haul of 129 goals in the competition means he will almost certainly have to be in Europe’s top competition again next term if he wants to overtake Ronaldo at the top of the scoring charts.
