I hate the discussion about a player being the GOAT only if he wins the World Cup because there can be amazing players who can't win the World Cup because of there nationality. Ronaldo is one of the best players who ever played this game and it doesn't matter whether he won a World Cup.
in my opinion, a player like messi who has won everything is something that is difficult to see, and it is also clear that reaching the world cup final and having contributed a lot for your national team to become champion makes this player the best in the world world, but there are some cases that are an exception, which is the case of the mbappe, he was carrying the team in all the world cup games, it was visible how the mbappe was the center of the france, and he would not give up, if the france had won the world cup i think it would have been fair to put mbappe as the best player in the world and currently messi manages to play very well in relation to cristiano ronaldo and i'm not just saying that, reality shows that
look, messi if he lowered his salary any team in europe would run after messi, any team even in real madrid messi would be a king if he were to play there, even mbappe is a great player that any team would want him, o same applies to haaland's case... but what about ronaldo? no one would want him. but then where is the evidence of what I'm talking about? here:
Messi:
32 games, 16 goals, 16 assists
Mbappe:
33 games, 28 goals, 5 assists
Haaland:
35 games, 36 goals, 8 assists
these are statistics of just the games in the leagues they play in, there is nothing about cups or the European league, and these players scored fewer goals from penalties and are playing against very strong opponents
and now look at ronaldo:
16 games, 14 goals, 2 assists
1 - scored many penalties
2 - has few assists even playing in a much lower league
3 - only has 14 goals even playing in a league without quality and against very weak opponents
ronaldo in the world cup was off, ronaldo in manchester united was off and now in this lower league it's the same thing, but as the arabs are specialists in marketing they are pushing ronaldo's image to look good