Germany head coach Joachim Loew regards Barcelona’s Lionel Messi as the most complete player compared to Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo has impressed with his goalscoring exploits with Los Blancos for the past nine seasons but Loew believes Messi is the better player overall due to his ability to contribute regular assists. Speaking to reporters, Loew said: “I’d go with Messi. Ronaldo is sensational, a professional, an incredible goalscoring machine but Messi is the most complete player. Messi’s an assist genius, the past 10 years he’ll get 30-40 assists and score 50 goals. He has an incredible way of playing.”

Messi ended the season with Barcelona with another domestic double but the Argentine would still be disappointed by the club’s failure in the Champions League. The Blaugrana were touted to at least make the last four of the elite competition but they only managed to reach the quarter-final stage where they were surprisingly eliminated by AS Roma.

Nevertheless, there were plenty of positives with the way Barcelona dominated in the Spanish La Liga and the attacker will be hoping to maintain his goalscoring form when he features for Argentina at this summer’s World Cup. The South American nation were the runners-up during the previous edition of the tournament in Brazil and they will be hoping that they can go all the way this time around despite the concerns surrounding their defensive setup.

Meanwhile, Ronaldo still has a Champions League final to look for against Liverpool and winning the competition would make him the first player to win the European title on five occasions in the modern era. Thereafter, the 33-year-old is expected to link up with Portugal for the World Cup where they will be seeking to emerge as potential dark horses. Portugal surprised most of Europe in 2016 where they beat France to the European Championship title.