Douglas Deutsch
Honor Pledge DD
Dueling Summaries:
Summary 1:
As a player, or even a coach, can you imagine the joy of seeing your team work together in unison, as one, playing beautiful futbol and being rewarded with a goal? A primal combination of dancing and fighting, all underlined by loyalty to the team. Now as a player or coach, can you imagine the sour after-taste that comes from watching a player who just scored a tap-in goal resulting from all of that teamwork celebrate like he just dribbled the whole team by himself? This is how Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates every goal. Every. Single. Goal. Despite this abundance in arrogance, Ronaldo has the stats to back it up. All time Champions League top goal scorer. 5 time Ballon D’Or winner. 708 career goals. He brings a work ethic and intensity to the game that is completely unrivaled, and it is a fact that that world football would be worse-off without him.
Summary 2:
The relationship between Messi and Argentina is a complicated one. It is the story of a love triangle between the Catalan football giant FC Barcelona, Argentina, and Messi. Messi is from Rosario, Argentina. He moved to Barcelona at the tender age of 13 to play for FC Barcelona, the club he still plays for today. Despite being diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency at a young age, he excelled all throughout his childhood and teenage years, earning his first fully professional appearance at the age of 19. As told by Robert Gribert, a soccer player who joined Barcelona the same day as messi, “sometimes you thought that the only way to stop him was by getting out a gun and and firing a shot, but even then you had the feeling that the guy would swerve the bullet with the ball under his control.” Messi routinely plays against players that are a head and a half taller than him, and nearly twice his weight, players that are bigger, faster, and stronger than him. Yet somehow, it is always Messi that emerges from a bunch of 4 or 5 players with the ball, never the defender. How he does it is something the world is still trying to find out. The caveat comes here. All of these feats that Messi somehow pulls off, they only happen in Spain. Time and time again, Messi has dropped the bag when on international duty for Argentina. The last time Argentina won a world cup was 1986, and Argentina have been looking for their next Diego Maradona to lead them to victory again. The fact that Messi is arguably better than Maradona really rubs salt in the wounds of the Argentines, as they feel he lacks the loyalty he dedicates to Barcelona for his birth country. The paradox that such a great team player, not only the La Liga all-time goal scorer, but at one point leading with assist too, cannot replicate his passion for his country is the only stain on his name.
“The Story of Lionel Messi’s First Days at Barcelona | Goal.Com.” Goal.Com, 2017, www.goal.com/en/news/we-called-him-dwarf-the-story-of-messis-first-days-at/5dg1otj0xbzi1ocoxm8dandgp. Accessed 7 Sept. 2019.
