{"id":11397,"date":"2019-10-09T23:05:10","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T23:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=11397"},"modified":"2026-07-09T17:32:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T17:32:44","slug":"he-gave-a-plus-to-the-rivalry-lionel-messi-admits-he-wanted-rival-cristiano-ronaldo-to-stay-at-real-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2019\/10\/09\/he-gave-a-plus-to-the-rivalry-lionel-messi-admits-he-wanted-rival-cristiano-ronaldo-to-stay-at-real-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;He gave a plus to the rivalry&#8217;: Lionel Messi admits he wanted rival Cristiano Ronaldo to STAY at Real Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"class\"><strong>Lionel Messi admits he misses his on-field rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo<\/strong><\/li>\n<li class=\"class\"><strong>They have not played each other since Ronaldo moved to Juventus in 2018<\/strong><\/li>\n<li class=\"class\"><strong>Pair were seen laughing and joking at Champions League draw in August<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Lionel Messi admits he misses his on-field rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">The pair have not faced each other since Ronaldo left Real Madrid for Juventus last summer and Messi has revealed he wanted his old rival to stay in Spain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">He claims that the Clasico rivalry was given an extra edge by his involvement in the past.<\/p>\n<div class=\"artSplitter mol-img-group\">\n<div class=\"mol-img\">\n<div class=\"image-wrap\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11398\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-3-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-3-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-3-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-3.jpg 634w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"overlay-icon mobile-gallery\">\n<div class=\"mobile-gallery-icon\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Lionel Messi (left) admits he wished rival Cristiano Ronaldo had stayed at Real Madrid<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"artSplitter mol-img-group\">\n<div class=\"mol-img\">\n<div class=\"image-wrap\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11399\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-2-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-2-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-2.jpg 634w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">The pair shared a fierce on-field rivalry when they clashed in Barcelona-Real Madrid games<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;I wanted him to continue with Real Madrid,&#8217; he told RAC1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;He gave a plus to the rivalry in the Clasico and La Liga.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;Real Madrid will continue to challenge because they have very good players, but I already said that the team was going to feel his loss for what he meant and that the squad would notice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;But they have plenty of players to allow them to fight for every title and they have a lot of history.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Messi and Ronaldo were last seen laughing and smiling in each other&#8217;s company at the Champions League draw in August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Ronaldo admitted he missed the rivalry between the two and even invited Messi out for dinner.<\/p>\n<div class=\"artSplitter mol-img-group\">\n<div class=\"mol-img\">\n<div class=\"image-wrap\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-1-286x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"286\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-1-286x300.jpg 286w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-1-143x150.jpg 143w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/messicr7-1.jpg 634w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 286px) 100vw, 286px\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">But Messi admits he misses the extra edge that their personal rivalry gave to El Clasico<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"moduleFull mol-video\">\n<div class=\"item\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div id=\"p-38\" class=\"related-carousel with-fb-or-tw sport\" data-track-module=\"am-related_carousel^related_carousel\" data-track-selector=\".rotator-panels a:not([class*=external])\" data-dm-rotator-rotate=\"false\" data-track-pos=\"static\" data-preferred-shared-network-enabled=\"\" data-dm-rotator-auto-init=\"\" data-dm-rotator-active-class=\"active\" data-dm-rotator-page-count=\"1.0\" data-dm-social-article-auto-init=\"\" data-dm-rotator-page-size=\"1\">\n<div class=\"fb\">\n<div class=\"count\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Lionel Messi admits he misses his on-field rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo They have not played each other since Ronaldo moved to Juventus in 2018 Pair were seen laughing and joking at Champions League draw in August Lionel Messi admits he misses his on-field rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo. The pair have not faced each other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6409],"tags":[276,641,1911,283,1791,4066,12406,746,7090,492,10560,2626,1113,1273,13256,196,8459,194,4293,7333,3954],"class_list":["post-11397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-a-plus","tag-barcelona","tag-champions-league","tag-christiano-ronaldo","tag-cristiano-ronaldo","tag-el","tag-el-clasico","tag-feel","tag-games","tag-juventus","tag-la","tag-la-liga","tag-lionel-messi","tag-messi","tag-players","tag-real-madrid","tag-rivalry","tag-ronaldo","tag-spain","tag-summer","tag-will"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51712,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11397\/revisions\/51712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}