The rivalry purely sporty it does not exist on the court and even less outside the game. Although there are purists of the technique, it is inevitable that the feeling of confrontation of athletes and fans is entangled with other rivalries, such as political, religious, economic or border.
That explains, for example, the high voltage scattered in chess in the 70s, in the middle of a Cold War which seemed to lead to a nuclear confrontation between the West and the Warsaw pact. 30 years after the fall of Berlin Wall, there is little of that ideological stink in chess championships and never again was there such a great coverage as the duel between the American Bobby Fischer and the Soviet Boris Spassky of 1972 received.
Many elements have made the rivalry between the Argentinian Lionel Messi and portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo the most intense and longest of the football history. Yes, more than that of the Argentine Diego Armando Maradona and the Brazilian Pele, who only collided on television sets and never on a field, as they were separated by a wide age difference. Was a merely verbal duel.
The duel between ‘La Pulga’ and ‘CR7’ has been lived on the pitch from the technical point of view of the football and of the trophy harvest; but it also covered the media, finance, politics and institutions.
There was no other footballer who managed to get in the way, as it happened to tennis with the emergence of the Serbian Novak Djokovic in the struggle that the Spanish maintained Rafael Nadal and the swiss Roger Federer for the supremacy of white sport. Not the swedish Zlatan Ibrahimovic neither the Spanish Andrés Iniesta nor much less the Brazilian Neymar, among others, were able to intrude on this debate that encouraged fans for a whole decade.
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