The Big Two rivalries: What football and tennis have in common

Pat Cash unwittingly raised an interesting parallel between the sport he dissed (football) and the other he ignored (tennis)

Football fans have eviscerated Pat Cash, the Australian tennis player with one Grand Slam title to his name, for suggesting that “real men” don’t play football. To be fair, he wasn’t suggesting that “real men” play tennis. He’s talking about some sport called Aussie Rules Football, a tough-guy game that only Aussies are crazy about and in which he would have us believe players don’t cheat. 

Let’s set aside the foolishness and innate sexism of Cash’s remark – ladies, forgive him, for he knows not what he says – and focus instead on an interesting parallel he has raised between the sport he has dissed and the one he has ignored. Both are dominated currently by Big Two rivalries. All four sportsmen have the term GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) attached to them, though a true sports fan knows never to make such a final judgement.

They are, drum roll, please: Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini of Argentina versus Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro of Portugal, now competing on the playing fields of Russia; and Rafael Nadal Parera of Spain versus Roger Federer (yup, that’s his full name) of Switzerland, who have bagged the last six Grand Slam titles between them. 

All of them are in their thirties, veterans by sporting standards, though some say modern fitness science has made 30 the new 17. In both pairings, the age gap is less than five years. Rafa is 32 to Roger’s 36; CR7 is 33, Leo (LM10), the youngest, is 30. Three of them – Rafa, Roger, and CR7 – are 6 feet one inch and, surprisingly, about the same weight (84/85 kg). Only LM10, the “little flea”, the victim of a childhood growth ailment, is 5 ft 7 inches and a mere 72 kg.

Where younger men flag, none of these sublime sportsmen show signs of faltering. Ronaldo’s hat-trick against Spain last night in one of the best games of the tournament so far shows age has not withered his extraordinary instinct for goal. Messi fans are already salivating at the prospect of a virtuoso display when Argentina meet Iceland tonight – and the latter team is no pushover as we saw in Euro 2016.  

The eternal debate about who is the better footballer will never be settled, of course. Messi’s fans have already assigned him the GOAT crown, but he’s still some distance from CR7 650+ goals in all competitions (minus friendlies) plus a Euro title. Messi’s not far behind in the goals tally, to be sure, at 616, but he has no as yet national honours to his name. His emotional spot resignation after losing the Copa America final to Chile, a year after losing the World Cup final to German, shows how deeply he cares and how much is at stake for him in Russia. Both have five Ballon d’ Ors, football’s most coveted honour, and their goals per match are a hairsbreadth apart: 1.3 for CR7 to 1.2 to LM10 (and both have run into tax problems in their native countries).

Reams and reams of statistics can be marshalled to prove one GOAT case against another but nothing can replicate the sheer artistry with which these two champions ply their trade at Spain’s top two clubs – Real Madrid (CR7) and Barcelona (LM10), which pretty much exchange the La Liga title between them each year. One can thunder a bicycle kick into the net, scoring a goal so stunning that even the opposition fans stand up and applaud. Another routinely dribbles like a hot knife through butter through hulking defences to baffle goalkeepers, one of whom once confessed to having Messi nightmares.  

Roger and Rafa: 37 Grand Slam titles between them, 20 to the Swiss, 17 to the Spaniard, a win-loss ratio of 4.5 and 4.8 respectively. Both have wept at Grand Slam Finals – Roger for losing to Rafa at the Australian Open in 2009; Rafa for winning his extraordinary 11th French Open title. Whose better? Rafa holds the lead in the head-to-head record 23-15 and 6-3 in Grand Slams. But no one in their right mind would confidently say these numbers are a final judgement of their talent. And who cares! Roger, all fluid grace, and Rafa, all power and guile, stand far above the rest.

So it doesn’t matter whether they’re “real men;” both rivalries represent real champions. And they’re the reason sports fans flock to watch them – rather than Aussie Rules football.