Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are talking about retirement. What does football look like without them?

It was assumed this summer’s World Cup was the last time Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo would both be on the same stage at the same time.

At 39 and 41, it was implausible that they could soldier on through another four-year cycle and re-appear in 2030.

For differing reasons, the tournament cast an element of doubt over both’s finality. Messi’s majesty, with eight goals and four assists, suggested he could do this walking-genius shtick for a while longer. Ronaldo’s on-field tears and post-match comments suggested his inability to accept that Father Time had called.

“I’ve given my best. I’ve won three titles for Portugal. Before Cristiano, we hadn’t won any,” he said, referring to himself in the third-person, after a meek last-16 exit to Spain.

“The biggest title I won with the national team was in 2016 which, for me, has the same value. That’s what I repeat: I leave with a clear conscience.”

He sounded like a man trying, and failing, to convince himself that he was content with his lot. That Messi secured that elusive World Cup triumph in 2022 did not make him feel incomplete. Perhaps the lure of a home World Cup in Portugal would be too much to resist after all.

However, in an interview with Vogue this week, amid talk of his home wedding and lavish diamonds, he revealed that he expects his current contract at Al-Nassr to be his last.

“This is probably my last year of football, and I want to leave a spectacular legacy,” he said.

“I have my future all mapped out. I have so many things to keep me busy that to tell you just one thing is hard. Because football could leave a big hole, you have to fill your time in various ways, not just one.”

Padel was, of course, mentioned. You cannot legally be an ex-professional footballer without a penchant for the racquet sport.

What was so striking, however, was that he sounded like he had finally made peace with the thought of retirement. The admission came in the same week that his great nemesis Messi also hinted at retirement.

Messi’s contract at Inter Miami runs until 2028, but the death of his father Jorge this month has thrown his future into doubt. As the man who had overseen his career since he brokered the trial at Barcelona, he was Messi’s inspiration. Shorn of that connection, the reasons for continuing are harder to find.

“You were by my side from the beginning; there was so little left until the end. Why couldn’t you hold on just a little longer so we could finish it together?” he asked on his social media tribute.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. I don’t know how to carry on. I used to just play football, and now I’m really not sure if I’ll carry on doing it for much longer.”

Messi with his father Jorge at the 2022 World Cup (Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The Messi-Ronaldo duopoly has dominated the sport since 2008 when they first met in the Champions League semi-final.

Across 15 years, they played 36 competitive matches against each other, sharing almost 3,000 minutes on the pitch. They made Spain’s El Clasico a must-watch global event between 2009 and 2018 and challenged each other to break records. La Liga was an annual proxy war for the Ballon d’Or, a title they shared equally for 10 unbroken years — until Messi added another three in the twilight of his career. The latest came in 2023, when Messi was an Inter Miami player.

In the past five years, however, the longevity of Messi’s genius has practically upended the narrative of the previous two decades. By leading Argentina to two Copa America titles and the World Cup in 2022, he ticked off the only remaining boxes in his career. Before then, Ronaldo’s Euro 2016 triumph and league trophies in England, Spain and Italy had afforded weight to the argument he was the more complete, more adaptable force.

These triumphs, underlined by more mesmerising moments at this summer’s World Cup, have reframed the debate.

It is no longer Messi vs Ronaldo. It is Messi and everyone else. To sit at the top of every other player in your era is an incredible achievement, but for so much of Ronaldo’s career they were inextricably linked. The goals, the trophies, the legacy. Messi’s brilliance is surely part of what drove Ronaldo, a less gifted player, to extraordinary heights — in some years, above the Argentine.

Ronaldo celebrates after winning Euro 2016 (VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images)

Legacy is a subjective term that is hard to measure.

Ronaldo has more than 1,000 goals and holds the record for most international games and goals. Messi has won eight Ballons d’Or, scored a record 91 goals in a calendar year and has won the most European Golden Boots.

The list of records is endless, but their choice of final destination, where they would hang up their boots, was a bet on their legacy. There was no romantic return to Barcelona or Newell’s Old Boys for Messi. No full-circle year at Sporting CP or Nacional, where Ronaldo started out on the island of Madeira.

Both players hitched their wagon to emerging markets. Messi went to PSG in 2021, owned by Qatar, and then onto Inter Miami in MLS. Ronaldo kickstarted Saudi Arabia’s attempts to become a football superpower when he moved to Al Nassr.

Ronaldo has to shoulder the criticism of associating with a nation accused of sportswashing its human rights record, but he surely has an interest in the league achieving its ambition of becoming a major player in the sport. If it does, he is the face of the project. If it does not and the investment fades, it will look like he backed the wrong horse.

It is a shame that there was no last dance between the two at the World Cup. Instead, their last meeting was a 2023 friendly between Messi’s PSG and Ronaldo’s Al Nassr in Riyadh. That was their first goodbye to the world stage. Now the final one is coming, perhaps sooner than many wish.

Is football ready for life after the big two?

Kylian Mbappe, Lamine Yamal and Erling Haaland are the three individuals primed to take over the spotlight, but can they fill it in the same way?

Maybe no two players can recreate the same fervent wrestle for GOAT status. There might be more televised matches and more sponsorship deals than ever, but the way fans consume football has changed. It has become more fragmented. Shorter attention spans have created a clips climate in lieu of live match viewing. A more transactional and fickle association to teams, fuelled by social media, means it is often a player rather than a team that millions follow.

Messi and Ronaldo at their peak would have been the perfect prototypes for this era. Walk around London now and you will see Miami and Al Nassr tops sporting the same names on the back.

Those factors would suggest a climate in which individual rivalries would flourish. But perhaps what made Messi and Ronaldo’s era special was that, while they were competing for supremacy, they also had to achieve team supremacy. To be the king, you had to win your team the crown.

All sports rely on cults of personality. Tennis is still grappling with that reality following Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s retirement. Football is, of course, a team sport and the World Cup proved that there is no shortage of spell-binding characters. Vinicius Jr, Jude Bellingham and Michael Olise are all highly marketable figures.

The only issue is that, still, no player stirred the imagination the way a 39-year-old Messi was able to. No player’s struggles engendered such attention as Ronaldo’s demise.

They remain dominant, even as faded figures. If they are soon to be ghosts, given how so much of their careers have run parallel, it would be fitting if they exit stage left together. A final piece of narrative symmetry.