Who is the best player in the world right now?

Ahead of the first Clasico of the Liga season, there appears to be a consensus that, on current form, Cristiano Ronaldo is winning his relentless battle with Lionel Messi for global football supremacy.

It is Ronaldo, scorer of a frankly silly 15 goals in just seven Liga games this season, who is the huge odds-on favourite to win a second successive Ballon d'Or courtesy of his role in Madrid's Champions League success and his peerless form in the early part of the season, as least as far as goalscoring goes.

In a straight shoot-out, there is no competition. While Messi is only one goal away from breaking the Liga goalscoring record, sitting pretty on 250, his Madrid rival has outscored him by 18 goals to nine in all competitions this season, a huge margin.

As you can see in the table provided by Opta, below, Ronaldo also surpasses Messi's marks for minutes per goal this season - scoring at a rate of more than twice that of the Barcelona forward - as well as with his shooting accuracy and conversion rate.

Ronaldo's perpetual quest for self-improvement has seen him reach a state of absolute physical perfection and dominance. In 10 appearances this season he is scoring at a barely believable average of one goal every 49 minutes and 12 seconds.

This, you could argue, is the defining statistic when deciding which of the two greats are currently the best in the world. Both are ultimately judged by how many goals they score: that is why Messi - with his historic marks of 50 Liga goals in one season and 91 goals in total in 2012 - probably has the superior overall claim to greatness, if not this season then over his career so far.

(uk.eurosport.yahoo.com)

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