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The Lionel Messi Vs Cristiano Ronaldo Debate May Have Been Ended With In-Depth Twitter Thread Daniel Marland in Football Published 11:14 AM, Monday May 25 2020 GMT+1.

The Telegraph had their social media channels hacked on Saturday afternoon – with football superstar Lionel Messi being (wrongly) announced dead.

Messi is alive and well with no harm being done to the Barcelona superstar, but hearts will have skipped a beat after this tweet from the verified Telegraph Sport account was sent out on Saturday.

What is happening @TeleFootball – Messi has died ???? #Hackedpic.twitter.com/vawh33GlbD

— ian (@igrattan) December 12, 2020

While the issue was quickly rectified by the Telegraph, it did fast become clear that all of their social media channels had been compromised. Across the board, they were screenshotted tweeting utter nonsense.

The Telegraph got hacked bad, the ‘snitch’ tweet absolutely sent me ? pic.twitter.com/YrDp5zI8xv

— Matt Turner (@MattTurner4L) December 12, 2020

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For a publication as esteemed and respected as the Telegraph, it’s a bit of an embarrassment, but these things happen, and it’s unfortunate that their login details fell into the hands of someone with the cojones to tweet what they did.

But – and most importantly – Lionel Messi is not dead. As and when he does pass, which will hopefully be many, many years into the distant future, ideally never, you’ll here about it first here at CaughtOffside.

Lionel Messi isn't exactly immune to criticism.

You don't become one of the greatest sportspeople in history without amassing thousands of haters and Messi's place in the GOAT debate has been the cause for plenty of heated arguments.

You daren't ask people who they think the greatest player of all time is without the comments section being filled with passionate arguments either backing Messi or one of his mercurial rivals.

Messi's place in history

Besides, whether you regard the Barcelona superstar as football's number one or not, you can hardly deny that the six-time Ballon d'Or is firmly in the conversation.

We are talking about someone on course to finish their career as the highest goalscorer in the history of the beautiful game, after all, not to mention his astonishing collection of trophies.

But that hasn't stopped the 33-year-old from being treated harshly for certain aspects of his career, namely only having played for Barcelona and having failed to win the World Cup.

Criticisms of Messi

One of the biggest arguments lodged in favour of Cristiano Ronaldo is that the Portuguese has proven himself across bountiful spells in England, Spain and Italy.

Messi, on the other hand, is viewed by many with great suspicion for having only cut his teeth in La Liga and some fans even speculate that he would flop in competitions like the Premier League.

That's not to mention the fact Messi is yet to win a major honour with Argentina, suffering a heartbreaking string of final defeats in the World Cup and Copa America between 2014 and 2016.

Fascinating new Twitter thread

But to what extent are those two weighty points valid criticisms of Messi? Well, a fascinating new Twitter thread by football writer Paul Murphy has provided a brilliant angle on the status quo.

Murphy has attracted thousands of 'likes' and hundreds of retweets by way of mocking the criticisms against Messi by speculating how fans would view other legends if they were treated similarly.

Lionel Messi Twitter Official

In other words, how would we look at various football legends if we judged them in the same way as Messi? If you're intrigued by that concept, which I suspect you are, check out the thread here:

Messi Twitter Reaction

Should we rethink how we view Messi?

While it might be deliberately exaggerated in places, I'm inclined to think the Twitter thread does a fantastic job of highlighting certain areas where Messi is treated a little harsher than others.

Naturally, Messi is being held to a higher standard than, say, David Beckham or Kenny Dalglish, but it's interesting to see how easily you can flip perceptions of Diego Maradona or Zinedine Zidane.

It's also amusing to see modern Twitter language used against stars like Pele who played decades and decades ago with accusations of playing 'pub teams' ringing so true in a 2020 context.

Messi Twitter Account

Besides, I think we can all agree that the various legends being branded frauds is absolute nonsense - deliberately so, of course - and similar accusations are Messi are equally bogus.

Messi Twitter Reaction

It doesn't mean that you should suddenly change your GOAT answer to Messi, don't get me wrong, but it's simply fascinating to see the way he's discussed on social media put under the spotlight.

Messi Twitter Posts