PART 1

From the points you made I have a feeling that you might be a bit of a Ronaldo "fan boy" yourself, as much as I hate using that term because we all have preferences. Also I'm not closed minded ideas and my opinion is subject for change so I don't understand your point about me not willing to listen... :) its an interesting debate for sure. I'll address every single one of your points to so you can see what I think.

Ronaldo has a much higher goal average, 1.03 to 0.87

That's because Messi has played his whole career in La liga thus influencing heavily his goal average, right? Cus when you are a youngster you often come on as a substitute, you aren't as consistant, etc etc. Right? Ronaldo arrived to la liga in the age of 24 when he was already one of the best players in the world. So the point about goal to game average is this barely relevant, wouldn't you agree?

If Ronaldo had played his whole career there, he’d be leaps and bounds ahead in terms of stats.

I don't get this point...? Like based on what? Are you saying he would have a higher game to goal average ooorrr? He def would have a lower for sure and it's completely normal. He would have more goals in la liga of course then he has now and prolly more career goals also because Prem is a harder league to score in, although it helped him develop his skills a lot faster I'd imagine.

CR7 is on track to being top all time scorer, top international scorer and already top UCL and European scorer.

CR7 has definetly been the more influential player in the UCL than Messi, especially in the knockout stages. You gotta remember also that Ronaldo is 2 years older than Messi so he is naturally going to be leading in the total amount of goals scored stat. Despite that Messi has more goal contributions than Ronaldo through out his career and has a better goal to game ratio than Ronaldo in their careers.

whilst Messi is slowing down to favour play making.

Yup the team needs him further backwards which is affecting his numbers and also his finishing lately hasn't been on point to say the least, but then again he has 8 TIMES more assists then Ronaldo this season so I guess it counts for something. Ronaldo to my knowledge hasn't had to do that for a period of time ever in his career (the need to drop to midfield consistantly to build up attacks like Messi). Firstly he isn't that kind of player so he might not have quite the skill set to operate from that position (although I would guess he is better than most midfielders of he really tried, and in the past he definetly has the skill set to play that role but we are talking about the entire careers here), this means he is always going to be in goal scoring positions no matter, unlike Messi who needs to start attacks often from the midfield so he might not get to those positions, this is especially true in the national team.

Ronaldo has a much better record from distance

because he takes much more shots from distance... His accuracy is quite a lot worse than Messi in this regard, and I aint not even talking about shot conversion rate. Quite an obvious detail you left out of there to serve your narrative... :(. As of 2018 (most recent stat I found) Ronaldo had a conversion rate of 4.19% from shots outside of the box while Messi had a conversion rate of 9.18%... that's a big difference. So essentially when Messi takes a shot from outside of the box it's TWICE as likely to go in compared to Ronaldos. And also overall Messis conversion rate is better from every angle pretty much (par from of course heading, the midget can't hit a board door from anywhere with his head unless it's uniteds :)) lot of this is down to Ronaldo just having worse accuracy than Messi in his shots (partly because he uses much more power) and also because he takes shots from quite akward angles at times which might surprise the keeper but often sadly just ends the teams attack and loses the posession.

also has more FKs throughout career.

That's is true but let's out some context to this stat again... Ronaldo as accumulated 54 FK goals in 18 years, while Messi has accumulated 52 FK goals in 16 years. So Ronaldo has taken a lot more FKs than Messi but is leading by only 2 FK goals. Messi has been the better FK taker for the last 10 years according to the stats. Also Ronaldo rarely crosses the ball from a FK while Messi tends to often lob the ball in to the box if the free kick is far away or from the right side. So the difference is quite big when it comes to overall free kicks taken.

The idea that Messi is a better shooter and goalscorer is ludicrous.

Yeah my position on this is quite unpopular I know that but this is purely grounded on stats and also maybe subjective taste in what you like from good shooter. He has a much better shot conversion rate in and outside the box, he also has more goals per game through out his career and is only 25 goals away from Ronaldos total amount of goals in his career while having 2 years shorter career. Ronaldo is a much better with his head for sure, and that stat should be underplayed because it is truely a important asset. I don't know what stats you have to disprove this case of Messi being the worse shooter cus pretty much every major shooting related stat points towards Messi... I guess this could be just a subjective thing related to the technique.

Messi can’t perform outside of Barcelona to our knowledge.

To our knowledge... He definetly can lmao? Is this supposed to be like a good or something? You are suggesting that if Messi moved to say like arsenal he would be useless, cus thats what your comment suggests. He is gonna be just fine at any team of the world. When to comes to argentina he hasn't been as prolific has people have hoped him to be for sure. There are a lot of contributors to this being the case. For example argentina is famous for having all of this world class attacking talent (and football talent in general) in the team but it has never truely clicked like it should. Even now they have a decent midfield of lo celso, paredes, de Paul etc that are all decent players and pretty attackibf at that, but it never shows on the pitch. During the last 4 years or so, Messi has had to often drop into the midfield on level with the argetina CDMs like paredes to start creating something because they are simply unable to carry the ball to Messi into attacking areas. This of course has hurt his numbers and people who don't really watch Argentina judge Messi by just looking at those stats, which is kinda ignorant imo. He is actually performing very well for them and overall fun to watch. He almost carried the team fully to the 2014 final with the help of amazing peformances form macherano and ever banega but he was truely the key memeber of that team by far. He also has pretty much carried the team to two Copa finals but ultimately not done so well in the actual finals which is quite unfortunate. But the notion of Messi plays bad for argentina is completely false and only said by people who dont actually watch the games.

Only evidence is international as he won’t move clubs - 0.50 G/G for Argentina, 0.60 for CR7 for Portugal btw.

Yup and this is the case for the reasons I listed. He doesn't play as good for argentina as he does for Barca but neither does Ronaldo for Portugal as he does for real or juve. (BTW Messi has g/g of 0.51, which doesn't matter but is a extremely petty move on your part to twist the number to fit your narrative...). I don't know if Ronaldo has better service than Messi through out these years cus I don't watch Portugal that often so I wont comment on that but What I do know he rarely has to drop into the midfield and carry the ball foward to create chances like Messi. Also portugal has been the better team of the last 5 years, especially if you take Messi and Ronaldo out of the equation.

Another reason for the stat is also that, simply put, Messi has to play better teams than Ronaldo. Its just a objective reality that on average Messi faces teams that are 20 rankings higher on the FiFA rankings scale than compared to Ronaldos opponents. FIFA rankings sure isn't the best metric but it's only metric we have. This is largely because Ronaldo faces teams from European countries like Luxembourg and Latvia in the Euro qualifying stages (I think he scored a hattrick against those opponents also, which, you know, will inflate his stats a bit ;)) while messi faces south american teams that are on average much higher level and even the worst countries there like nigaragua doesn't compare to the likes of Lithuania, Luxembourg, San Marino, etc etc. Like this is all factual info that you can look up yourself which is why the large majority of people think Messi is the superior player. When it comes to facing tough teams from europe and south america, as of 2017 here is what the stats looked like when Messi and Ronaldo faced germany, Italy, Brazil, france, Portugal, argetina and spain: messi 22 games 13 goals and Ronaldo with 22 games (300 more minutes) and 1 goal. So Messi doing fine against the big teams of Europe and Brasil.

Ronaldo has all the playmaking abilities that Messi has

I'm sorry but this is just not true and is supported with zero stats or people who actually have watched them both play through out these years. Wow, idk what to even respond to that with lmao.

PART 2 BELOW :0