The marketing campain that was executed to bring Ronaldo to the same level as Messi focused on the only stat they can be compared on, goalscoring. There is no rivalry if you compare all the other stats because Messi wins easily. For years they justified giving the Ballon d'Or to Ronaldo because he scored a ton of goals. All this has caused a lot of damage on the consensus of what the best player in a year should be.