How Ronaldo and Messi Accidentally Changed Football Forever

There was a time when a great season in football looked very different.
A forward could score 25 goals, win the league, produce moments of brilliance in Europe and comfortably walk away with the Ballon d’Or. Midfielders could dominate games through elegance and control rather than overwhelming statistics. Numbers mattered, but they did not define football in the suffocating way they do now.
Then Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi arrived and quietly distorted reality for an entire generation.
Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But permanently.
Before their era fully exploded, winning football’s biggest individual prize often required excellence rather than statistical absurdity. ...