Sitting across from his former Manchester United team-mate Rio Ferdinand, Tevez did not hesitate. Asked for the best player he had ever shared a pitch with, he picked Paul Scholes.
Not Messi. Not Ronaldo. Scholes.
The verdict came on Ferdinand’s YouTube show Rio Ferdinand Presents, and the reasoning had nothing to do with trophies or showreel moments. It was a training-ground memory.
“Do you remember at training? Like this, no speak, nothing. First ball. All the time at training, pass, pass, pass. For me, the best,” Tevez said, in comments reported by Yahoo Sports on 28 October.
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Pushed to pair that answer with a second passer, he reached across his career to Juventus and named Andrea Pirlo alongside the United midfielder.
Messi over Ronaldo, and why
Tevez did not duck the question the Scholes answer immediately raised. Asked to choose between the two players who have carved up the GOAT argument for a generation, he picked Messi, and framed the pick very specifically.
“For me, Messi. For me, because Messi is natural. It comes naturally to him. We’d watch Cristiano, who with every dribble or every move he made, he was training it all the time, and Messi, I never saw him train that,” he told GiveMeSport.
He went further, telling the same outlet that Messi would occasionally announce in the dressing room, very calmly, that the team would win 2-0, and then go out and score both goals himself.
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A view from three dressing rooms
Few players are placed to make this comparison in the first place. Tevez spent two seasons at Manchester United on loan after joining from West Ham, playing alongside Scholes and Ronaldo under Sir Alex Ferguson, as GiveMeSport recapped. He later wore the Argentina shirt with Messi, and lined up next to Pirlo at Juventus.
That gives his answer a different weight from the usual pundit ranking. He is not comparing players he watched on television. He is comparing the players he trained with every day.
The full conversation is available on Ferdinand’s YouTube channel Rio Ferdinand Presents.
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