Messi vs Ronaldo: Comparison of their battles with Ashley Cole is eye-opening

Ashley Cole is without question one of the greatest left-backs the sport of football has ever seen.

For well over a decade with Arsenal, Chelsea and the England national team, Cole consistently performed to a world-class standard.

The 2012 Champions League winner was as good as they come from a defensive perspective and was also pretty lethal when he got on the ball in the final third.

Cole’s brilliance on the left flank saw him named in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year four times and the UEFA Team of the Year twice.

Many elite-level wingers were halted in their tracks by the 41-year-old, including the great Cristiano Ronaldo in his first spell at Manchester United.

In an interview when he was playing for Real Madrid, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner named Cole as the toughest defender he came up against – and it’s easy to see why when you watch several clips from their on-pitch duels

pic.twitter.com/na2gDZez6F

Yeah, it was a pretty one-sided battle…

Cole just seemed to have the answers to every question posed by Ronaldo and few full-backs in history have been able to pull that off.

But there was one man who the Chelsea icon struggled to contain and that man is Ronaldo’s eternal rival, Lionel Messi.

When he was a guest on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, Cole talked about coming up against the Paris Saint-Germain superstar, stating that “he was too good for me”.

He said: “People talk about Ronaldo more because I played against him more. But I think to mark Messi, on his day… he was just too good for me.”

And judging by footage of Cole trying to stop Messi in a Champions League match at Stamford Bridge, his comments were spot on.

Ronaldo says his toughest opponent was Cole, Cole says his toughest opponent was