Jamaican football star Leon Bailey has waded into the Lionel Messi vs Cristiano Ronaldo debate, and, while he praised both legends, feels the Argentine has stayed with FC Barcelona “for too long”.  

Bailey, appearing on ESPN FC’s Alexis Nunes Meets show with the titular Jamaican host, sparked a firestorm of polarising comments as he offered his perspective on the two modern greats. 

When asked “If you were Messi, stay or leave Barcelona?”, the 23-year-old Bailey calmly responded that Messi should part ways with the struggling La Liga club. However, instead of leaving the comment there, Bailey went further to compare the achievements of Messi with his Juventus rival Cristiano Ronaldo.

“I think he has been at one club for too long and the big difference with a Cristiano Ronaldo and a [Lionel] Messi is Cristiano Ronaldo has done great things [with] different teams and that’s what makes him great,” he said in the interview, which aired on ESPN FC’s YouTube page on Wednesday (February 17).

“Obviously, they’re two great players but Cristiano will always have that upper hand. I believe Messi is more talented than Cristiano but when it comes to success I will give that to Cristiano Ronaldo a hundred times,” the Bayer Leverkusen forward added.

While some agreed with Bailey’s perspective, others felt he was too young to be speaking definitively on the Messi vs Ronaldo topic in an informal sense as the lighthearted Nunes show. 

More still, didn’t find the remark objective as Bailey demonstrated a bias for Ronaldo, evidenced in the naming of his son, Leo Cristiano, who was also a topic on the recent interview.

“Head to head during Ronaldo’s time in Spain, Messi has clearly been the better player. And aside from that, people need to stop acting as if Ronaldo joined bum teams and took [th]em to the top. He joined teams that were [already] winning,” one man commented under the video on ESPN FC’s Instagram page. 

See the interview in full below: