'Messi is an artist...but Ronaldo is a machine'

Rio Ferdinand explains to a group of young England hopefuls how much work his former Manchester United team-mate put into his game and describes the Barca superstar as a 'genius'

Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo? Everybody has their favourite and the debate as to who is the best player goes on and on.

But rather than pick a winner, Rio Ferdinand explained the differences between the two players to the England Under-16 squad in a recent Q&A session filmed by FA TV.

Ferdinand describes Messi as an 'artist' and a 'genius', while his former Manchester United team-mate is painted as a 'well-oiled machine'

"It's two different superstars," Ferdinand said. "The best way to describe it is Messi is like a genius. He shouldn't be that good.

"He's small. If you're going to build a footballer you're going to build Ronaldo, so Messi is working from a disadvantage straight away, and he's doing ridiculous things. He's like an artist, he's just a genius.

"Ronaldo is like a driven, well-oiled machine, who has made himself that superstar.

"Messi seems like he's more natural. Its just been given to him. Someone looked down and said 'You're the man'. And he went out there and did it, and he's just a beautiful footballer.

"There's two different players, but the respect for both of them is huge. I just think it's great that we're in this time where we can appreciate these two ridiculous footballers putting up numbers that noone has ever even seen."

Ferdinand also breaks down the amount of time and effort Ronaldo put into improving his game during his time with United.

He said: "You've got Cristiano Ronaldo who came to the club as a good player, as a talented player. You think he was what he is today? He wasn't. He has worked.

"He didn't have a great shot when he came. He had a powerful shot but it went everywhere.

"He used to go out after - he was embarrassed - pick up a bag of balls, walk around to another pitch right over the other side [of the training field] so he could hide behind the trees.

"'Ronnie, where are you going man?'

"'I'm just going over there.'

"After a few months you'd see. 'Where's Ronnie going? He's doing shooting, he does stepovers.' He used to put these mad things on his feet, these weights, and do mad stepovers.

"I used to think 'Are you mad? What are you doing?' Until he started bamboozling people.

"You'd get to that stage where he was flying for Manchester United but it wasn't enough. He wants to be the best. He's not getting the ball and doing these mad tricks all the time; he wants efficiency, goals, assists. That's all he cared about."