Ronaldo, Ronaldo or Ronaldinho, which one actually deserves the name the most

[Merchant]

Football has given us three players who go by some version of Ronaldo and all three could make a case for being the best footballer of their respective generation, which makes for one of the more fun naming arguments the sport has to offer. Brazil's original Ronaldo, usually referred to as Ronaldo Nazario or simply R9 to separate him from what came later, is still regarded by plenty of good judges as the most complete out and out striker the game has ever produced, a two footed, ludicrously explosive forward who won two World Cups and two Ballons d'Or before injuries robbed him of what might have been an even more absurd peak.

Then there is Ronaldinho, the closest thing football has had to pure joy made flesh, a player who turned genuinely unwatchable Barcelona and Brazil sides into must watch television purely through flair, a World Cup winner in 2002 and a Ballon d'Or winner in 2005 who somehow made elite football look like a street kickabout even at the very top level of the sport.

And finally Cristiano Ronaldo, CR7, who took a completely different route to greatness, transforming himself from a stepover heavy winger into arguably the most relentless goalscoring machine the sport has ever seen, racking up five Ballons d'Or and what stands at 979 career goals, a level of manufactured, obsessive excellence that could not be more different from Ronaldinho's effortless style or the original Ronaldo's natural gifts.

Three completely different types of genius, three completely different eras, and three genuinely strong cases for the title. So which Ronald do you actually rate the highest?

[ECWCole36]

Cristiano wins this on sheer accumulated output alone. 979 goals and counting is not a fluke of longevity, that requires an obsessive level of professionalism sustained across two decades that neither of the other two ever came close to matching.

[CMPunk_Fan]

Ronaldinho gets my vote purely on joy and cultural impact. He made an entire generation of kids want to pick up a football, and that Barcelona team around 2005 to 2006 was must watch television in a way most technically superior sides never quite manage to be.

[Rapid Crossing]

Has to be the original Ronaldo for me. Everyone who actually saw him play before the knee injuries at his absolute peak around 1997 to 1998 says the same thing, that he was simply doing things nobody else could physically do at that size and speed combined.

[Delulu67]

R9 not winning more Ballons d'Or than he did is purely down to those injuries robbing him of years he should have had at the top. Fully fit across a normal career arc and this is not even a debate, he wins going away.

[Bussin99]

People forget how genuinely dominant peak Ronaldinho was before the decline set in. That 2005 season specifically, the Bernabeu standing ovation game against Real Madrid, that is still one of the great individual performances against a rival crowd in the sport's history.

[NovaPrime68]

Ronaldo's two World Cups settle it for me personally. Individual brilliance is great, but delivering on the very biggest stage the sport has to offer, twice, is the tiebreaker when three cases are otherwise this close.

[CyberWarden61]

I actually think this comparison undersells just how different these three players were as footballers. Comparing a poacher, a flair merchant and a manufactured goal machine on the same scale almost does a disservice to what made each of them special