🚨 Carlo Ancelotti on the greatest player he has ever seen during El Clásico: “People would probably expect me to say Cristiano Ronaldo. I'm a Ronaldo fan, I worked with him, and I know exactly what that man is capable of. His mentality, his hunger, his ability to score when everything is against him. Cristiano is special. But if you're asking me who was the greatest player I personally witnessed during El Clásico, my answer is Lionel Messi. And I know some people won't like hearing that, especially Madridistas. Messi was the kind of player who made you forget you were playing against Barcelona and made you concentrate entirely on him. Between 2013 and 2015, I experienced it firsthand. You could prepare your team, study Barcelona's movements, organize your defensive line and tell your players exactly what to do. Then Messi would receive the ball, and suddenly everything you had planned became complicated. He wasn't just scoring goals. He was controlling the game, creating chances, taking responsibility and making decisions that nobody else on the pitch could see coming. Cristiano could destroy you with his finishing, his movement and his mentality. But Messi could destroy your entire defensive structure without even needing to score. That was the difference for me. And the difficult thing was that you couldn't simply tell your players to stop him. You needed two or three players around him, but the moment you committed those players, somebody else became free. That's football intelligence. That's understanding the game at a level that very few players have ever reached. I'm not going to disrespect Cristiano to praise Messi. I don't need to do that. Cristiano is one of the greatest players I've ever worked with. But when I remember those Clásicos, when I remember the pressure, the atmosphere and the quality of football, Messi was the player who made me think, 'This is something extraordinary.' And if somebody asks me to choose the greatest player I witnessed during those matches, I will say Messi. Even knowing that everybody expected me to say Cristiano.”