Messi vs Ronaldo in 2013: ronaldo's best year.

69 goals in 2013 is the highest calendar-year total of Ronaldo's career. Messi's 45 was his 11th-best and the first sign of the injury-affected period that followed his 2012 peak; the 24-goal margin is the 3rd-largest of any year Ronaldo led.

It bought him the Ballon d'Or in December, his second, ending Messi's four-year run and with Messi second. The 2013–14 season beginning in this year became La Décima: 51 goals in 47 games and a Champions League single-tournament record of 17.

The most loaded single goal of the year was not a hat-trick. On 5 March, Ronaldo returned to Old Trafford with Real Madrid in a Champions League round of 16 and scored in a 2–1 win — one goal, against the club that made him, in the stadium where he had spent six years. It sits in this site's records as a near-miss rather than a hat-trick, because that is what it was.

Sir Alex Ferguson, who signed him from Sporting CP at 18 and managed him for those six years, described him as having "the lot — physical, technical, mental" and as the best young player he ever signed.

In 2013 Ronaldo posted his career-best calendar year while Messi's 45 fell outside his own top ten, and Ronaldo took the Ballon d'Or for the first time since 2008 — the award had gone to Messi in each of the four years between. Their 114 combined goals was the fourth year running above 100.