Messi vs Ronaldo in 2025: a first mls cup.

In 2025 the two careers ran entirely in parallel, with no prospect of a meeting. Ronaldo scored 39 to Messi's 25 — Ronaldo's joint 16th-best year, Messi's 19th — and their combined 64 continued the decline from 154 in 2012.

Messi's return was a trophy rather than a total: Inter Miami won the MLS Cup in December, the club's first, which took his count of honours at the club to three in three years and his career team-trophy total to the figure published on this site.

Ronaldo's most consequential goal of the year was a penalty. On 4 April he scored a late winner against Al-Ittihad that kept Al Nassr's Saudi Pro League title hopes alive — his eleventh penalty of that league season, which is a rate that says as much about his role in the side as his finishing.

There was no Messi–Ronaldo fixture in 2025. A February 2024 friendly between Al Nassr and Inter Miami is sometimes described as their last meeting; Ronaldo did not play in it, so this site does not count it, and the head-to-head record still ends in January 2023.

2025 is the second full calendar year of the post-Europe era, after 2024: neither player appeared in a Champions League or World Cup match in either year, because neither was in a competition that stages one. Both spent the whole twelve months at the same non-European club, which had not been true before 2024.