It's been a week to forget for both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi from the penalty spot. In their respective Euro last 16 and Copa America quarter-final stages, both players, debated upon for years as to who is superior, struggled from 12-yards. While their teammates were able to prevail and keep tournament hopes alive, these top players from this generation's upper echelon of natural talent seemingly had uncharacteristic, synchronous moments of misery under pressure.

While we dissect what happened, read on further as GIVEMESPORT charts the two greats' penalty records as well as their best and worst moments with the eyes of the world glued to where their penalties might end up.

Penalty Pain, Tears and Team-mate Redemption

As said, both Ronaldo and Messi had their own issues from the spot this week. Of course, CR7's story was a little different to that of his Argentinian sparring partner - as in Portugal's Round of 16 match with Slovenia, his penalty in extra-time was artfully saved by Jan Oblak, resulting in a BBC graphic dubbing the forward 'Misstiano Penaldo'.

With what must be one of Slovenia's footballing highs, it was seemingly a real low for Cristiano. The waterworks arrived in due course, before Diogo Costa helped dry his eyes with three superb consecutive shootout saves before and after the captain had made up for his penalty with a staggered run and slot home. Although Costa was the hero, Ronaldo was ultimately the headline-grabber and, like so many times in the past 20 years, Messi's miss confounded a similar pattern.

In a game where Lisandro Martinez opened the scoring for the Albiceleste with a first half header just crossing the line, flicked on from a Messi corner, Ecuador then missed a penalty of their own in search of the equaliser after handball against Rodrigo De Paul. A late leveller arrived with a deft Kevin Rodriguez header in the 91st minute to send the game to penalties.

Lionel Messi, who has been dubbed Lionel 'Pessi' by some looking to discredit his penalty record, was the first to step up in the shootout, and while he sent goalkeeper Alexander Dominguez the wrong way, his Panenka dink was too high and pinged off the top of the crossbar to start the kicks in the worst fashion. Like Ronaldo, Messi was helped by a fine combination of his goalkeeper and other takers - as Argentina prevailed 4-2 thanks to two saves from Emiliano Martinez and conversions from Julian Alvarez, Alexis Mac Allister, Gonzalo Montiel, and Nicolas Otamendi.

The Stats breakdown of Messi and Ronaldo from the 12-yards

In total, Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 163 out of his 193 penalties attempted across all senior competitions. This leaves him with a ridiculous success rate of 84.5%. For Messi, he has taken fewer, with a total of 110 out of 141 attempted. His success rate is 78%.

For Ronaldo, his most prolific team for penalties was Real Madrid where he notched 79 goals from 12-yards. In that spell, he missed (or had saved) 18.

In his best spell in front of nervy international keepers, Ronaldo scored eight penalties for Portugal between 2018/19 and 2020/21. Incidentally, adding his recent miss, he’s failed to score on eight occasions. While most have arrived in international friendlies, the saved penalty against Slovenia arrives in good company as he also failed to convert from the spot in Euro 2016 against Austria. On his penalty technique, The Athletic's Kevin Coulson analysed after the two kicks of varying success levels against Slovenia:

"His approach is known as the ‘goalkeeper independent’ technique. That is, he picks a spot in the goal and tries to find it, regardless of what his opponent does."

Lionel Messi’s most prolific team for penalties, is of course, Barcelona. With the Blaugrana, Messi netted 78 penalties. In that spell, he missed (or had saved) 29.

In this prime period for the Argentinian, with the Albiceleste, he scored 19 penalties. Adding this recent Panenka fail, Messi has only missed the opportunity to score six penalties for his country. The most notable arrived in the World Cups of 2018 against Iceland, where the minnows secured an historic 1-1 draw, and 2022 against Poland. Argentina ended up winning that one 2-0 regardless.

Messi’s most successful season from the penalty spot was 2011/12. In that term, he scored 17 spot-kicks, with 14 for Barcelona and three for Argentina. His worst seasons for penalties arrived joined together, between 2014/15, 2015/16, and 2017/18 with four misses or failed conversions a-piece. Notably, when shedding some light on the processes and psychology behind penalties, Messi spoke of his decisive effort in the 2022 World Cup semi-final against Croatia:

"I studied the Croatian goalkeeper's technique with (Geronimo) Rulli and with Dibu (Emi Martinez). We talked about how he waited a lot. The best thing to do was to surprise and hit him at once, instead of waiting and holding him. When they hold him for a long time, it's difficult. I was determined to kick like that."