The countless rivalries that exist within sports makes them that much more exciting. Whether they exist between individuals, teams, regions, or even different ethnic or religious groups, rivalries add a unique sense of excitement to any competition.

For the past nine years, the international football community has been fortunate enough to watch the greatest individual rivalry in the history of sports. While rivalries such as Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer, Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson and Sidney Crosby vs Alex Ovechkin all present incredible drama, none compare to the nine-year reign of dominance currently being displayed by Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid & Portugal and Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona & Argentina.

In American sports, the awards for Most Valuable Player are handed out at the end of the regular season and before the beginning of the playoffs. In sports like golf or tennis, there is a ranking system that varies regularly based on the performances of athletes in their respective sports. These are two places in which football awards are unique compared to other sports. To start, there is technically no such thing as playoffs (outside of the Americanized MLS), meaning that footballers are judged based on their performances for an entire calendar year. Second, there is no ranking system in place for individual players, only for national teams.

The official award for the best footballer in the world is the Ballon d’Or (ball of gold in French). There are 30 players nominated for the prestigious award, which accepts votes from professional football players, coaches from across the world and high-ranking journalists. With all of the individuals most centrally involved in the sport having a say in the selection process, the player elected winner of the Ballon d’Or is typically accepted without much fuss.

Incredibly enough, for the last nine years, either Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi has won the Ballon d’Or. Ronaldo has won four Ballon d’Or trophies (2008, 2013, 2014, 2016), while Lionel Messi has won five (in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015). Between them, they have won 12 domestic league titles and seven Champions League titles, having broken a never-ending list of records on both the domestic and international level. Lionel Messi is widely considered the best player in the history of the sport, and some make their argument for Cristiano Ronaldo. Regardless of who one may consider the best, both of these players have undoubtedly cemented his place amongst the greats. It is important to note that one could easily argue Cristiano Ronaldo to have the more successful career between the two, but when it comes down to ability, Lionel Messi usually comes out on top.

In no other sport have two players remained in or immediately near the number one position in the world for so long, or so intermittently. After winning his first Ballon d’Or as a player on Manchester United, Cristiano Ronaldo watched Messi win the award for four straight years, before he came back and won it twice in a row as a player for Real Madrid. Messi then stole the crown again in 2015 before Ronaldo was again awarded the Ballon d’Or for the fourth time this past January. The rivalry between these two players is unprecedented considering the decade of consistency shown by both players, and we must remember to appreciate them both for the legends that they are despite all of the inevitable comparisons being made between the two players.

With that being said, we continue to compare.

While Cristiano Ronaldo is still performing relatively well, he is now 32 years old, and his form this season has not been quite as prolific by his sublime standards. He has looked slightly less sharp at times, and unless Real Madrid win the Champions League again this year as well as the Spanish domestic league, he is unlikely to ever win the Ballon d’Or again. Lionel Messi, on the other hand, is only 29 years old and is currently in mesmerizing form. Considering that Messi relies more on his technical ability, whereas Cristiano Ronaldo utilizes his physical dominance, Messi can likely win the Ballon d’Or at least twice more before somebody else finally takes the crown from the two superstars.

But who will it be?

Currently only 25 years old, Neymar is perfectly poised to win the next Ballon d’Or after teammate and mentor Lionel Messi decides to let him lead the frontline. FC Barcelona purchased the Brasilian in 2013 from Santos, his native club, where Neymar was considered a prodigious talent from the age of 16. He stayed in Brasil for a year longer than stardom-hungry European clubs wished he would, giving him another year to develop as a player, until finally moving to Barcelona at the ripe age of 21.

After a solid debut season with the club, Barcelona then bought Uruguay-native Luis Suarez from Liverpool, who is arguably best striker in the world. This trio of Messi, Neymar and Suarez quickly gelled in the 2014-2015 season, becoming what is now considered the best attacking line in the history of the sport. This goal machine trio produced 122 goals that season between them, leading the club to their second treble in club history, with Neymar making an immediate impact, scoring in the Champions League final against Juventus. On April 2^nd 2017, Neymar scored his 100^th goal for Barcelona in less than four seasons, indicating his comfort at the club.

Neymar has grown as a player in every season that he has been with Barcelona. With the mentorship of Messi and Suarez, along with veterans like Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique and coach Luis Enrique, Neymar will continue developing into the very superstar that people saw in him from day one. In fact, if he continues improving at this rate, he may even exceed those expectations. His ability to accelerate past players with innovative skill moves, use both feet to great effect, and his nose for both goals and assists make him the perfect winger. Most importantly though, you can tell in his style of play that Neymar lives for the joga bonito (the beautiful game in Portuguese).

Neymar has also proven his world-class abilities on the international stage, currently averaging well over half a goal a game for Brasil (a stellar statistic for a national team), which at this rate will see him easily passing the legendary Pele to become Brasil’s all time leading scorer. Neymar won Player of the Tournament honors at the 2013 Confederations Cup, had an impressive 2014 World Cup campaign before getting injured, and led Brasil to Olympic Gold for the first time in the country’s history last Summer. Neymar is the game-changing player that Brasil has been missing since Ronaldo (not to be confused with Cristiano Ronaldo) single-handedly won the 2002 World Cup with a brace in the final against Germany.

If Neymar would like to end the nine-year reign of Ronaldo & Messi more quickly than some may anticipate, he will need to perform just as the Brasilian Ronaldo once did for the national team. The World Cup is next summer, and with Neymar growing in confidence with every game, there is no reason that he cannot lead Brasil to their first World Cup since they won in South Korea in 2002. Such heroics would almost certainly guarantee him the 2018 Ballon d’Or, assuming that Messi wins the 2017 Ballon d’Or.

Realistically though, Neymar doesn’t need a World Cup to win the Ballon d’Or. As long as he continues to win trophies with Barcelona and performs at a high level for Brasil like has done for his entire career, it is only a matter of a time before Neymar is crowned king. He is simply that good. Surely, players like Eden Hazard and Paul Pogba are capable of beating Neymar to the throne, but none of them have hit the ground running in the way that Neymar has.

At this point, we are privileged enough to sit back, relax, and enjoy as Lionel Messi ever so slowly hands the torch to Neymar. Or, depending on what Neymar wants to do, maybe it won’t be so slow at all.

Claudio Ranieri is a genius.

In the 2014-2015 Premier League season, Leicester City was a mess. Going into 2015, Leicester looked set for relegation into the EFL Championship, the second division of England, as they sat at the bottom of the league standings. Yet somehow, the Foxes managed to finish in 14th place, escaping the treacherous pit of regulation by a nervy six points. Ugly football riddled the club at times, but all they needed was survival. After such a treacherous season, Leicester City fired Nigel Pearson, their coach who led Leicester to promotion from the third division into the Premier League.

The man chosen to fill his place was none other than signore Ranieri.

Nobody could have predicted what happened starting three months after their survival of their first run at the Prem, and only one month after Ranieri’s hiring. In what is widely considered to be the greatest sporting achievement of all time, Leicester City won the 2015-2016 Barclays Premier League for the first time in the club’s history, overcoming odds of 5000/1 in doing so. Ranieri took what had seemed like a team of average and below-average players and turned them into a disciplined, efficient and exciting team that poured every ounce of passion into their play. Players likes Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and N’golo Kante had breakout seasons, and based on their lackluster performances in the season before, Ranieri deserves all of the praise in the world for what Leicester’s players achieved. To top things off, Mahrez was named Player of the Year in England, and Ranieri was named Manager of the Year.

So yes, you could say that the Italian manager is a deity at Leicester City.

Sadly, though, this season has not painted a picture anywhere close to that of last season’s fairytale league championship. Leicester struggled through the entire first half of the season, largely walking along a tense tightrope of two or three positions that dangled above the relegation zone. They seemed to have reverted back to the ways of two seasons before, when they struggled to merely escape relegation to the Championship. The team seemed to be lacking the fiery desire to succeed which brought them the league title just months prior, and relegation looked to be a serious threat.

After performing miracles in his first season with the club, Ranieri was now subject to serious criticisms about his team’s poor form. Critics of Ranieri pointed to the fact that Leicester was more or less fielding the same team that won the Premier League the season before, but they clearly missed the presence of Kante after the summer transfer window saw him making a move to current table leaders Chelsea. Kante is the kind of player that every team needs: he seems to be everywhere on the pitch at all times, intercepting or tackling the ball in key areas, starting and finishing counter attacks, and controlling the tempo of the game. During their championship season, the 5’7” Frenchman led Europe’s top five leagues in tackles. Without N’Golo Kante, Leicester City would never have won the Premier League.

Leicester failed to adequately replace Kante, once he departed, which is another potential area of criticism for Ranieri, but here is the problem with such criticism: you cannot easily replace a player like N’Golo Kante. So, with such a huge hole now existing in the Leicester City starting XI going into a new season, many expected Leicester to return to their form of the 2014-2015 season, and they did. While Ranieri was in part to blame for such a drastic drop in form, surely his job was safe. His heroics in the season before were nothing short of magical sorcery, to say the least, and he was revered not only by Leicester City, but by the entire international football community for his tremendous achievement. If he could lead his team to the Premier League title in his first season in charge of the side, then he could surely save them from relegation in his second.

The hierarchy at Leicester City disagreed, and only nine months after creating history in winning the Premier League, Claudio Ranieri was fired in February of this year.

Leicester City’s decision to sack Ranieri came largely as a shock for the football community. It was simply unfathomable as to how a manager who beat the odds of 5000/1 in his first season as coach to win the most competitive league in the world could be fired less than a year after doing so. Although Leicester’s form was indeed awful in the first half of the 2016-2017 season, many felt that Ranieri should have been given the courtesy of at least completing his second season with the club before being given the boot. Ranieri was adorned for his genuine personality, which was central to Leicester’s 2015-2016 success, and despite his short tenure, he almost seemed to take on the persona of the grandfather of the club. How could you fire your grandfather?

Sadly, Leicester City’s choice to sack Claudio Ranieri is reflective of a much wider trend that has plagued football across Europe’s top five leagues for quite some time now. Arsene Wenger is currently the longest serving manager in Europe’s top five leagues, having coached Arsenal for 20 years. The next longest serving manager, Christophe Galtier for Saint-Etienne, has only been the coach there for seven years. With such a large gap between first and second longest serving coaches in mind, it is clearly rare nowadays for any manager to remain in charge of a club for more than a couple of seasons. Football clubs are hungry for immediate success, expecting their managers to make significant improvement in their team’s ability to perform and achieve positive results, seemingly overnight. Such an unhealthy mentality ultimately leads to the premature sacking of managers before they are even given the time to cement their philosophies within the training ground.

What makes the case of Ranieri so confusing, so infuriating, and so heartbreaking, is that he was the definition of immediate success. In fact, he was the most dramatic case of immediate success in the history of the sport. Leicester City went from being the worst team in the Premier League to being the best team in the Premier League in just one calendar year, thanks to Ranieri. Certainly he did not deserve to be on the end of such strong criticisms that he received during the first half of the 2016-2017 season so soon after working wonders. Would firing grandpa really improve the quality of performances for Leicester City?

Sadly, three weeks into the new Leicester Era, the answer is yes.

Since Ranieri’s dismissal, Leicester City has created significantly more goals, and are conceding far less at the same time. The club has played four games under current coach Craig Shakespeare since Ranieri was dropped in late February, and they have won all four of these games, scoring 11 goals and conceding only four. These include a 3-1 win against top side Liverpool, and a massive 2-0 win against Sevilla, which sent them through to the Quarterfinal of the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history.

In the short term, things have looked brighter for Leicester City, and one could certainly argue that this impressive run of form is directly correlated with Ranieri’s dismissal. It is important to keep in mind, though, that three weeks is not enough time to assess whether this success can be accredited to the sacking of Claudio Ranieri or not. We will have to wait and see where Leicester City end up both in the Premier League and in the Champions League in order to make such a statement.

Regardless of whether sacking Ranieri goes on to help Leicester City avoid relegation like they did in the 2014-2015 season, I cannot help but hold a grudge against the club for the way that they treated the Italian genius. Although this sounds selfish of me, a large part of me actually wishes that Leicester City is relegated again, strictly so that the club front office rues their decision to let Ranieri go. The lack of faith that they showed to a man who gave them more than they could ever even dream of having in just nine months is astounding. It is disrespectful to the man himself, to Leicester city fans (excluding the small contingent who supported his sacking), and it is disrespectful to football culture as a whole.

So, to repeat the sentiments of so many football fans around the world, I have two words for Claudio Ranieri:

THANK YOU!