for me it's always been obvious messi was the goat. it was simply more aesthetically pleasing to watch him play. ronaldo made lots of useless moves and helped his teams a lot by diving or threatening to dive, messi never did that. just cut through every defense like butter, made the right decisions always, in the right timing, with incredible accuracy and unparalleled agility. it's dumbfounding how great he was at everything except headers, and that's only because of his size.
pic related because the difference is probably the amount of dribbles that ended in a dive by ronaldo