Shocking farewell plan could finally unite Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo | OneFootball

Carlos Tévez has collected titles, strong words, and a straight connection with idols who transcended generations. Today, off the pitch, Carlitos is warming up what could be his grand final role as a hero: a farewell game with a stellar squad, at La Bombonera, and the bold challenge of assembling Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in the same team.

Sounds over-the-top? Maybe. But from Tévez, expectation turns into skepticism. And this sort of move has everything it needs to become an international spectacle, one that can go viral, break viewing records, and revive debates that had seemed lost for good.

UEFA Champions League Final - Manchester United Training | Shaun Botterill/GettyImages

The so-called dream farewell

The plan is to arrange a match at the end of the year, in the xeneize temple, with the greatest legends who crossed paths with the Argentine number 10's career. And he doesn't want to do it halfway. The plan is to put Messi and Cristiano together, yes, together, on the same team.

"Ronaldo on one side and Messi on the other? I'll put them together," said Tévez, in an exclusive interview to the Argentine TV show Olga. And he went a step further: "If I have to, I'll bring him (CR7) myself," when referring to Cristiano Ronaldo.

The symbolism is overwhelming. The two veterans, ex-colleagues of both, one of South America's all-time great names, and intimating a historical clash at La Bombonera — and if it is to be held, will resonate right around the entire world. It would be that game that pauses time, brings enemies together, brings out long-lost nostalgia, and takes both sets of team-color allegiance higher.

Messi and Cristiano on the same team together? That never happened. And the fact already constitutes more than headlines: it constitutes fans, brands, investors, and the people who went through the time of these two as if they were a series every week.

Argentina v Germany: 2010 FIFA World Cup - Quarter Finals | Chris McGrath/GettyImages

Connections that stretch across time

Tévez is not doing it for the claps. He has earned the respect of both. He played over a decade with Messi for the Argentina national team. With Cristiano, he shared Manchester United's dressing room and won the 2007/08 Champions League, the only title of his career.

More than club teammates, they're characters in a story that intersected, expressed mutual respect, and now may cross paths again. And Carlitos knows that. That's why he's calling, dreaming, insisting.

But it doesn't stop there. Tévez wants much more than Messi and Cristiano. The guest list seems as if plucked straight from a mythical game mode. Buffon on one side, Van der Sar on the other. Chiellini, Bonucci, Ferdinand, Vidic. Pirlo, Scholes, and of course Riquelme man the midfield. On attack, Rooney.

It's almost like a time capsule with the major names that gave shape to a span of European football. One cannot gaze on this assembly without sensing a historic burden, a suffocating emotional load.

And the selected setting? La Bombonera, the place it all started. The perfect stage. A mixture of nostalgia and legend, with the smell of concrete and sweat, where Tévez arrived to be a player and was made an idol. If the farewell indeed takes place as he has it envisioned, it will be hard to find something more symbolic in recent history of soccer.