Ronaldinho at 42: Assessing his greatness at Barcelona and those who say he was better than Lionel Messi

Ronaldinho won the World Cup at the age of 22. In front of 56,557 fans in his native Brazil, he helped his team win the Copa Libertadores.

What longevity means for football's greatest players has been redefined by Lionel Messi. The feeling now is that Ronaldinho had a short time at the very top.

The decline began soon after he won the European Championship in 2006 at Barcelona.

How do we define greatness?

Sustaining success is important. It is possible that those who have been acknowledged as the greatest to have ever played this game have never surpassed the sheer wonder of watching Ronaldinho at his peak, toying with teams just because he could. The spectacle has not been defeated.

Those who witnessed the conjuror supreme up close still hold that view. Bojan Krkic played more than 100 games with Messi at Barcelona and he doesn't hesitate when asked who is the greatest.

He tells Sky Sports that Ronaldinho is the best player he has ever seen.

It was the way that he did it. You could think that it was easy when you watched Ronaldinho. He was doing things that were hard to do.

Only he could do them.

Ronaldinho was not the same as before. He used the no-look pass and seemed to have an extra power when dribbling, lifting balls over opponents as well as past them.

Cesar Cruz once said that art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, and that was Ronaldinho.

He could relax when rolling his foot over the ball. One day, he claimed, he would make a ball talk.

He was capable of producing something that nobody in the stadium had anticipated, and he was also able to shock.

Consider the goal he scored in the game against Chelsea. It was the sort of moment that made people wonder why they had never seen it before, only to later realize that they had never seen it done before.

A goal and an important one were brought about by that act.

Other magic touches resulted in famous assists. Maybe you remember the ingenious scooped pass that set up Messi for his first-ever Barcelona goal against Albacete or the flick and dink combo to put the same player through to score against Deportivo.

The moments that don't make the highlights are easier to miss. There were dozens of passes and Nutmegs. A low raking pass against Athletic that traveled little more than a yard off the ground at any point but still took out nine opposition players.

The bar was reset by Messi andRonaldo. The best scoring season in Europe could not compare to what either man has produced over the past 13 seasons.

Ronaldinho sculpted the land that Messi inherited.

He changed the city.

Bojan says that Barcelona were not good as a team. The camp was half full. It was half empty. I remember when Ronaldinho arrived in Barcelona, he had something special.

Ronaldinho is said to be the spark that lit everything. The project of Real Madrid was defeated. Bojan says that the greatest period in Barcelona's history begins with Ronaldinho.

He was the one who brought the winning mentality to the club. He was complete as a player. He was doing everything he could to be a footballer.

I think a lot of people went to Camp Nou because they wanted to see Ronaldinho. What he did for Barcelona in those two or three seasons was something special.

The win in 2006 was a turning point. European competition had been dominated by the containing game. They had it locked up by the managers of Valencia,Liverpool, and Porto.

The key was held by Ronaldinho.

It feels like another time in this era of high pressing. Athleticism seems to be more important. Ronaldinho became a luxury for fans to enjoy and a luxury for modern coaches to endure.

Is the game moving forward? Nobody has made it funnier.

Bojan says that football is changing a lot, the world is changing a lot, and people are changing a lot.

It isn't as it was before. People don't follow it as a game. There are a lot of things involved with football. When we were four years old, we started running with the ball with the same passion we have today.

Ronaldinho, his body expression, his face, it was so relaxing, he was so happy.

He was the best for me.