Gary Lineker Can't Help Himself From Drooling All Over 'GOAT' Messi on Twitter

English footballing hero Gary Lineker has given his own insight as to who he thinks is the better player between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi - rather strongly suggesting that he believes Messi is the superior.

The 'greatest of all time' debate took another twist last night as Messi almost single handedly guided Argentina to the 2018 World Cup in a must-win match for the South American side.

After going 1-0 down to Ecuador within 40 seconds, the Barcelona superstar decided to take the game by the scruff of the neck, and quickly responded with a goal of his own, prompting a rather exotic couple of tweets from Lineker, which sum up his excitement over the Blaugrana star rather well...

Maybe slightly too much detail from the former England international, but his message is quite clearly understood.

It didn't take long for Messi to add to his first goal, scoring another two in spectacular, typically Messi fashion - completing his hat-trick on 62 minutes; at which point, the Match of the Day host (rather strongly) gave his undoubted opinion on who the best player on the planet is:

Messi's brilliance hoisted the Argentinians into third place for their qualifying; and after what seemed like a genuine possibility that La Albiceleste wouldn't make it to Russia, Messi and Co have seen their way into the tournament rather comfortably.

In other news in South America, one team holding their heads in shame is Chile - who have failed to qualify for the World Cup only four months after winning the Copa America.

Their 3-0 loss to Brazil, along with Peru's 1-0 victory over Colombia, has ensured that Peru will go through to the play-off round, and Alexis Sanchez and Co will miss out on a free holiday to Russia this summer.