Geneva: Lionel Messi won his personal duel with his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo lighting up Argentina's 2-1 win over Portugal by making one goal and scoring the winner in a lively friendly international in Geneva.
Messi, FIFA's World Player of the Year for the last two years, and Ronaldo, who won the award in 2008, were both on the scoresheet but Ronaldo, who came off after an hour, ended up on the losing side as Messi gave the South Americans victory, scoring from the penalty spot after 89 minutes.
Coincidentally the hugely entertaining match was played in Geneva, a little over 24 hours after Europe's most powerful clubs expressed their concerns at the amount of friendlies being played every year at their annual assembly in the Swiss city.
The managers of almost every important European club would have preferred this international date to have been dropped from the calendar, but more than 30,000 neutral Swiss braved a chilly night to watch one of more than 30 friendly matches which were being played around the world.
The most high profile games capturing the spotlight were in Europe where international managers, in contrast to their club counterparts, were happy to use the games as preparation for next month's resumption of their Euro 2012 qualifiers.
World champions Spain swung back into action after the winter break with a 1-0 win over Colombia in Madrid thanks to a late winner from David Silva.
The victory ended a poor run of form for the world champions who lost 4-1 to Argentina and suffered a 4-0 defeat to Portugal in friendlies.
But although David Villa failed to get the goal that would have taken him past Raul's all-time Spanish record of 44 goals, Silva came off the bench to score from close range in the 86th minute.
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