Are injuries to Messi and Ronaldo good for football?

With the recent injury to Cristiano Ronaldo, La Liga suffered another injury to one of their league’s stars. Lionel Messi will likely be sidelined until early 2014 with another hamstring injury, and one may assume that injuries to both of the sports biggest stars may be a bad thing. However, there may be a silver lining to this situation.

As the holiday season quickly approaches, many of the sports stars can now be thankful that they have an opportunity to not be overshadowed by Messi and Ronaldo. Players in La Liga, such as Neymar and Gareth Bale now have the stage to demonstrate their skills without being overshadowed by their superstar teammates. Other major figures in the sport have quickly taken advantage of this opportunity. See the spectacular overhead goal scored by Diego Costa this past weekend. This brief period may be critical to the development of teams without their top players and serve as an opportunity for great players to become superstars.

This period may benefit the squads of Real Madrid and Barcelona for many reasons. First, the squad will not be able to rely on their stars to lead the show.

Second, these players will be allowed to rest and get back to 100% health during this slow period of the season.

Third, the injured stars will be able to return when the season picks back up after the new year.  

If the star players are able to return to their top form, they may be returning to squads that have improved at many levels.  It will be interesting to see how the teams perform for the next couple weeks and it will be even more exciting to see what the teams look like after the stars are inserted back into the lineup.