It has been an encouraging week for soccer. A week in which the spotlight has turned away from the darker side of the sport — the fan violence, the corruption scandals — to shine brightly on two of its most brilliant players: Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Argentina’s Lionel Messi.

Both are young — Ronaldo is 22, Messi 19 — and both have left their native country to find fame with a rich European club. Ronaldo plays in England with Manchester United, Messi is at Spain’s FC Barcelona.

On Wednesday, it was Messi who lit up the soccer world by scoring a superb individual goal in a Spanish cup game against Getafe. A goal that sent a buzz of excitement throughout the sport, not least because it was so similar to the one Diego Maradona scored for Argentina against England in the 1986 World Cup. That goal, frequently cited as the greatest World Cup goal ever, featured a 60-yard run from Maradona during which he dribbled past five defenders before working the ball around the goalkeeper to score.

Messi’s goal was an almost uncanny replay — he started from the same area of the field then surged forward past defender after defender (yes, five of them!), finally drawing out the goalkeeper, to score from virtually the same position as Maradona. In each case, the action lasted a mere 8 seconds.

The subtle differences in style have been studied and analyzed: Maradona’s dribble featured more fakes and changes of direction while Messi seemed to bamboozle opponents more by running straight at them, Maradona applied the final touch with his left foot, Messi with his right.

But the similarities went deeper. Both Messi and Maradona are Argentine, both with a short, stocky 5-foot-6 build, and both are left-footed players. Messi has often cited Maradona as his idol, while Maradona has returned the compliment, praising Messi as his soccer heir.

Sadly, the 21 years that separate the two goals have seen Maradona fall from the heights down to the agony of drug and alcohol addiction. Even as Messi was being lauded, Maradona was secluded in a Buenos Aires nursing home, undergoing treatment for toxic hepatitis induced by over-drinking. Messi did not forget Maradona and spoke quietly and movingly of his plight: “Diego has always supported me, and I hope he gets well soon. The whole of Argentina wants him back well again. We miss him.”

For Messi to dominate the soccer headlines is quite an achievement when one considers that he plays on a Barcelona team that includes the Brazilian Ronaldinho, a two-time winner of the FIFA Player of the Year award (in 2004 and 2005), and many experts’ choice as the best player in the world.

But not the choice of ManU coach Alex Ferguson. He has no doubt that honor belongs to Cristiano Ronaldo. “His season has been incredible,” says Ferguson. “At this moment, I think he is the best player in the world.”

Ronaldo’s brilliance has been undeniable, and on Sunday, he received an amazing double honor: the professional players in England voted him both Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year. Less than a year ago, the thought of Ronaldo receiving any honors at all in England was laughable. He was vilified by the English press for his alleged role in getting Wayne Rooney red-carded in England’s World Cup loss to Portugal. There was much talk that Ronaldo would leave ManU to play in Spain. He is still regularly booed at English soccer stadiums, but his play this season has been spectacular, much too good for his fellow professionals to deny him the year’s top award.

What unites Ronaldo and Messi— and Maradona from that distant age of only two decades ago — as players is their dribbling skill, their ability to beat opponents one-on-one, to work the ball magically through the forest of tackling legs that invariably confront the ball artists in today’s defense-oriented game.

Such players suffer more than their share of fouls and are frequently seen getting up slowly after rough tackles. It seems that their skills, their ability to beat opponents, are resented. There is a strong streak of macho honor in soccer, and for a defender to be beaten by some fancy ball trickery has come to be regarded as an unacceptable insult. To this way of thinking, the defender is justified in fouling the Messi’s and the Ronaldo’s.

Physical intimidation has not stopped either Messi or Ronaldo, but both players have had to suffer a more insidious attack on their talent: The accusation that they are divers, that they exaggerate the effects of the tackles they have to endure in order to con the referee into giving them a free kick.

Such accusations can carry a real threat of physical danger. In the English premier league, Gareth Southgate, the coach of Middlesbrough, after repeatedly accusing Ronaldo of diving, was apparently surprised when his own captain, George Boateng, took things a stage further, remarking that “one day someone will hurt him [Ronaldo] properly.” A friendly warning or a threat? Southgate, having created the atmosphere that invited Boateng’s comment, backed off and disciplined his captain.

Messi came under attack last year after a dazzling performance during Barcelona’s win over Chelsea in the European Champions League. It was all too much for the Chelsea defender Asier Del Horno, who slammed into him and was duly ejected from the game. Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho, not known as the most graceful of losers, immediately accused Messi of diving. “How do you say ‘cheat’ in Catalan?” was his comment.

For the past week soccer has been busy praising two brilliant players and lauding the most basic of the sports skills, dribbling. The grim purveyors of defensive gloom have been temporarily supplanted by the game’s artists.

The ghastly realpolitik of Getafe’s German coach Bernd Schuster will not go away, of course. All he could find to say about Messi’s wonder goal was this: “We should have fouled him.” A mean-spirited remark, deservedly overshadowed by the words of Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard, who applauded Messi’s goal as “a work of art.”