Hello, people always in the community write that cristiano or messi retired or some stuff. Although most are just speculations just because they are never mentioned after. I pulled some proofs here for that. Sorry for the long mess but i wanted to speak about it
In universe story explanation:
We know that in 2018 the year blue lock starts, we get to know that Noel Noa beat CR7 and Messi for the ballon d'or in the 2018 year. Okay the year wasnt directly stated but it was told that Noel Noa is the ballon dor winner who beat Messi and CR7 to get that. Now Ego wouldn't say that if he wasn't the current Ballon d'or winner. Or maybe someone can say that he is talking about a year way back in the past when CR7 and Messi still played. But that still wouldnt make sense when we got the confirmation that Noa was the best player in europe in 2018 and the current best regarded striker. Why would ego talk about a player who isnt the current ballon d'or winner? The implication in the 1st chap pushed that Noel Noa was the top dog rn who even beat our IRL goats for the ballon d'or.
The problem is that if we go by this logic and match it with our IRL timeline, we can see that in this BARCHA match of copa del rey finals, messi would defintely be in BARCHA for this important match , 2018 (keep in mind that this might be 2019 by now in blue lock as well the same year Messi was in another prime mode and won 2019 ballon d'or)
Also Noa regards Snuffy as the best player in the world for a good amount of time but himself as the best striker but the comparison we got in the 1st chapter was comparing to CR7 and messi. Snuffy is still 29 btw. Ego didnt even mention snuffy at first chapter as well
The timeline nor context in the story matches or makes sense right now.
so basically we can make up a conclusion that despite what was implied in the first chapter, Messi nor any of his equivalent ever appeared in the copa del rey final. We can say that he already retired and Ego talked about another random year where Noa beat Messi and Cristiano and it's not the last ballon d'or but the ballon d'or year where Noa finally took over as the current best striker. And perhaps that was already a Messi and Ronaldo who were declining down from their era and werent in their prime anymore in that year where they got over took. So basically they were close to retirement and by 2018 or even before that retired already, perhaps 1 or 2 years later after Noa became #1 striker.
And Noa is probably the current Ballon d'or winner (cause he also no 1 player in europe in 2018)
beating someone else for the current ballon d'or, not cristiano and messi which was way more back in the past.
technical explanation:
''snuffy wasnt even thought of back then''
''messi and ronaldo are simply retconned out of the story and currently doesnt exist in the universe''
because timeline wise or context wise, their existence doesnt fit properly in this story anymore.
I also heard isagi's age and other stuff did get retconned not sure, so this could be the same.
tdlr: ''I want kaneshiro to give a proper explanation since he dragged 2 of our IRL legends to the manga and now doesn't give and explanation or conclusion as to what happened with them or any conclusion because he perhaps fears copy right or whatever.''