Diego Maradona to Lionel Messi: My goals were more 'beautiful'

(CNN)In Diego  world, he's still number one.

Asked by CNN anchor Becky Anderson to pick between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as to who is the world's top footballer, Argentina's former World Cup winner emphatically endorsed the Barcelona star -- but quickly worked himself into the conversation.

"The thing is, my goals were more beautiful," insisted Maradona.

However, even Maradona, who led Argentina to victory over West Germany in the 1986 World Cup final, was forced to concede the 27-year-old Messi is trumping him in the goalscoring stakes.

Messi is "killing it with his goals," admitted the 54-year-old -- a nod to Messi's prolific career scoring record of 328 and counting for Barcelona and Argentina, far outweighing Maradona's own tally of 293 for club and country.Messi's tally includes 53 goals scored so far this season, including two in a 3-0 drubbing over Bayern Munich last week in the first leg of their European Champions League tie. Barcelona advanced to the final on Tuesday with a 5-3 aggregate score after the away leg.

Messi's performances in those two games prompted Bayern's coach Pep Guardiola to describe the diminutive forward as "the best player of all time."

Both Messi and Maradona were often the smallest men on the pitch and each wore the blue and white stripes of their country along with the unmistakable maroon of the famous Catalan club.

Quizzed as whether it is Messi's goals or his style that make him great, Maradona offered a compromise: Messi might be scoring more goals, but it's the former Napoli star who had more flair.

"I think that I had my own style from the very beginning," said the man famously known for his "Hand of God" goal against England in the 1986 World Cup. "And that is the point in which I could be better than Messi."