The rivarly between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi returned this weekend when Ronaldo's two-match ban was finally lifted and he was allowed to compete for his club against its crosstown rivals. Meanwhile, Messi and Barcelona looked to continue their hot play at Athletic Bilbao.

Madrid managed a scrappy 2-1 win over Sevilla earlier in the week that left the team with two key injuries to James Rodriguez and Sergio Ramos. Some felt that the return of Ronaldo on Saturday would offset the loss of Rodriguez, but it became clear that the superstar was not back to his best.

In fact, Ronaldo's current slump has become increasingly alarming. It seems that since the calendar changed to 2015, the superstar has been anything but the best player in the world. He was as poor as he has been all year on Saturday as he literally watched his team lose 4-0 to one of its biggest rivals.

Ronaldo had 45 touches in the game, good for eighth on the team. He connected on just 71 percent of his passes and he had a total of one shot at the goal. It was not on target. He contributed nothing defensively with no tackles, no clearances, no blocked shots and three fouls.

He had a total of 31 passes, good for eighth on the team, not a single accurate cross, not a single key pass and not a single through ball. He was completely shut down in a game in which he needed to rise to the occasion and dominate for his team.

To call his performance a calamity is an understatement, especially when he is the one expected to come in and save the day.

Losing the game must have hurt even more after watching Messi put up one of his finest performances of the year in Barcelona's 5-2 win over Athletic Bilbao. Messi contributed a goal and two assists in the match, despite completing a paltry 78.8 percent of his passes on the night. Messi has been red hot since the start of 2015 and is already running away with the Ballon d'Or.

Season & Calendar Year Stats

Considering the way that the two are playing, one would have to call Ronaldo lucky that Messi has not passed him in the goal scoring race thus far, but it could easily turn for the Real Madrid talisman. Ronaldo has 36 goals and 13 assists in 32 games this season for Real Madrid. Dreams of him besting the 73-goal season Messi put up in 2011-12 are probably a distant memory at this point unless Ronaldo starts scoring at the rate he was at the start of the year and Madrid puts up a tremendous Champions League run.

In the Spanish league the superstar has 28 goals in 19 matches with just 16 games left to play. Based on his pace up to this point he could still top 51 goals and surpass Messi's record of most goals in Spain in a single year.

Meanwhile Messi now has 33 goals and 16 assists on the year and is creeping uncomfortably close to taking the scoring lead from Ronaldo in all competitions. In Spain he has 22 goals and 12 assists, but he already has far more open play goals than his rival. While Ronaldo has eight penalty goals in Spain, Messi only has one and so Messi has 21 open play goals while Ronaldo only has a total of 20. Overall, Messi has 31 goals from open play while Ronaldo only has 26. But ultimately a goal is a goal regardless of how it comes about and Messi still has work to do to pass his rival.

The New Year has not been kind to the Portuguese superstar, who is now going to have to face a ton of questions about his decline commencing at age 30. For a player of his caliber, the calendar year stats are becoming increasingly ugly to look at, especially when compared to his great rival. He has just four goals and one assist in seven matches, a ratio of 0.57 goals per game. That is far below his 1.11 career average for Real Madrid. One would imagine that he returns to close to that number down the stretch and if he does, he should score at least 16 goals. That would bring his total to 44 goals on the year, two short of his personal best in Spain back in 2011-12.

Meanwhile Messi is on fire in 2015 with a whopping 10 goals and seven assists in nine matches this year. He is already running away from his rival and will have more opportunities to continue adding to his totals for Barcelona.

Streaking

After scoring in four straight games between Dec. 6 and Jan. 4, Ronaldo has scored just three goals in six games for Madrid and has not scored in his last two matches. The only other time that Ronaldo went two matches without a goal was during the two matches of the Spanish Super Cup at the start of the year. This is the first time that he has failed to score in two straight league games.

Most damning of all is that at his current pace, Ronaldo would probably only score another eight goals in the remaining 16 Spanish League games. That would leave him at just 36 goals in Spain which would represent his third best such total since joining Real Madrid.

As for Messi, the streak could not be better. In his last 17 games (since Barcelona's back-to-back defeats at Real Madrid and against Celta Vigo), he has scored 24 times and only failed to notch a tally in five matches.

Winner

Ronaldo had his worst performance of the year while Messi had one of his finest. End of story. Messi has now tied Ronaldo 9-9 in this matchup.

For the last installment of the feature series, click here.