Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are through to the Champions League's final eight this year. The two superstars have a rather long track record in this competition as they are both the top scorers in the tournament all-time.

Ronaldo has 90 goals while Messi has a grand total of 82 over his career. Coming in at third is Raul with 71. Ronaldo has scored the first goal in a UCL game on 33 occasions while Messi has 25 such goals.

But scoring numbers in the Champions League can be skewed by what is usually a rather easy first round for major teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona. Just this year, Ronaldo put up 11 goals in the first round, scoring in four of six matches.

What is more important is how these superstars react when the pressure is on in the latter rounds - the games that are essentially do or die.

Messi

This season Messi three goals in the first round of the knockout stages, scoring twice at Arsenal before contributing a goal in the return leg at home.

Overall, Messi has 30 goals in knockout rounds since 2007-08. Of those 30 goals, two have come in finals, including one over Manchester United in 2008-09 and another over the same team two years later.

Worthy of note are two supreme efforts from Messi including a four-goal game against Arsenal back in 2009-10 and a five-goal night in 2011-12 against Bayer Leverkusen.

Messi's best output in knockout rounds came as a result of those two matches; he managed six goals in the knockout rounds in 2009-10 and eight in 2011-12. Aside from that his impact has wavered in recent years from a goal scoring standpoint. In 2012-13 he had only three goals in the knockout rounds, his tally undeniably affected by a lingering injury. A year later he only had two goals and even in last season's Championship-winning season he had two tallies, albeit important ones in the semifinals.

So goals are usually measured by when they come and the later in the tournament, the more crucial.

Aside from his two finals goals, Messi has four goals in the semifinals, eight in the quarterfinals and 10 in the round of 16.

Ronaldo

The Portuguese has in some ways gone in the opposite direction of his rival. In his first Champions League campaigns Ronaldo scored some big goals, but they were few and far between. Between 2006 and 2011 he averaged 2.6 goals in knockout rounds in the tournament. That of course included one goal in the final and a number in the semifinals and quarterfinals.

But then his numbers have taken off dramatically since 2012-13 as he has a whopping 28 goals since, including his two against Roma this season; that averages out to 5.6 goals per season.

Of Ronaldo's 41 goals in knockout rounds, 12 have come in the round of 16, 10 have come in the quarterfinals, eight have come in the semifinals and two have come in finals.

Of course Ronaldo only has two UCL trophies to Messi's four, but that might also be a reflection of the team around Ronaldo. Unlike Messi, Ronaldo's numbers are not buoyed by any four-goal or five-goal performances.