Sports: Messi, Ronaldo make scoring look easy but is it the hardest thing in football? #WilkeyPerkins Blog

"What is the hardest thing to do on the football pitch?"

Everything in football is constructed on there being one answer to this question. It is the answer we would all give, when asked, something we have learned by rote from a young age. It even comes in a ready-made, prepackaged, accepted form. Its beat is soothing, familiar, comfortable:

"Put the ball in the back of the net."

This counts as an article of faith for many, for most, of us who love football. If ever all of the truisms that swirl around the sport were gathered and codified into some form of credo, it would be up there competing for the top spot.

It would be the first commandment, above even Thou Shalt Not Dive and Nobody Wants To See A Red Card. We all believe it to be absolutely true: Thou Shalt Know The Hardest Thing To Do Is Put The Ball In The Back Of The Net.

Its importance is not just theoretical. It has a very practical significance, a huge, telling influence over almost every aspect of the game all over the world.

Individual prizes -- player of the year awards, the Ballon D'Or -- are given to those who score the most goals, or at least to those who have the capacity to score a considerable number of goals.

It is strikers who attract the most lavish, most exorbitant transfer fees and always have, right back to the days of Alf Common, a prolific scorer in the early years of the 20th century who is famous for having been the first player to be transferred for 1,000 pounds.

It is strikers, as Paul Tomkins and Graeme Riley showed in "Pay As You Play," who have always been given the bumper wages, paid on average half as much again as their defensive colleagues.

It is strikers who are turned to in days of desperation; witness all of those sides battling relegation in the Premier League who spend the last few hours of the transfer window chasing a handful of forwards on the grounds that what they need, what they really need, is goals, even if their defences have been so bad that bringing in a Labrador would have been a considerable improvement.