What was that quote about "Messi being the best Xavi, but when he's Xavi he's not Messi" ? Something like that. Some of his passes are just beyond compare with anyone else currently playing.
Lionel Messi
- Thread starter Scarecrow
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So since Messi has scored more goals outside the box than Ronaldo we're now down to heading and being a 'stronger player'.
Anyway this isn't that thread.
Messi is by far the best player I've ever seen. He's the reason I watch la liga games
Jesse Lingard>Lionel Messi..... argue with santa clause.
He wasn't an all-time great playmaker in his early 20's. It's something that he got gradually better at as he got older — same as with free kicks and shots outside the box.
Modric is bettah though!Europe's top five leagues in 2018-19:
Most goals - Messi
Most assists - Messi
Most dribbles - Messi
Most chances created - Messi
Most free-kicks scored - Messi
Most key passes per 90 mins - Messi
Most goals from outside the box - Messi
He missed three weeks through injury.
Source: @FootballFactly
Loved the Wire when it came out, but that show hasn't aged too well. Tried rewatching it last year as I was nursing a knee injury, and it was meh. Might have been the excessive oxycodone.
Peyroteo here? Really?
I swear...
Shame bud. I feel your pain
Also, by the time that Ronaldo had moved to Inter, he was very much a playmaker too (maybe not quite in the Xavi/Messi mould but he had rapidly, rapidly improved) and his passing had become very, very good.
You can see in the few youtube clips available that Best had a very similar style of dribbling to Messi, perhaps in his prime he was the greatest dribbler the world has ever seen, but as was the case with Garrincha, and, to a lesser extent, Ronaldinho, lacked the burning desire to be an athlete.
How much has HGH helped elevate Lionel Messi's performance level? A controversial one I know. Now we all know he took HGH and doctor supervision from the ages of 13-17. From I've read Barcelona have declined to comment on whether Messi still takes HGH for his condition. We also know that athletes sometimes use a theraputic use exemption to use banned substances to gain an athletic advantage. Messi does seem to have incredibly developed thighs and very dense bones/tendons and extra HGH could make him super human in this respect. I don't think it's a coincidence the best player of all time was treated with HGH as a youth.
Then there's the Spanish Court ordering the destruction of blood testing from Operation Puerto as a whole other side to Spanish sport doping. Doping doctors have been linked to top Spanish clubs and Bayern IIRC.
My personal opinion is Messi and Barce have benefited from performance enhancing substances. But I also think it would be naive to believe most professionals in a billion pound industry aren't trying to get an edge using similar tactics.
Then there's the Spanish Court ordering the destruction of blood testing from Operation Puerto as a whole other side to Spanish sport doping. Doping doctors have been linked to top Spanish clubs and Bayern IIRC.
My personal opinion is Messi and Barce have benefited from performance enhancing substances. But I also think it would be naive to believe most professionals in a billion pound industry aren't trying to get an edge using similar tactics.
Because he didn't have to do it doesn't mean he wasn't able to do it. He didn't have to playmake because he had Xavi and Iniesta back then. Young Messi was such an intelligent player that I have no doubt he'd done everything if they asked him so; he had practically no problem transitioning from RW to a more central position on Pep's demand and even played there better than proper center forwards. Of course with age comes more experience, but Messi is not a normal player, he's the perfect player created in a laboratory; he can do everything if asked, he can even play in goal and become better than De Gea.
When they'll start to watch him play instead of judging him in 1 or 2 KO CL games than compare him to every time Ronaldo scores a goal.
You just can't argue against Messi, when will people stop doing it?
Ronaldo moved to Inter when he was 21 and left it when he was still 27 year old, so if you're insinuating that his improvement in that area is due to age then I don't agree with you there. As much as I love Ronaldo and think he'd became the GOAt without contest if it wasn't for the injuries, but his passing and play making abilities aren't close to what Messi is displaying now. Currently Messi is the GOAT in everything he does.
And then they wonder why people find the Messi fanbase laughable.
HGH doesn't impact intelligence on the pitch. That is what sets him apart.
That's a weird opinion, quite frankly. A bit like "Hazard can be the best player in the world if he wants to". He wasn't a top playmaker in his youth, even though he was probably always technically capable of making the hardest passes. But he didn't have the same vision and understanding of the game back then — it was years that he spent playing alongside Xavi and Iniesta that taught him that — and now he is one of the most efficient final third passers of all time. He also wasn't very good at taking free kicks when he was younger (it was one of the biggest cons against him in the constant Messi-Ronaldo comparisons) — was it because he wasn't asked to be good? Or maybe because he constantly develops new features in his game to make up for his ageing body?
If he's doing it now then he has always had the skills to do it, he didn't magically developed those qualities out of nowhere. Many players tried to become playmakers in their later ages but failed because they didn't have the required qualities. Messi and someone like Scholes succeeded that transition because they had those qualities at younger ages and were very intelligent players back then that if asked they'd had no problem playing there. Of course with experience your develop a good understanding of the game but a young Messi was already a good reader of the game, he knew when to dribble, when to pass, when to shot that he had amazing stats back then, he did everything with perfection.
I don't know if I'm wrong but Messi was also better passer of the ball than Xavi and Iniesta when they were playing together (I've to check again but I think he won the BO without winning any major trophy because of his unbelievable stats).
Intelligence is important but it's not his stand-out characteristic. There are more intelligent players who are nowhere near as good as Messi and could never hope to be. Ultimately, the reason he's the best is because his skill, coordination and balance allow him to pull things off other players can't.
I think it's possible that HGH could have helped with some of those things if (and it's a big if) he was given more than was required to make up for his deficiencies, in the same way that at university, some students gain an unfair advantage by using ADHD meds they weren't prescribed to cram for tests. In the absence of his medical records being released, which would be a huge breach of privacy and something I think Barcelona would never allow to happen, I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
Weird you just mentioned that. I just got the wire for Christmas. People won't shut up about it so looking forward to watching it. I'll be surprise day if it's better then GoT. Which is impossible
I believe it was when he hasn't had his snickers.
I really disagree. He wouldn't be half as effective without his vision, and understanding of when to dribble, when to keep it simple, lure in defenders and then pass to an open teammate. Xavi has spoken about this quality of Messi a lot.
I suspect we will end up agreeing to disagree but I feel like you're mythologising this aspect of Messi's game. Most of what you cite above is the bread and butter of what kids are taught at La Masia, obviously some take to it more than others but it's clearly coachable. Messi is world class at the things you cite above, but there are players who are/were better than him at them. Again, I'm not saying he's bad at them, just that those things of themselves aren't what makes him truly special.
The difference between Messi and Xavi, or between Messi and players like Iniesta or Scholes, has nothing to do with intelligence, it's that Messi is, in the history of the game, uniquely good at manipulating a football and has uniquely good balance which means that in situations where someone like Xavi/Scholes might have one option with a positive outcome e.g: to play a first time pass to get the ball to a teammate in a better position, Messi might several viable options which will yield a positive outcome.
The fact that Messi can dribble out of situations lesser players can't isn't proof of preternatural football intelligence, neither is the fact he can play passes others aren't technically proficient enough to play. He's a very clever player but the reason he's brilliant is because he has unrivalled technical ability and doesn't have the same limitations that other players have, not because he's some sort of Chess Grandmaster playing 2-3 moves ahead of the opposition.
He might not be 2-3 moves ahead but his intuition on the pitch can’t be taught. He paints the picture before anyone else. And over the years because he’s got so good at always finding the right solution, his teammates can make runs into areas before Messi even has the ball because they know he’s about to get it and find them.
Of all the things Messi is good at, one that doesn’t get mentioned is his ability to lead a quiet life off the field. Every man and his dog in Spain that’s earning big bucks has tax problems (because Spain as a nation were financially fecked and just decided to go after the super rich) and that’s really the only scandal there’s ever been about him. No questions of infidelity, no drunken nights out or driving under the influence, he barely gets any negative press. I don’t know if he’s the ultimate role model (someone like drogba probably a better shout) for what to do with your status, but the fact that he’s pretty much universally regarded as at the very least a top 3 player of all time and manages to keep his life fairly modest is impressive.
That's one thing that sets him apart. He's also incredibly strong, can ride tackles like no one else, is incredibly quick, very nimble, his joints can turn at ungodly angles and he never gets injured ever. Not to mention super human stamina. All of those are physical gifts given to him partly I suspect by HGH.
You realize that we all have HGH? Messi got a treatment as a kid because he had a deficiency.
There are many many clips of luis ronaldo's performances vs various teams in italy as well as his single season in barcelona. Non of the performances vs madrid or aletico were anywhere near messi's even at the same age. Not in terms of passing, vision or even dribbling. Messi has always had astonishingly good vision and creative passing from a very young age.
What i hate is when people claim that ronaldo had injuries while conveniently ignoring that messi spent several weeks at a time on the treatment table from age 18 to 21. I am very sure, had he not had those injuries, he would hav become the youngest ballond'or winner ever
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Not synthetic and likely overdosed HGH we don't. And who says he stopped taking HGH as a kid? From what I've read Barce declined to comment on whether Messi still has a therapeutic use exemption for HGH.
I didn't mean as a playmaker in comparison to Messi (who is obviously so far ahead) but saw a few people describe Ronaldo as a "pure number 9" now which is also blatantly false. He was all over the park at times, and often drifting on the wing for Inter.
Ronaldo didn't just have 'injuries or niggles'. He had two career threatening injuries. The fact that he got back to the level he even did (one of the best strikers in the world) speaks to the absolute talent he had to begin with prior to his injuries.
Also, 1998 should really have cemented Ronaldo's legacy. He was 21 at the time. But y'know, weird circumstances around that.
With regards to youngest Balon d'Or winner ever - didn't Ronaldo win it at 20 (i.e. performances aged 19?). Doesn't seem likely.
I've thought this, but as someone mentioned above, he was injured quite a lot when he was younger - Guardiola instructed Messi to no longer press as hard and to minimise the amount he sprinted in a game so that could explain why he has been so injury free, he also has short legs for his body which might help. Also, HGH gives you a larger, distinctive gut which as far as I've seen Messi doesn't have.
if you look at clips of messi 10 yrs old he was already doing the same thing as now. If the worlds greatest footballer was jacked up on Growth Hormone im sure it would have been revealed by now
The idea that there are more intelligent players than Messi seems laughable to me. He strikes me as someone with just about the clearest mental picture of the game imaginable. In split seconds he sees passes that you'd struggle to pick out with the aid of pausing time and looking down on the pitch from above. I've always found this aspect of his game hard to come to terms with. It's almost otherworldly.
Argue ? Why do Messi fans always want to argue their opinions on everyone else .
You just can't argue against Messi, when will people stop doing it?
You can't do it as it's just opinions no amount of pointless "facts" is ever going to change the opinion of any other sane person .
I think Ronaldo is better and nothing will change that . The only fact Im interested in Messi is why he got a pass for doing drugs
