We are talking about Messi. If passing was his primary job, I am sure he can display that sort of vision as well.
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Top 2 in some of those, but not on free kicks and long shots. Probably not on long passes when you have Maradona, Pirlo and Alonso. First touch brings in the likes of Bergkamp and Zidane.
His free kick success ratio is highest ACM.
His long passes are evidently great and always progressive and leads to goal scoring opportunities.
Look at it this way,
Ozil, Pirlo, Fabregas have made a top class career out of being a good passer.
Lukaku has made a career out of being a goal scorer.
Pepe is making a career on basis of his dribbling.
There are many players who are doing one or few things at high level and managed to carve out a great career for themselves.
Messi is doing everything at a very high level. That’s 6-7 careers combined. A Playmaker, a goal scorer, a free kick specialist, an amazing passmaster, magnet foot dribbler and so on.
Even his closest rival Ronaldo can’t match all that. Ronaldo is great at 2-3 attributes, not all. Ronaldo is lauded for his free kicks but even his specialist pales in comparison to success rate of Messi’s free kicks.
Ronaldo is also monotonous with his free kicks, Messi adds more variety and yet is more productive.
Some of you really don’t see what Messi brings to the table.
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No mate. What it is your convincing yourself every aspect of his game surpasses everything else of other players without looking at it objectively.
I’m not going too get to deep into this as I don’t want to degenerate into an argument were I’m having to criticise Messi in overtly negative manner.
The guy is clearly a football genius and in the argument as the best ever, but it’s not an exact science.
Just look at the attributes of others in equal measure instead of being agenda driven. You’ll get better appreciation without compromising your few of where Messi is in terms of greatness.
I don’t think so.
Messi shits on everyone.
Even when he shits on everyone, he lobs that shit 90 yards down the field and lands perfectly on their sorry face
Leave you with this then. Cruyff is the architect of Barcelona footballing philosophy.
Maradona is the icon that every Argentine kid aspires too. Fuse the two of them together you get Messi.
Messi isn’t as good a freekick taker as Mihajlovic, Juninho or Hagi
And I’m not convinced he’s better than Baggio, Beckham, Maradona, Platini
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Fine, let’s concede that.
Messi is top 10 in free kicks. What does that change?
He still remains a complete player.
Yes I don’t disagree with that, it’s more my pedantry and also thinking there’s been some doping shenanigans that’s seriously aided him
Messi and Maradonna both had skills that set them apart from any other player in their era of football but what Maradonna did at Napoli, playing alongside what was effectively a mid table team, was drag them to the top of Serie A, and after he left they dropped down to that level again.
He also won the World Cup with Argentina and was instrumental in their success.
Messi is an unbelievable player and so was Maradonna so it’s difficult to separate the two of them.
If Maradonna had been playing alongside the quality of players that Messi had at Barcelona, I’m sure he could have been even better and had more success but we don’t know if Messi could have done the same in an average side.
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Messi’s been playing in an average/poor side for a good while now.
Take him out and they don’t win the league as much as they have or much else.
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That’s a fair point.
Isn’t shirt swapping against covid protocol though?
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Players are “advised” not to swap shirts, there’s no solid rule in place.
Ah I see, kind of like all our Gov guidelines in place for covid.
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Sounds like he really could be off from Barcelona this window, but realistically what sort of fee would he go for at 33?
100m+ still you’d imagine. But the only clubs who could possibly sign him and afford his wages are city and psg
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Absolute madness. Where would he go? Inter always gets brought up for some reason but Conte plays a really dire style of football.