10 - Lionel Messi - v3

[footyfan]

Watching today's Argentina game really helped me appreciate how good Barca's midfielders are passing wise. Gago and Mascherano take ages to make a decision of which player to pass the ball to, losing so many opportunities.

Re: Messi, he was quite good today, enjoy his talents while he's still in Brazil, because he's not gonna be there for much longer. Also I don't think his vomiting issue has anything to do with anxiety and pressure. Honestly, if this vomiting (caused by anxiety) is affecting his game and he can't deal with pressure, then he doesn't deserve to be a star athlete.

 

[instinct]

I'm not that impressed with Messi either. Scored two goals out of pure talent, but his performances overall don't even place him in top 5 of this World Cup. And let's be real, the Argentina group is probably the weakest or second weakest from this World Cup. But, whatever, he's Messi, so he gets bonus points just for that.

I seriously don't understand you. You nowhere talk about the other players, the tactics, the system, just about Messi. You sound like he has to carry the whole team through the entire WC which is clearly not the case. He was not that good in the first half vs Bosnia because of lack of support (IMO). In the second half he made many key passes and scored the winner (oh, and he ''assisted'' the own goal). Today, Argentinia faced a bus, no, a fucking airplane. You can't expect Messi to dribble past everyone and chip the ball over the goalkeeper, it's a team game and the rest of the team was dogshit, they were only crossing. What is he supposed to do there?
I can understand that people criticize him but please put more aspects into perspective and in your arguments.

He can't carry the team alone, he needs the support of the other players which he didn't get today (and in the 1st half of the Bosnia game).

 

[i_bleed_blaugrana]

Thats the point, Messi is far from his best performances, but he can still score 2 amazing winning goals...Who else can do that?

Suarez did it when he was half-fit coming back from injury and did it twice against a much better English squad. For his talent, he should have lit Iran up much more than a solo goal to save the day at the last minute.

There are many players who can pull out games on their own even when they aren't playing that great. And like others have said, this is by far the easiest group for any of the other favorite teams to win the tournament. The fact that he has only scored two goals against the likes of Iran and Bosnia is disappointing to say the least.

 

[i_bleed_blaugrana]

Let me clear also, I am not a Messi hater by any means. I just want to see the old Messi again

 

[voodoomaster]

Suarez did it when he was half-fit coming back from injury and did it twice against a much better English squad. For his talent, he should have lit Iran up much more than a solo goal to save the day at the last minute.

There are many players who can pull out games on their own even when they aren't playing that great. And like others have said, this is by far the easiest group for any of the other favorite teams to win the tournament. The fact that he has only scored two goals against the likes of Iran and Bosnia is disappointing to say the least.

Relax man. We all know you hate messi. So why keep onIntellectualizing pure hatred? You decided first and then started to think up arguments. Thats also Standard procedure in messi/ronaldo debates. Messi just finished off two countries on his own and your focus is on how bad he performed compared to old times. But hey....you are just debating objectively arent you.....No hatred here...

 

[Flavia]

Stats Messi in the game against Iran: 1 Goal, 93% Pass Accuracy, 3 Chances Created, 7 Dribbles Completed #fcblive #arg [via @squawka]

I don't think he can do much better if his teammates don't step up. He can only do so much.

 

[DonAK]

Suarez did it when he was half-fit coming back from injury and did it twice against a much better English squad. For his talent, he should have lit Iran up much more than a solo goal to save the day at the last minute.

There are many players who can pull out games on their own even when they aren't playing that great. And like others have said, this is by far the easiest group for any of the other favorite teams to win the tournament. The fact that he has only scored two goals against the likes of Iran and Bosnia is disappointing to say the least.

To be fair to Messi then England weren't defending with 9 people in their own half 80% of the game. Luis Suarez and his team mates in Uruguay had space to work with, something Messi and the rest of the Argentina team did not.

Messi had a great second half against Bosnia and almost added a second goal at the end of the match. He decided both games to Argentina's favour and that's good in my eyes. The World Cup for Argentina has started rather slow, but they will pick up pace later on and the further they go in the tournament, the better team they will face and those teams will not sit back to defend almost the entire match, those teams will look to attack and that's where Argentina's strenght comes in to play, hurting the other team on the counter with the likes of Messi, Di Maria, Aguero and Higuain playing an important role, along with the defence which is vital to sustain the other team's offensive and allow their attacking players to do well.

 

[serghei]

I seriously don't understand you. You nowhere talk about the other players, the tactics, the system, just about Messi. You sound like he has to carry the whole team through the entire WC which is clearly not the case.

I can criticize the lack of effort aspect of his game. And I don't care about other players. Messi plays for Barca. Higuain/Aguero don't. I want to see him work harder, and that's all I'm going to say about him. We'll see how he does later on in the competition.

Btw, Goetze ran 7.8 km without the ball so far at this WC. Messi has run just 3.9. Half.

 

[Kerrybai]

Suarez did it when he was half-fit coming back from injury and did it twice against a much better English squad. For his talent, he should have lit Iran up much more than a solo goal to save the day at the last minute.

There are many players who can pull out games on their own even when they aren't playing that great. And like others have said, this is by far the easiest group for any of the other favorite teams to win the tournament. The fact that he has only scored two goals against the likes of Iran and Bosnia is disappointing to say the least.

I respect your opinion but I totally disagree. I don't think you appreciate how tough it is to play against a team with 11 men behind the ball when you have Mascherano ( hasn't played midfield for 3 years ) and Gago ( played poor today ) in midfield. Even at Barca with our great midfield we can struggle against these sort of defences. The you add the fact that Messi has 3 players around him at all times.

Fair enough you can say he should be playing like he was in 2010, but to say he's past it is hyperbole. He explodes when given space.

2 goals in 2 games might seem poor against the opposition, but how many goals do Aguero, Higuain and Di Maria have?

 

[Sumlit]

Argentina simply depend on the front 4 to be sharp. They don't have a great link between defense-midfield-frontline. They have two teams, one to defend and recuperate, another to attack. So when in your front 4 dedicated to attack, 2 players are struggling mightily (Aguero and Higuain, specially Aguero who has been terrible) and when your midfield partner Di Maria is playing very erratic, Messi not destroying teams is not so crazy.

Still, he has played the best out of all Argentina players and has single-handily won 2 games for his team.

I think sometimes expectations for him are just a tad unreasonable, just a tad.

 

[footyfan]

I respect your opinion but I totally disagree. I don't think you appreciate how tough it is to play against a team with 11 men behind the ball when you have Mascherano ( hasn't played midfield for 3 years ) and Gago ( played poor today ) in midfield. Even at Barca with our great midfield we can struggle against these sort of defences. The you add the fact that Messi has 3 players around him at all times.

Fair enough you can say he should be playing like he was in 2010, but to say he's past it is hyperbole. He explodes when given space.

2 goals in 2 games might seem poor against the opposition, but how many goals do Aguero, Higuain and Di Maria have?

Do you think Messi is past his peak?

 

[Blaugrana Bull]

I celebrated his goal so much. So happy for Leo.
Especially the chat here was so awful.

 

[DonAK]

You can always say that he doesnt look motivated and that his lack of effort is messing up his game, but what do you exactly want him to do? He could move around a bit more to make himself more available as he DID vs Bosnia in the second half WHEN Argentina got a bit more SPACE to work with. When you have 7-9 players ahead of you, you can hardly do much even if you move around more as every time you'll get the ball, you're already gonna be in a position where the opposition player will most likely cut you off without big problems.

People forget so easily sometimes that it's so frustrating. Get an external harddisk of 1 TB and record all matches and please rewatch them.

The fact that Higuain is still rusty as you could see with his 1st touch and whenever he tried to dribble along with Aguero being woeful and Di Maria still in 2nd gear, I do wonder what people exactly want from Lionel Messi. Even Pele or Maradona could not just go around and kill it by themselves, they needed their team players to do decently as well.

 

[instinct]

I can criticize the lack of effort aspect of his game. And I don't care about other players. Messi plays for Barca. Higuain/Aguero don't. I want to see him work harder, and that's all I'm going to say about him. We'll see how he does later on in the competition.

What do you mean with effort? He played in a very deep role in front of many many defenders. I don't expect him to try to dribble past them to call it effort. His effort was to put his teammates in a good position, to deliver passes around the pitch. When he had space, he tried to score, he was pacey.
We know Messi as a constant goal-scoring threat but his role today was very different. I liked him today, Flavia posted some interesting stats to back this up (though I don't like stats at all.)

 

[Paganinisrvnge]

If Messi takes Argentina to at least 3rd place with Messi playing very well and wins another Champions League at some point in his career(he should unless our board screw things up for the next 8 years or so) then I can't see how one can argue that he's not at least top 3 all time.