PROFILE: LIONEL MESSI:His four goals against Arsenal in the Champions League this week mean the diminutive Argentinian, as many felt he would, now has a claim to be the greatest soccer player the world has ever seen, writes EMMET MALONE
COMPARING NEW players to old ones is predictably standard stuff in football, with managers, agents and reporters all routinely moved to cite great talents of the past when attempting to describe new kids on the block.
Usually, it’s difficult to tell from a distance whether there is much foundation to the link, but it does seem a fairly safe bet that whoever was first to describe the young Lille winger, Eden Hazard, as the new Lionel Messi (Hazard’s mother, for all we know, because nowhere in the countless media references does it say where the comparison originates) was getting a little bit carried away.
History suggests that talents of Messi’s magnitude, a little like certain comets, only pass our way at intervals that run into decades.
The 22-year-old Argentinian, as it happens, has had to endure endless comparisons with Diego Maradona since first coming to prominence a few years back at Barcelona. The World Cup winner, now manager of his country’s national team, claims he would like the youngster to eclipse his own achievements, but his actions can sometimes appear unhelpful to this aim.
Similarly, fans back at home seem somehow more reluctant to celebrate the young star’s sensational talent than those whose often awestruck admiration he has earned on this side of the Atlantic. Messi is apparently incapable of persuading the public there that he is sufficiently proud to play for the country he left for Spain at the age of 13. The lingering ill-will, particularly among sections of the media, is rather puzzling given that the player’s family had little option but to move away from a country then gripped by a bitter financial crisis.
AS A CHILD, Messi first played football for his local club, Grandoli, in Rosario, an industrial town some 250 miles north of Buenos Aires, where his father, a coach at the club, was a steelworker and his mother a part-time cleaner. Even then, he was considered small for his age, but his ability ensured that “la pulga” (“the flea”) was soon playing with kids several years older.
Driven on by both a tireless love of playing with a ball and a father who was fiercely ambitious for his third son, the young Lionel graduated to Newell’s Old Boys (a sizeable club where Maradona once had a spell) before the bigger Buenos Aires club, River Plate, first signalled its intent by having one of its scouts gatecrash his younger sister’s christening.
A River Plate medical, however, confirmed a diagnosis that the boy was suffering from a hormone deficiency and, at 4ft 6in, had pretty much stopped growing. He would, his parents were told, require injections every day, costing around €900 per month, for several years. River Plate, in dire financial straits at the time, was not prepared to pay for them.
The Messi family set about trying to find a club that would, and through relatives in Catalonia, a trial was arranged at Barcelona. The club spends around €15 million annually on youth development, three to four times what Chelsea or Manchester United do in England, and seemed happy to pay the cost of a few return flights.
The pressure on the 13-year-old must have been immense. There were few alternatives to earning a place at the club’s famous academy, and without a deal in Europe, Messi’s dream of playing professionally was almost certain to be ended by his medical condition. Despite this, Messi scored five times in his first game at the club.
“Christ, who’s that?” exclaimed Charlie Rexach, the club’s director of youth development, on first seeing him play. “In two minutes I saw his speed, his skill, and decided we would sign him,” he recalled later.
Rexach was soon predicting that the youngster would eventually become the world’s best player, and there has been little during the intervening years to prompt any second thoughts. Certainly, Messi raced through the club’s youth teams, thriving on the Barcelona philosophy of “loving the ball”, and made his senior debut in a friendly against Jose Mourinho’s Porto at just 16.
His achievements since then make for a very long list, but three league titles, two Champions League titles and a World Player of the Year award (in 2009) would appear to merit some mention. Tuesday night’s humiliation of Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia was a first for him, in that he had never scored four times in a senior game for his club, but there have been a fair few memorable outings over the past few years.
His goals against Barca’s bitter rivals, Real Madrid, including a hat-trick in March 2007 (all equalisers, the last of them in injury time) and the two he contributed late last season in a 6-2 away win, are clearly viewed with particular fondness by the club’s supporters. Against other opponents he has scored goals reckoned to be serious contenders for the best of all time and, rather bizarrely, he has virtually recreated both of Maradona’s goals against England in the 1986 World Cup.
To dwell on the goals, however, is to miss so much of the point with Messi, no matter how many (more than 120 in senior football, if you must know, and he won’t be 23 until the summer) or how wonderful some have been (a former Argentina coach recommended closing the stadium where one of them was scored because its like would never be seen again).
To watch Messi in full flight with the ball at his feet is something quite magical . . . unless, that is, you are a defender who is supposed to stop him somehow. His balance, strength and ability to dribble, his breathtaking acceleration and astonishing ability to go from top speed to almost stationary in a moment, his astonishingly accurate passing, his awareness of team-mates and his brilliant knack for weighing up the options and then – instinctively and almost instantaneously – choosing the best one are all part of a remarkably rare package.
He is also incredibly unselfish for a player of his type, generating a steady stream of scoring opportunities for those around him and, astoundingly, making more tackles this season than any Barcelona defender.
He is, in short, one of the greatest talents the game has ever produced. Arsenal boss Arsène Wenger pretty much acknowledged as much after Tuesday’s game and even the pro-Real wing of the Spanish media appeared to accept that the debate over whether Messi or Ronaldo is the better player has effectively been put to bed.
Real, who host their rivals in a crucial league clash this evening, would, of course, happily write a fun-sized cheque to have the pair play together, but Messi recently extended his contract until 2016. Even if his repeatedly stated desire to spend his entire career at the Nou Camp cannot be taken completely at face value in the modern era, his employers can take some comfort from the €250 million sell-on clause in his latest deal.
Money, in any case, doesn’t seem to be an issue. He earned just short of €34 million last year (around one-third in wages and bonuses, the rest for commercial endorsements) but eschews the brashness of Ronaldo, dressing casually, driving an Audi provided by his employer and routinely looking like a (not very) big kid who is too preoccupied with football to care that much about anything else.
Perhaps this apparent lack of materialism is what prompted Maradona to make the somewhat odd observation in the wake of Tuesday’s performance that “he is playing his football like Jesus at the moment”. Now those truly are pretty big boots to fill.
CV LIONEL MESSI
Who is he?Lionel (Leo) Andres Messi, Barcelona soccer star, sporting sensation.
Why is he in the news?For furthering his claims to be the world's greatest ever player with four Champions League goals against Arsenal this week.
Most likely to say:"Give it here, Thierry."
Least likely to say:"Anyone got a number for the Bernabeu?"
