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I s yo u n g A r g e n t i n e a n s u p e r s ta r L i o n e l M e s s i t h e n e x t M a r a d o n a?
T h e j u r y ’ s s t i l l o u t o n t h at o n e . I s h e t h e b e s t p l ay e r i n t h e w o r l d to day ? Y e s .
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Is Lionel “Leo” Messi the best player in the world?
On the evidence of his display against Arsenal in the
UEFA Champions League quarter-finals at the
Camp Nou, it’s a most affirmative yes. Arsene
Wenger, Arsenal’s manager, was convinced
he’d seen something not quite human:
“He’s like a PlayStation. I think he can take
advantage of every mistake you make.”
Argentina’s national coach, the immortal
Diego Maradona, was even moved to
distance him from the temporal: “He is
playing his football like Jesus at
the moment.”
Four goals, each brilliant in their own
way, drawn from a team regarded –
outside Messi’s own Barcelona – as the
torchbearers of the beautiful game.
The first: power. The second: stealth.
The third: skill. The fourth: cunning. }
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By Jesse fink
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“He is playing his
football like Jesus at the
moment.” – Maradona
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The third of four
goals against Arsenal
two months ago. A
chip from heaven.
As far as big stages and big asks go, there
are few bigger than scoring four against
Arsenal in the Champions League. Messi’s
third, certainly, was a work of religious
art worthy of placement in the Vatican: a
delicate left-foot chip at speed over the
flailing arms of Manuel Almunia that had the
crowd at Barca’s 95,000-capacity stadium
thinking they’d seen a miracle. The oneman show at the Nou Camp was Messi’s
fourth hat-trick of 2010 and included his 39th
goal of the season and his 13th goal in just
eight matches.
Sufficient explanation as to why this short,
slightly built Argentinean with the looks of
a Peter Jackson hobbit is the highest paid
footballer in the world, earning $50 million
a year?
But to speak of Messi in the same breath
as Pele and Maradona as an all-time great is
perhaps premature. Perhaps because until
we see Messi replicate the magic we saw
against the Gunners for his national team
Argentina at a World Cup, we can never
really state his case with hard evidence. As
Les Murray said in an editorial for SBS in
April after the 22-year-old had destroyed
Wenger’s 11 men in Spain: “The titillation
over this wonderful, exciting, conquering
young man is getting out of control … [he]
hasn’t been around long enough. The time
to make such comparisons [with Pele and
Maradona] is when Messi is about 35 and,
preferably, already retired. It’s only then
that we will know what he achieved over a
career, under what circumstances, against
what odds, and what lasting imprint he has
left on the game.”
What we do know, though, is enough
to satisfy the conviction of South Africa
2010 being a pivotal moment in the young
Argentinean’s incredible career. Germany
2006 didn’t require much from him, Jose
Pekerman choosing to play him sparingly
despite Messi scoring the final goal in the
6-0 demolition of Serbia and Montenegro.
He sat out the first match against Ivory
Coast altogether, got 16 minutes against the
Serbians, started against the Netherlands,
got six minutes to have a goal ruled offside
in the 2-1 second-round win over Mexico,
and didn’t get a chance at all against
Germany in the quarter-final in Berlin, with
the host nation going through to the semi
by winning a penalty shoot-out after the
scores were tied 1-1 after extra-time. With
Argentina ahead 1-0 and needing a second
to put the result beyond all doubt, Pekerman
instead brought on Julio Cruz for Hernan
Crespo in the 78th minute, a decision that
had Albicelestes fans tearing their hair out.
A couple of minutes later, Germany
equalised, Pekerman had no substitutions
left and the nation’s greatest goal conjurer,
Messi, El Enano, The Dwarf, was forced to }
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Argentina’s fans
are dying to see
Messi shine in
his national
colours.
watch his World Cup disappear before his
eyes and with his greatest assets, his feet,
criminally unused.
There won’t be much chance of that
happening in South Africa. Maradona
might be God, but even he knows that
if he sidelines the world’s best player,
Argentineans will call for his head on a
plate. The real issue is what system he’ll play
and how Messi will fit into it. Like Maradona,
the diminutive Messi has a low centre of
gravity, but is muscular and solid and has a
peerless ability to control the ball at speed.
Unlike Maradona, though, Messi is typically
deployed as a winger or second striker who
finishes off plays, not as a free-roaming No.
10 who creates them, and we’ll likely see
him take his place on the wing, upfront in a
4-3-3, alongside Carlos Tevez, Diego Milito,
Sergio Aguero or Gonzalo Higuain, but
without the trequartista (playmaker) of Juan
Roman Riquelme pulling the strings behind
them.
Riquelme, who plays for Maradona’s
spiritual home, Boca Juniors, had a
spectacular falling-out with Maradona
during World Cup qualifying and said he
would never return to the national side
while Maradona was in charge. His shoes
haven’t been adequately filled since,
though there have been hints of a possible
rapprochement.
And though Messi played a far freer
role against Arsenal, dropping back into
midfield and even helping out in defence,
Argentina’s 1978 World Cup-winning coach,
Cesar Menotti, explained the difference
between Messi’s club and country tasks
last October: “Messi is not responsible for
the strategy at Barcelona. That is [Andres]
Iniesta, Xavi and [Yaya] Toure. Messi is
the one that completes the moves. When it
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comes to Argentina, they expect Messi to
cope with the strategy of the team, to create
goals and score them, to do everything.
“The team runs around a lot because they
play badly. There, they need to run more.
But this is a football team, not a marathon
club. Messi plays for Barcelona, but with
Argentina, he runs.”
Former Real Madrid manager Bernd
Schuster agrees: “Argentina have a problem
if they can’t make Messi play. You can’t
afford the luxury of Messi not performing
in a World Cup. You have to adapt to him.
Argentina don’t know what to do with
Messi. They can still change, but it’s
going to be difficult for them.”
A quick glance at the statistics
testifies that Messi’s performance
for his nation is not a patch on his
efforts for his club. Thirteen goals
in 43 appearances, compared to 80
in 136 for Barca. This would explain
why in some quarters of Buenos
Aires, Cordoba and his hometown of
Rosario, he’s pejoratively known as “The
Catalan”. Claudio Mauri, a columnist for
daily newspaper La Nacion, has written,
somewhat unfairly: “The world’s best
footballer is an Argentinian who, in his
own country, has less fans than a referee.”
Outside of his paucity of goals for the
Albicelestes, this has as much to do with
the fact Messi has never played senior
football for a club in the country of his
birth, having left Argentina at the age of 13
for Spain, where Barcelona was offering
to pay for the growth hormone treatment
he desperately needed to make it as a
professional footballer – with the caveat that
he sign for them. (He’d been diagnosed with
growth hormone deficiency at the age of
11.) His boyhood club in Rosario, Newell’s
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Old Boys, simply couldn’t afford it, nor could
Buenos Aires superclub River Plate, who
wanted to sign him.
Messi’s World Cup arrival, then, and
his true bid for footballing immortality, is
firmly in the hands of a man who has all
sorts of reasons to want to deny him any
more limelight. Maradona, who turns 50
in October, has never been known for his
humility and doesn’t take kindly to sharing
the stage with anyone. Messi’s Brazilian
team-mate at Barcelona, Daniel Alves, is
convinced the Argentina coach has his nose
out of joint: “When you’ve done everything
possible in football and then see that there’s
a possible usurper, it’s inevitable that you’ll
get upset.”
But Maradona has proved with his
generous praise of his charge that he has
more charity than perhaps people give
him credit. Not everyone gets called Jesus
by Maradona, even though a cynic would
point out Jesus was the son of God. And in
Argentina at least (and in Maradona’s own
mind), there‘s only one God in football:
Maradona.
The reality, though, is
Maradona needs Messi
more than Messi needs }
Bags of goals for
Barcelona, but will
El Diego’s coaching
“system” allow the
same result?
Maradona. To coach Argentina to a World
Cup victory, its first since 1986, would
arguably be the man’s finest achievement
because no serious observer of the game
gives El Diego much respect as a trainer
of players. Maradona is what is known as
a “name coach” or “player coach”. Not a
“teacher coach”. It’s his presence and his
pedigree that inspires his players, not his
tactics or intellect.
Recall, if you will, Argentina’s unimpressive
qualification for South Africa 2010, where
they finished fourth and along the way lost
to Bolivia 6-1, Venezuela 2-0, Colombia 2-1,
Chile 1-0, Ecuador 2-0, Paraguay 1-0 and
Brazil 3-1. It took a 1-0 win over Uruguay in
Montevideo in the final round to get there.
He’s called up over 100 players since he
took the reins from Alfio Basile in 2008.
That’s hardly the sign of a manager with a
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1958/1962 and 1970 and Beckenbauer in
1974 and 1990. He isn’t about to leave
anything to chance and Maradona
recognises that he has the gift of a lifetime
in the form of Messi.
Where Messi can steal a march on
Maradona, irrespective of Argentina’s
progress in South Africa, is his performance
off the park. Messi is by all accounts a
humble, gentle man who doesn’t flaunt his
wealth and doesn’t regard himself in a class
apart from his team-mates or peers. Such a
rep isn’t afforded to Maradona, whose
gigantic footballing talent was long ago
eclipsed by his gigantic ego. Unlike
Ronaldinho and David Beckham, Messi
keeps a low media profile outside of football
and is reportedly dating a girl from Rosario
called Antonella Roccuzzo. She remains in
Argentina, studying nutrition at college,
while he plays for the biggest club in the
world in Spain. They’re planning to marry
after South Africa 2010.
Messi’s coach at Barcelona, Pep
Guardiola, identified this homespun quality
in a press conference after the Arsenal
game: “The good thing about Messi is that
[after tonight] he will get up and look for the
affection of his people and his team-mates. I
like the love he has for football, and his
anonymous character.”
This anonymous character lets his football
do the talking. It’s a cliche trotted out by
athletes every weekend, but with Messi, you
truly get the feeling it’s all he wants to do.
So let’s all just enjoy his football … It really
doesn’t get any better. n
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lot of confidence in his players or what he’s
doing. It’s Maradona’s luck that he has such
an incredible array of talent to work with,
even outside Messi. A state Premier League
coach could arguably do a better job with
Argentina than Maradona has in the two
years he’s been with the team. But he’s a
legend of the game and legends of the
game have a habit of getting such
opportunities. Maradona is not going to
blow it. Nor is he going to spurn his
chance for his own personal revenge
on the FIFA peabodies who sent him
packing as a player from USA ’94
for failing a drugs test and years
later, as a coach, banned him
from all football activities for
two months for telling his
critics – after Argentina had
qualified for the World Cup
– to “suck it and keep
sucking it”.
So South Africa 2010
looms not only as the
summit of Messi’s career,
but Maradona’s. A World
Cup win as coach would
also put him on a
different plane to Messi,
no matter if the player won
the World Cup for his boss
and nation single-handedly.
It’s rare for someone to win a World Cup
as a player, then again as a manager.
Only Mario Zagallo and Franz
Beckenbauer have achieved the player/
coaching double before, Zagallo in
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He’s a humble man who doesn’t regard
himself in a class apart from his
team-mates – unlike Maradona.