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Spanish Inquisition: Will Lionel Messi Win The Ballon d'Or Again If He Leads Barcelona To Champions League Glory?
Goal.com's Subhankar Mondal claims that should the Argentine lead Barcelona to Champions League glory yet again, then he will be in pole position to win football's most coveted individual honors.
Mar 18, 2010 10:55:38 AM
By Subhankar Mondal
They came with gold, myrrh and frankincense for the little child in a manger. They came from a land so far away that it would seem that they had come from an alien planet. They had seen his star at its rising and had come to pay homage to a child who they believed would rescue them and provide them with salvation. They were the Magi and they had come with gifts, blessings and hope for little Jesus Christ.
Lionel Messi might have been born some 22 years ago but every time he gets on to the pitch it seems that he has been reborn, that he is new, that he is pure. You feel like going to him, dressing him in protective clothes, giving him the gifts you have carried from the Far East, the Far West, the Far North or the Far South. The Blue Fairy watches over him, the angels create a fortress around his bed and the Bright Star lights up his innocent face. There was only one Jesus Christ and there is only one Lionel Messi. The Lionel Messi. The Messiah. The Savior of Barcelona and to some respect football itself.
On Wednesday evening, Messi was so good that even ITV were forced to admit that he is the best player in the world, by which they implied that he is better than Wayne Rooney - which he certainly is. Which is quite a progress for the mainstream English media, notorious for not accepting that football outside the British Isles exists, but for once they were right. It may have been only Stuttgart but it was a huge Champions League fixture and with Xavi out of the match and Zlatan Ibrahimovic on the bench, Messi was the central thread in the Barcelona web.
Is There Anyone Better Than Messi?
In the end Messi turned out to be the central thread in the web of football. He was, to put it simply, everywhere and anywhere a footballer could possibly be on the football pitch and did everything and anything a footballer could possibly do on the football pitch (except get sent off, that is). The former Newell's Old Boys youngster ran half the length of the pitch, hoodwinked a cluster of bemused Stuttgart defenders and rifled a sweet shot that seared into the Jens Lehmann's net. He set up Yaya Toure to provide the assist for Barca's second with a pass that only Xavi could manufacture, himself shot home another very soon and could have scored his second hat-trick in a week. So much so that a commentator exclaimed, "He seems to do it all on his own."
But by saying that "he seems to do it all on his own", the commentator meant just that - he seems to do it all on his own but doesn't actually do it all on his own. Jesus wouldn't have been able to do what He did without his apostles and Messi wouldn't be as effective without his Barcelona teammates. Daniel Alves was so sensational that a fellow Goal.com journalist marked him as "the most talented player on the planet", Pedro was again brilliant, Toure filled in for Xavi perfectly, Maxwell enjoyed going on the attacks and Thierry Henry looked mobile and enthusiastic.
Yet it was Messi who stunted them all.
At the weekend the world's finest footballer did exceptionally well too as he scored a scintillating hat-trick against Valencia. Curiously, all the three goals were quite similar and came from the same side, but the first one was a gem - not one of those 200-yard blinders that nine times out of ten end outside the stadium but a marvelous blend of vision, technique, skill and pace: a perfect amalgamation of poetry and prose. At the moment it did look like Messi will succeed in everything. Anything.
Which is why his 'failure' with Argentina so far has been so stark. Detractors suggest that Messi looks good at Barca only because he is surrounded by world class players especially Xavi and Andres Iniesta, and indicate that for Argentina, a weirdly dysfunctional squad under Diego Maradona, he looks redundant. Which is true but it is more complicated than that. At Barcelona Messi is part of a well-functioning, well-theorised and well-thought system but for los Albicelestes, Maradona fails to create that same environment. And until Messi learns how to turn water into wine and turn a battered Argentina side into world champions, there will always be fingers pointed at him.
The Night When The Dwarf Became The Giant
Yet based only on club football, it is almost impossible to suggest that Lionel Messi will not win the Ballon d'Or or the World Player award this year if he guides Barcelona to Champions League glory. Granted, Cristiano Ronaldo has looked truly galactic in La Liga for Real Madrid and Rooney has been exceptionally dominant in the Premier League, but one stroke of Messi's brush and you would forget that there was ever a Ronaldo or a Rooney, so destructively charming the Messiah's spell is.
In one of his September columns for Goal.com, yours truly proclaimed Messi as El Diego II, the perfect and most apt successor to Maradona's throne as the world's greatest ever footballer. Six months fast forward, and there is no logical reason to say anything to the contrary.
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Lionel Messi might have been born some 22 years ago but every time he gets on to the pitch it seems that he has been reborn, that he is new, that he is pure. You feel like going to him, dressing him in protective clothes, giving him the gifts you have carried from the Far East, the Far West, the Far North or the Far South. The Blue Fairy watches over him, the angels create a fortress around his bed and the Bright Star lights up his innocent face. There was only one Jesus Christ and there is only one Lionel Messi. The Lionel Messi. The Messiah. The Savior of Barcelona and to some respect football itself.
On Wednesday evening, Messi was so good that even ITV were forced to admit that he is the best player in the world, by which they implied that he is better than Wayne Rooney - which he certainly is. Which is quite a progress for the mainstream English media, notorious for not accepting that football outside the British Isles exists, but for once they were right. It may have been only Stuttgart but it was a huge Champions League fixture and with Xavi out of the match and Zlatan Ibrahimovic on the bench, Messi was the central thread in the Barcelona web.
Is There Anyone Better Than Messi?
In the end Messi turned out to be the central thread in the web of football. He was, to put it simply, everywhere and anywhere a footballer could possibly be on the football pitch and did everything and anything a footballer could possibly do on the football pitch (except get sent off, that is). The former Newell's Old Boys youngster ran half the length of the pitch, hoodwinked a cluster of bemused Stuttgart defenders and rifled a sweet shot that seared into the Jens Lehmann's net. He set up Yaya Toure to provide the assist for Barca's second with a pass that only Xavi could manufacture, himself shot home another very soon and could have scored his second hat-trick in a week. So much so that a commentator exclaimed, "He seems to do it all on his own."
But by saying that "he seems to do it all on his own", the commentator meant just that - he seems to do it all on his own but doesn't actually do it all on his own. Jesus wouldn't have been able to do what He did without his apostles and Messi wouldn't be as effective without his Barcelona teammates. Daniel Alves was so sensational that a fellow Goal.com journalist marked him as "the most talented player on the planet", Pedro was again brilliant, Toure filled in for Xavi perfectly, Maxwell enjoyed going on the attacks and Thierry Henry looked mobile and enthusiastic.
Yet it was Messi who stunted them all.
At the weekend the world's finest footballer did exceptionally well too as he scored a scintillating hat-trick against Valencia. Curiously, all the three goals were quite similar and came from the same side, but the first one was a gem - not one of those 200-yard blinders that nine times out of ten end outside the stadium but a marvelous blend of vision, technique, skill and pace: a perfect amalgamation of poetry and prose. At the moment it did look like Messi will succeed in everything. Anything.
Which is why his 'failure' with Argentina so far has been so stark. Detractors suggest that Messi looks good at Barca only because he is surrounded by world class players especially Xavi and Andres Iniesta, and indicate that for Argentina, a weirdly dysfunctional squad under Diego Maradona, he looks redundant. Which is true but it is more complicated than that. At Barcelona Messi is part of a well-functioning, well-theorised and well-thought system but for los Albicelestes, Maradona fails to create that same environment. And until Messi learns how to turn water into wine and turn a battered Argentina side into world champions, there will always be fingers pointed at him.
The Night When The Dwarf Became The Giant
Yet based only on club football, it is almost impossible to suggest that Lionel Messi will not win the Ballon d'Or or the World Player award this year if he guides Barcelona to Champions League glory. Granted, Cristiano Ronaldo has looked truly galactic in La Liga for Real Madrid and Rooney has been exceptionally dominant in the Premier League, but one stroke of Messi's brush and you would forget that there was ever a Ronaldo or a Rooney, so destructively charming the Messiah's spell is.
In one of his September columns for Goal.com, yours truly proclaimed Messi as El Diego II, the perfect and most apt successor to Maradona's throne as the world's greatest ever footballer. Six months fast forward, and there is no logical reason to say anything to the contrary.
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