Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola says that he has run out of superlatives to describe his forward Lionel Messi. His club’s president Joan Laporta hasn’t.
“Messi has once again shown that he is a wonderful player and that he is, without doubt, the leader of Barcelona,” Laporta said. “He is the best player in the world and the best in the history of football. Along with Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona, he is the best player we have seen at Barça.”
The thing is, he may be right.
Laporta was talking after Messi’s sublime hat-trick had destroyed Real Zaragoza at the weekend. His third goal was his 11th in Barça’s last five games. His second was of such bewildering quality that it even prompted the Madrid-based, Barça hating sports newspaper Marca to declare “Maradona, here is your son.” Yet it arguably wasn’t the most impressive moment that the Argentinian produced on the night.
After Zaragoza had pulled the score back to 3-2 – perhaps inspired by the introduction of Jermaine Pennant – Messi set off on another mazy run vaulting over the challenges of some defenders, seemingly going through the legs of others, until he was hauled down in box. He allowed Zlatan Ibrahimovic – with one goal in 2010 – to take the penalty. “Zlatan needed it,” he said. Add humility to that growing list of attributes.
Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba and Fernando Torres – who were all on the mark at the weekend – are quite rightly lauded in this country for being the best forwards that the Premier League has to offer, yet Messi places them in perspective.
All three are different, yet have the same qualities. All can score astonishingly different types of goals, they act as focal points and leaders for their teams and can often set the tempo and dictate the performances of team-mates. Messi does all that and more, and he’s gunning for England.
A week tomorrow, he’ll be at the Emirates Stadium attempting to knock Arsenal out of the Champions League, a competition that Barcelona won last season and are favourites to clinch this.
He makes Barça tick, and if they get into top gear in either leg against the Gunners then Arsène Wenger’s long wait for European success with Arsenal will go on, and that might not be the only pain that he visits upon these isles in the coming months.
If all goes to plan – and that is a giant if considering what’s about to be written next – then England could be playing Argentina in the semi-final of the World Cup on the evening of Tuesday June 6th in Cape Town.
The prospect of Messi running at a patched-up Rio Ferdinand and an increasingly immobile John Terry will surely be enough to give Fabio Capello nightmares. Quite how he – and the rest of coaches at the World Cup for that matter – plan to stop him will be a question at the forefront of their minds. Maybe it is a question that can’t be answered.
“I'm not sure he's human,” said Zaragoza’s Ander Herrera after Sunday’s masterclass.
“Tonight, I saw Diego Maradona,” said Zaragoza’s coach José Aurelio g*y, “but at more revs per minute. There are no words left to describe him – he is interplanetary.”
And he’s coming for you, England.
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