ITT: LEO 'KING' MESSI

That's a bit harsh, but 'cartoonishly awesome frisson' is an excellent test of greatness I reckon. If Messi doesn't have it right now, who does?

there is something dispiriting about the ease with which he can destroy sides with the same few moves but necessity is the mother of invention and he has gradually improved his playmaking and long shots as he plays more centrally

i'm not sure if 'the ridiculousness in his joy, the joy in his ridiculousness?' isn't a product of oversaturation, even if you were around during maradona's time i'm guessing it wasn't that easy to see his every game/goal in hd youtube embeds

i'm going to have to stop being enthusiastic about things i guess. wish i was as jaded as u hipsters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/mar/22/leo-messi-barcelona-la-liga-spain - good Sid Lowe article, don't worry hoyey, you're not alone in your wild enthusiasm.

thread needs more Ray Hudson if you want to see real dick-riding

a hoy hoy dick riding messi >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> a hoy hoy dick riding diaby tbh

can you use another phrase please

sid lowe is the worst for messi hype anyway, he wrote an article just like that about daniel alves

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/jan/26/dani-alves-barcelona-leo-messi

Daniel Alves one of those ridiculously great players who is surprisingly disliked by britishers?

a hoy hoy dick riding messi >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> a hoy hoy dick riding diaby tbh

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Monday, 22 March 2010 21:29 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

These past couple weeks I have been starting to think... hmmm, one day Diaby could actually live up to NEXT VIEIRA hype and might be good enough that one day we can carry on without Cesc? Totally different kind of midfielder though so we'd have to change things around but his form has gone from lol comparisons to jenas to omfg am i watching xavi in an black french guy disguise?

however it is also like loving everything enjoyable about footballers. i dunno, this little fucker is just boring to me - he's like a really well-honed pro evo cutscene. where is the ridiculousness in his joy, the joy in his ridiculousness? yknow? he does not have the cartoonishly awesome frisson of the true great, whatever the stats might say.

― r|t|c, Monday, 22 March 2010 19:33 (2 hours ago) Bookmark

There's a real element of truth to this - hell, I've said it about Barcelona - but my main issue here is that great as Messi is, football, even great football, is about more than one man. There's a good deal of Messi-shaped tunnel vision going on at the moment; it's as though footballers who aren't cutting through defences three times a game are incapable of greatness. As a team sport, football is always going to be defined by a collective effort, and as a worldwide sport, defined by more than one team. There's as much beauty in a lower-league player transcending his or her professed abilities and doing something magnificent on a football pitch as there is in the world's most decorated player challenging his. Messi is not the be-all and end-all of what we fans ought to love about football; he is impermanent and mortal, and his time shall pass - football has not acquired new definitions. He's merely a lot more consistent at dribbling, passing and shooting than most players we've seen. A thousand Craig Fagans on a thousand pitches in a thousand years would emulate Messi's greatest goals; his genius is in the regularity of his brilliance.

Yes because Barca only have Messi and people watching them do not care for the work of Zlatan, Iniesta, Xavi, Keita, Pedro, Alves etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

Also I don't think anyone on this thread is saying that because watching Messi is a joy that suddenly lower-league football doesn't have its own qualities? You are making an argument out of nothing?

What you mean is, he can do things deliberately and regularly that Craig Fagan would fluke one time out of a billion. Way to puncture the hype.

It's arguments like

yeah not giving a shit about messi is like hating anything enjoyable ever done with a football

― he might have even have gone in. (a hoy hoy), Monday, 22 March 2010 19:20 (3 hours ago) Bookmark

which rile me. Comparatively to my giving-a-shit-about-football, my giving-a-shit-about-Messi is negligible. Dude's damned skilful, sure, and he does great things, but the cornucopia of brilliance I have witnessed in football is far, far vaster than the feats of one man - he is as Sirius to the firmament

ew

I mean, pardon me for deriving far greater joy from Michael Pook's incredible last-gasp winner for Cheltenham in a 6-5 away victory last week than from Messi's Zaragoza strike. And that's an extreme example. Even mundane things like a late Rotherham equaliser can inspire me equally, if I happen to see them. Jimmy Glass for Carlisle is still the greatest thing that's happened in British football since I grew aware of the game.

Messi dribbling past four hapless defenders = impressive*

This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YBrS5Gr5Pk

= stuff of legend

*do it in a World Cup final/semi-final and we're talking

Some days I'm of the view that Adebayor's celebration against Arsenal is the single greatest moment of the last ten years. But so what?

Anyway, I look down on your examples, because the greatest joy I've had recently was seeing my man Bobby Z take on a full-pelt first-time running lob from 25 yards, on the volley, from a route one ball coming over his right shoulder after he'd stolen a yard on Rio at Old Trafford. It didn't go anywhere near the target, but the vision...

^^^pretty awesome. one of my greatest early footballing memories was darren powell of derby aimlessly hoofing a ball high into the box after a corner was cleared, and it ending up dropping in the top corner. glory days.

David Hirst was better than Bobby Z at spectacular misses.

Louis, you're saying you prefer accidents to deliberate acts. Which is fine, but it doesn't make any recipient of a happy accident a great player.

Also you're arguing against a position that no one is taking. Who is saying that Messi is so good he makes the rest of football a joyless irrelevence? Certainly no one here, and not 99.999% of football fans either.

people are saying some very absolutist things about Messi - I don't think it's helpful to think in such terms, especially about players

Dunno, it would be quite helpful if it means he chokes at the World Cup and is rubbish when England inevitably play Argentina.

he strikes me as a man with the resolve and the mental strength to ignore what anyone says about him and concentrate upon playing football. if anything scuppers him, it'll be injury, a disciplined england performance, or most likely his team's tactics

i think he suffers playing for argentina because they have no dani alves, who gives him ridiculous freedom to roam at barca. play him on the left w/ insua maybe?

might even be worth trying maxi rod at rwb and sacrificing the the position to get the best from messi idk

people are saying some very absolutist things about Messi - I don't think it's helpful to think in such terms, especially about players

Is this a plea for more relativism in football discourse?

james milner all rubbing his hands in glee xp

Ismael, that'd be nice!

I'm not sure about that - how would the league table work?

play him on the left w/ insua maybe?

might even be worth trying maxi rod at rwb and sacrificing the the position to get the best from messi idk

Maybe try playing him with Dirk Kuyt and Lucas Leiva?

isn't jonas gutierrez a decent emergency FB [/trolling]

lj- i'm trying to cut down on my ridic statements and you know this but then dude goes and scores 8 beautiful goals in 3 matches and i cant help it.

he strikes me as a man with the resolve and the mental strength to ignore what anyone says about him and concentrate upon playing football. if anything scuppers him, it'll be injury, a disciplined england performance, or most likely his team's tactics

― LiveJournal (acoleuthic), Tuesday, March 23, 2010 10:01 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno lj. i feel like your strident and totally worthwhile contrarianism against imaginary opinions is starting to get to him.

rtc's contrarianism was miles more strident than mine - I've basically been the doddery lower-league fan all 'football is a coat of many colours' and he was all 'MESSI HAS NO SOUL'

but yeah sorry lionel I am sure you will take your frustration at not possessing the unquestioning adulation of every football fan on the planet out on arsenal

the criticisms of messi enthusiasm are at least as short sighted and dumb and the enthusiasm itself, tbh. sometimes shit's just great, enjoy and acknowledge it, it won't last forever.

messi is the bellx1 of football imo

he is the first footballer to break the sound barrier with a rocket in his arse?

Discussion of Messi missing out on the fact that he looks like a nerdy little dweeb who would be the last guy to be picked in a playground football match

That is true. He'd never have made it in this country, or if he did he would be Lee Trundle.

i mean trundle is just a great surname, notwithstanding that he runs quite well

although lj's clearly gone off on a mazy, i can sympathise with maybe reacting a little sorely to the insinuation of an idealogical purism when it comes to footer, and not least when it's coming from a guy that doesnt really support a team and a stereotypical nouvelle eurogooner. i'm not sure it gets to the point of why messi in particular draws an emotional blank though.

if we look at it from the 'greatness' side, i have enjoyed/cheered/booed/hissed/reacted to every other "phenomenon" footballer there's been, and it's not a question of style variation (owen scored the same lovely goal pretty much every time - who can't instantly picture it now?) or of exposure (1996 ronaldo at barca & 2007 ronaldo at united caught the imagination equally; i havent even seen any of this lukaku baby maniac at anderlecht but he sounds wicked and i love him already). what is it with messi then? i dunno really - his is just a new kind of inevitability, i think, purified in the depths of barcelona's molecular labs.

like let's say he beats 33 men and slots one in against england in the world cup - how will you react? will it be AHHH 4 FUX SAKE JOHNSON!! or AHH WE JUST GOT TOTALLY RAPED!! or, etc? no. you'll just go "yep, fair play. well done to the little fella. v good player. credit to the game." and meh to all that tbh. as lj says, wouldn't you rather watch a kevin davies' 1000 best elbows comp on youtube instead?

like let's say he beats 33 men and slots one in against england in the world cup - how will you react?

You don't want me to answer that do you?

the product of excellence is predictability. keep gazza, i don't think the argies were offering a swap anyway.

that's not what i'm saying. i've liked many a predictable footballer.

the best kinds of predictable footballers are ballplaying defensive midfielders

the best kind of unpredictable footballers are psychotic centre-backs who happen to have a good touch and the occasional propensity to surge

Zidane was pretty unpredictable? You couldn't necessarily rely on him to turn it on.

rtc, is it fair to say that most of messi's goals come about through an opening of space and then a slow yet quickening process of torture where defenders cower before the inexorable and the commentator clears his throat for the shout of GOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLLLLLL?

i'd probably root harder for messi if he did more stuff completely out of the blue. with his team up against it. the world cup could, thus, go a long way to endearing messi to me

yeah, zidane had the frenzy of creation, less the icy grip of execution - he was more compelling imo, although you'd possibly want messi in your team ahead of him if you wanted to *win*

anyway- we've signed sandro so i'd liek to add him to this list.

andy carroll's pretty unpredictable, can we put him up there?

Only if we're talking unpredictability in nightclubs, kebab shops or taxi queues

he's just broken steven taylor's jaw in a training ground bust up- does that count?