ITT: LEO 'KING' MESSI

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?

andy carroll should guard his phone like a hawk - capello could call at any moment

Yes to who will be this year's Hagi/Stoichikov/Milla and the like than whether Messi will do it 'when it matters'.

I guess this debate will rage on when SOL CAMPBELL contains the mighty Messi over two legs right?

We haven't really been blessed with Hagis, etc. ever since. Various Croats in 1998, Diouf in 2002, nobody at all in 2006 as I recall it.

Yeah no names in 2006 spring to mind...maybe that's why we had to contend with Zidane's phoenix from the ashes stuff...

And not a world cup, but who can remember that Greek side from Euro 2004?

Hagi phenomenon referring to one player dragging a rubbish team to a finals?

richard dunne was a 'nearly'

Step forward Wayne Rooney

i missed a sitter there

^heskey^

One brilliant player in a really good but unfashionable team who weren't pre-tournament favourites is a better definition - i.e. a massive shock to pundits who aren't aware of Barcelona, Brescia or, uh, JS Saint-Pierroise

Arshavin in 2008 maybe?

I'm thinking one of the Eastern European teams might have a wonderful footballer we just haven't noticed, maybe Serbia?

Arshavin started off great, then petered out, like Russia really (trying to work Peter the Great into that somewhere)

Arshavin started off with a two-game ban after getting sent off against Andorra!

Not sure it'll happen that way xp, the really promising guys get snapped up young. Would be great if North Korea had the new Maradona tucked away (so long as he managed to flee post-tournament). More likely Gourcuff or some French kid we don't know yet will have a blinder and after the initial surprise it'll just look like the natural order of things reasserting itself.

smh all this lower league real English football played by real English men who hit people nonsense. Of course 3rd division fans leap with joy at sclaffed crosses hitting the top corner and at their cult clogger figure taking ball plus man plus man behind him and anything else that happens to be nearby, but none of these things (particularly when it's not your team) is even close to matching a Messi or a Best or a Maradona in full flight with a ball glued to his toe.

I get the impression here that Messi's genius needs to expose a flaw to make him less boring when in actuality there's nothing more boring than the Flawed Genius who has 5 great career moments if he's lucky and spends the rest of his life snorting coke and punching his wife.

"And not a world cup, but who can remember that Greek side from Euro 2004?"

The Greeks were just as much about the manager...a bit like South Korea in 2002?

Romania and Bulgaria were not at all rub in '94 but erratically brilliant and Hagi/Stoichikov represented that.

xp = lolz was just gonna say North Korea. I reckon Man City will smuggle one of their players to England by the end to provoke an international incident

agreed onimo

Well said, that man

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0ctUgrc06x27b/x610.jpg

for extra aww factor that message up there on his t-shirt is for his newborn niece <3

― DJ Get Up Kids (jim in glasgow), Thursday, 18 March 2010 00:10 (5 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the sick little cunt

looking a bit ...

http://pentangle.net/blog/files/2009/10/da41600de893757c_landing1.jpg

this finding solace in the maculate is kinda catholic imho, valourizing the pitiful and the miraculous rather than enjoying the honest expression of rarified talents

i also prefer the seriousminded messi to the more playful, latterly clownish ronaldinho when you see the former just getting better and better with application and r10 happy to coast and play a great throughball once a game

i also prefer the seriousminded messi to the more playful, latterly clownish ronaldinho

Hate all that "Playing football with a smile on his face" bollocks

that was one of the more annoying tyldsleyisms of the mid 00s

i used to like that ronaldinho took pleasure in his greatness, and he was never shy with praising his teammates eg saying he wasn't even the best player at barcelona when messi came through

then you see the levity as the other side of the laziness that's afflicted him since

messi is protestant work ethic incarnate by comparison

i used to like that ronaldinho took pleasure in his greatness, and he was never shy with praising his teammates

Yes, I think he said Henrik Larsson was his hero at one point!

andy carroll stuck one on steven taylor?? man i already knew dude was gonna be a kitson x shearer dickhead to savour over the coming years but this just puts the tin hat on it. all hail your new #9 king:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hx1U8gDRC00/SWq3hH5K-GI/AAAAAAAAAHA/DsFMYEeQzSY/s400/andy+carroll+cornrow.JPG

maybe we should start a thread where we all basically lap dance for him for 200 posts until people start disliking him out of spite

Ronaldinho, lovely fellow:

"With Henrik leaving us at the end of the season this club is losing a great scorer, no question. But I am also losing a great friend. Henrik was my idol and now that I am playing next to Henrik Larsson it is fantastic."