ITT: LEO 'KING' MESSI

no, this: battered womens syndrome c/d

oh me, oh my

that was a fucking classic and i can't believe it didn't garner you all sorts of spermabans

spermabatters

It's going to be pretty difficult to lead Maradona's team into anything other than ridicule but I'm sure he'll do his best.

I think it's unfair that Messi making the exceptional commonplace somehow makes him less worthy of admiration.

I wasn't intending to personally insult anyone and I apologise if I have. I love lower league last day of the season feats of heroism as much as the next guy but I wouldn't fetishise them to an extent that they eclipse your actual best footballers in the world doing it on a regular basis. It's the "regular basis" bit that makes them the best.

And they're not eclipsing! Merely coexisting. Messi's genius isn't so much a genius of moment (unless he really does run past an entire international defence) as one of consistency, and the two appeal to different parts of my sporting appreciation. He's gifted with the ability to jink past everyone, so he does. He hasn't changed the way the game is played - yet. He's worthy of enormous admiration, because he works so hard at improving himself, and because he clearly think about his game.

the day Messi is caught with coke and hookers = the day he turns into Shane Warne* and becomes my favourite currently active sportsman <3

FUCKING LEGEND

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.

I don't mean he becomes a coke addict, I mean a single infraction (of which that's a cliched example - I could have said 'the day Messi goes on Countdown' or 'the day Messi takes up skydiving' or 'the day Messi gets caught painting the hippos at Woburn') which reveals a mind questing for experience

if he assaults women (which Warne didn't do AFAIK) then fuck him, also if he loses his life to drugs, fuck him

the case of Geoff Boycott is weird, because he was such a great sportsman and is such a wonderful commentator, but he did his his ladyfriend quite hard at one stage - twat, but arguably redeemable

Warne is not that sort of Flawed Genius; I was at pains to stress this! He redefined an entire sporting craft, for a start

hmm what part of hitting one's ladyfriend quite hard is redeemable?

idk, the "quite" bit?

what part of it is relevant?

different spheres. i don't really give two shits what a player's like off the pitch, though i do enjoy terry and cashley squirming in public because their entire on-pitch persona is exactly that of a pair of cunts.

ts; althusser vs collmore

*collymore

well he then got throat cancer and apologised quite profusely for his actions, and isn't a recidivist - dude's had his karma imo

but violence against women is something I find hard to forgive - hence 'arguably'

terry and cashley being brought low through no fault other than their own = awesome

"brendan is a top class accountant, but he was involved in a fracas with ulrika jonsson in a bar in paris. you've got to factor that in when looking at his balance sheets brian."

"john terry is a pub footballer you've never heard of that cheats on his wife. how do you feel about john terry?"

xp lj you didn't just 'karma' cancer.

he survived it and still has a very successful career to add to his pretty successful life - I'm not saying all cancer is karma - often it's tragic - but sometimes something like that fits snugly into a metanarrative

not saying terry/cole deserve to have their football judged according to their off-field acts, but their personalities certainly can be

STFU about cricket, dudes.

i mean yeah it's not good to factor cancer into karma, sorry. i'm just trying to show how Boycott shouldn't just be defined by his striking of a woman, but how hard it is not to

argh i've only gone and run the ball into my own net, out of the statium, and off towards beachy head ;_;

there is something amiss in this need for footballers to ingratiate themselves via various extracurricular escapades. don't really get this ah fuck, jimmy bullard, fuckin legend son shit, football is such a simple game and doesn't depend on paratextual piffle.

nor is football an ideal venue for esotericism, sure i like yr psychotic south slavic playmakers and tortured nu maradonas but i prefer that out of all the millions of kids the world over who try for a football career, there is one who is arguably the best at the somewhat counterintuitively privileged skill of kicking a ball.

very few people will have heard of giacinto scelsi or the young marble giants let alone agree to their greatness but only cavilling contrarians would argue with messi's place in the hierarchy.

young marble giants, even

i think you mean the young marble giants

No he means young marble giants.

also I am saying quite clearly in this thread that Messi has a great chance of joining the pantheon - in fact it is almost inevitable - but as I keep saying anyone can be the 'best' at kicking a ball, for a moment - the ontology of 'best' is limitless and confusing

scans better with the but not actually correct innit xxp

oh wait haha i thought he was correcting a phantom spelling error, rather than amending out a 'the'

there isn't anything confusing about the inarguable fact that no other top level footballer has the glue feet messi showed eg vs zaragoza, and manipulating a football with feet needn't be considered metaphysically wrt its importance in playing football

at this point I should just admit defeat, right

where the skills needed for football, in terms of offensive play, can be separated from general physical talents such as pace, strength, height, etc, then messi is peerless. c ronaldo is quick, strong and tall, rooney's excess fat gives him a ballast advantage, drogba can power opponents out of the way.

these guys all combine these physical advantages with footballing skills to great effect, but the fact that messi is up there without those physical advantages has a lot to do with why he's admired on another level by so many imo

that was the best argument in that sid lowe piece

When it comes to the inevitable and often tedious comparisons with Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the things that is often said about Messi is that he is not as complete.........Ronaldo is invariably described as more complete than Messi – stronger, faster, bigger, more athletic. But aren't they all part of the same package, an obsession with physical strength? Isn't that a pretty incomplete reading of complete?

What height was Maradona again?

messi isn't exactly slow tbh, nor slight

why only yesterday mr nakhchivan was emphasising how his stoutness of calf would ward off even the staunchest of shawcrossings

He's no Arshavin

at this point I should just admit defeat, right

― LiveJournal (acoleuthic), Tuesday, March 23, 2010 3:29 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes, your imaginary antagonists have made you look quite silly.

ADMIT DE FEET OF MESSI AS ARTICLE NO 1 AS EVIDENCE IMO

tbh caek as ever I've pretty much played myself

sometimes you are just too real for this board.

Worth noting that wee tiny Messi would be wee-er and tinier if Barca hadn't given him treatment for a growth hormone deficiency.

Aye, otherwise he might just have been the Argentinian Pat Nevin

so he's a drug cheat

nakhchivan w/ some unexpected sectarian football moralising here.

i may have been attempting to argue against him (and largely losing) but nakhchivan is on some serious awesome-fucking-football-analysis tip - his posting is A+ and his use of modernist crit dialectic is to be encouraged

sectarian?

secretarial

try to avoid milibandian moralizing tbh but if that's what it takes to subdue lj's bullardian intifada, so be it

bullardian antipasta

You trying to make like nakh's special friend is starting to bug me more than all this Messi-worship tbh. I'm gonna find me a really shit lower-division poster and lionise him instead.

i love bullard as much as anyone, and i'm not wishing harm on him or anything, but most pics i see of the dude off pitch make it look like the guy has maybe 6 months left to live or something:

http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00429/Jimmy_Bullard_682x4_429252a.jpg

the warmth of lj's maternal embrace is a beautiful way to welcome new football posters into the fold imo.

Awesome post darragh