Lionel Messi is the reigning FIFA World Player of the Year, and his four goal explosion against Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals leads you to believe that he sits firmly atop the mountain of the world's most special players.
Where he is the elite of the current players, where does he rank among the all-time greats? Tony Cascarino writes of what Messi has to do to sit among the football gods.
Is Lionel Messi the best player in the world? Right now, my answer would be yes, but why don’t we wait until at least the end of the season before proclaiming him as good as Maradona or Pele.
To deserve to be lifted into that category, Messi will need to perform outstandingly in a World Cup, so let’s see how he fares for Argentina this summer. Some top stars always disappoint on the sport’s biggest stage. It’s often the way that the players who enter a tournament with the highest burden of expectation are ineffective, and unheralded names take the limelight. I remember Gianluca Vialli being a huge let-down for Italy at Italia ’90 – but Toto Schillaci emerging as a surprise hit.
Messi was certainly amazing for Barcelona against Arsenal, but let’s not forget that he had plenty of freedom to roam because Arsenal play an open game and are defensively weak. His four goals were superbly taken but would he have scored them against, say, Inter Milan?
The forward almost seems like a veteran at the age of 22. Why is he so good? Technique, vision, calmness, confidence, a low centre of gravity that helps his dribbling. The ball sticks to him like glue and he’s always willing to receive possession because he knows that in any situation he can wriggle past any number of opponents who may be paying close attention.
When he gets the ball, he’s not just controlling it before deciding his next move, he’s making touches that already prepare him for his next stride, his next kick. He’s thinking ahead, with a quick brain and quick feet. He flies around the pitch with boundless energy but never looks tired. And his self-belief is obviously sky high.
When pundits talked about Messi as the best in the world after Tuesday it was as if they’d crowned him the winner in a contest between Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. It felt a bit unfair on Ronaldo and Rooney – after all, they’d apparently “lost” without even playing that night. The World Cup will offer the best assessment because it will have all the world’s leading stars competing under the most pressure in the same competition.
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