Barcelona's Lionel Messi is the world's best playmaker and goalscorer rolled into one unstoppable force

Andy West 00:49 30/10/2017
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  • On Saturday night, the best playmaker in the world sparked an attack for his team by stroking a perfectly weighted pass perfectly into the path of the overlapping full-back.

    When the cross came into the middle, the best goalscorer in the world was in the right position to finish off the move with a crisp and decisive finish, catching out the opposition goalkeeper by imparting so much pace on the ball despite meeting it so early.

    What a great goal it was, and all made possible by the brilliance of two superb players.

    Oh, wait a minute…it wasn’t two players. It was one player.

    The best playmaker in the world, the man who delivered the initial pass for Jordi Alba, was Lionel Messi. And then the best goalscorer in the world, lurking in the box to beat home keeper Kepa with his adroit finish, was…Lionel Messi.

    Two different roles all brilliantly wrapped up in one person, and the only reason – really, the only reason – that Barcelona are sitting pretty unbeaten at the top of La Liga right now.

    Of course, watching Messi score goals is nothing new. He’s been doing so at a rate of 50+ per season for the last decade, and the sight of Barca’s talisman wheeling away in delight after netting a crucial match winner for his team is nothing new.

    However, the increased responsibility he is taking for creating chances – playing in the traditional ‘number ten’ role – is a relatively new development, and has three main explanations.

    Firstly, there is the necessity. Pep Guardiola’s Barca teams were orchestrated by the relentless control over possession exerted by Xavi and Andres Iniesta, but since Xavi left and Iniesta entered into age-related decline, nobody has really stepped up to fill their boots in midfield.

    Of course, directly replacing a player like Xavi is impossible but by allowing Thiago Alcantara to join Bayern Munich and failing to recruit stellar playmakers such as Isco, Barca left themselves with a massive hole in the role that Xavi and Iniesta used to fill. So Messi is having to do it himself.

    Secondly, along with the necessity Messi also had the opportunity to become a goal-maker as well as a goal-taker when he played in the now-defunct ‘MSN’ front three alongside Luis Suarez and Neymar.

    Being part of a forward line with scintillating chemistry alongside two superb players who were both capable of finishing off the chances he created, Messi – after his move to the right wing – became more and more adept at delivering perfectly weighted and angled balls into the penalty box, where he knew they would be met by his hungry teammates.

    Of course, that triumvirate has now been broken up but it accelerated a shift in Messi’s approach to the game, which has been retained now that he has returned to his ‘false nine’ position as a deep-lying forward with the freedom to drop into midfield.

    The third and final reason for Messi’s evolution into a playmaker is personal: his age.

    Now 30, Messi knows that he cannot forever continue to make darting runs all over the pitch and in behind defenders, and he will have to adapt his game in response to the inevitable slowing down of his body.

    Playing in the hole in front of a solid midfield block and behind a striker like Suarez rather than leading the line himself, Messi can reduce the physical workload he undertakes and therefore – let us all hope – extend his career by at least another couple of years.

    Lionel Messi

    Lionel Messi

    It’s similar to the change in position adopted by Cristiano Ronaldo, who is no longer a flying winger surging from end of the pitch to the other, and instead contents himself with playing almost exclusively in and around the opposition penalty box.

    Messi can be seen as currently going through a similar transition as he becomes an attacking midfielder, chiefly responsible for building his team’s attacking moves rather than finishing them off.

    Because he is close to superhuman, however, at the moment he’s able to do both those things: starting moves and then scoring goals he has helped to create.

    But even Messi can’t continue to do that forever, and in the coming years it’s likely we’ll see a gradual decline in his scoring figures as he focuses more on creation than execution.

    The good news is that he’s more than capable of doing so. In fact, he’s already the best in the business.

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