Yeah, but how much some of thsoe players had to adapt. Someone correct me if I am wrong, didnt Pele played for Brazil with many of his club teammates at Santos and the rest of the Brazilians that all played in brazilian league in few other clubs and knew each other very well and played somewhat similar ways. So basically it was easier for Pele to play for Brazil than for Santos just that they faced better team ins WC. And how different are Napoli and Argentina 86?.. both destructive teams with Maradona having the free role and a lot of runners around him. If anything Messi adapting from playing in one of the best team ever and with one of the best coaches ever with very unique playing styles and football philosophy to playing for Maradona as a coach, subpar teammates that are not selectively picked to fit certain philosophy, etc.. is much more difficult. I would say that Messi had way more adapting to do than Pele and Maradona did for their major successes. I would imagine Pele playing for Brazil is like Messi playing for Spain, but he didnt.
I mean, it makes sense that performances at the club level are much higher for few reasons: Selectively picked out teammates from a larger talent pool Time to build strong chemistry with teammates More games The biggest difference between club and NT football is that atthe club level you train withthe same people, under the smae manager for years. Not sporadically 5 times every few months. And chemistry, cohesion, teammwork, tactics, organization,.. all these team aspects of football add another level to the quality of club football. What can be built through smart, patient, diligent preparation is outstanding. Messi is absolutely incredible when given time to exploit that variable of the game. There are more games at club level so eventually there will be more exceptional performances because there is more chances to be and large number of international games are friendlies in which Messi did do wonders but you dont refer those, I assume.
Without disagreeing with the basis of that particularly, I'd add that at club level it's easier/more likely that the most revered players end up on stacked teams and in unbalanced games (with one team being much more in the ascendency than the other). Obviously by the end of his time with Barcelona this wasn't happening so much in the CL though (and sometimes arguably even happened the other way round, with Barcelona being the disadvantaged team), although still would have been in La Liga. I think club football, and it's rules, also allowed for more open games than in the preceding years too. I do think International football did have more of the unbalanced games (one side with the heavy advantage) in the past, than it does now though, on the other hand. So yeah, I'm just saying this is another factor, even though an overlapping one (the better the team cohesion the better the team, so it's not just about the players on the roster).
We fundamentally disagree on how to evaluate performances in knockout matches and finals. No, I would not argue Messi played poorly if Kolo Muani scored. All of previous points about his positive Final would stand except for the PK in the shootout. He showed composure, fighting spirit, and leadership, scoring two, having a hand in the other, and staying present in the match until the very end. That cannot be said about any of Messi's other finals, so it would be completely logically consistent for me to still praise his performance. You only claim otherwise because you are convinced that I must be totally blinded by outcome bias and don't have the self-awareness to see it. As for R9, it should go without saying that missing a chance + scoring 2 goals is a better performance than Messi missing a chance + not scoring and not playing particularly well either. To say that he would have scored if he had more half-chances but simply was given them (by whom I ask? his teammates, the opposition, the grace of God?) is to remove all responsibility and agency from Messi in creating more. Sometimes, even if you play really well, the chances just don't come. But Messi didn't play at some ATG level and then miss one half-chance. He played below his usual level, even below his usual NT level, even below his 2014WC form level, and missed a chance that Higuain would have be crucified for. From what I've found, Higuain's xG for his missed chance in that match is only 0.173 or 17.3% chance of scoring (maybe @lessthanjake can correct this if it is wrong, I am unsure of where the xG data for this match is coming from).
Exactly you are starting to get it. By Ronaldinhos two phenonemanl passes, by Roberto Carlos' excellent cross and by grace of God that deflection from a gk save comes right in to his path for a tap in, which happened to Messi btw, for 3-2. It makes sense that you have those kind of criterias for evaluating players performance when you come to such narrative based conclusions. You are more interested in seeing illusory virtue signaling like fighting spirit, leadership, composure rather than actual valuable impact you can offer on the pitch like passing, progression, creativity, decision making.. I can seem composed, have fighting spirit, seem like a good leader and seem present in the moment till the very end, I can pretend like hell, but I am not an all time great international player. Messi's responsibility like everyone elses is mostly before the game in doing everything to prepare for the game. In game, he can only control his decision making and his technical execution. Also he is responsibile as a leader, in communicate the right way with his teammates but that is so vague and impossible to tell for us therefore irrelevant. Everything else is out of his control and not his responsibility. He is ultimately not responsibile for how his teammates perform. He doesnt control that.
The last line is going way too far on this. The point is well-taken that circumstances beyond a player's control can have a large impact on their ability to adapt and perform well for NTs. However, now we're just using post-hoc logic, looking at which great players did translate well between club and NT football, and finding reasons it must have been easier for them to adapt because they actually did, and finding reasons why great players who didn't translate well must have had it harder. This kind of reasoning doesn't tell anything about the player's actual ability to adapt. The part about Pele I don't think is completely correct. I believe he played with a different number of Santos players depending on which tournament it was. In 1958, there were only 2 other Santos players in the NT (Zito and Pepe) with only Zito typically in the Xl. In 1970 there were 4 other Santos players in the squad, typically 2 in the Xl (Carlos Alberto and Clodaldo). But to say that all of the Brazilian players would have known each other much better than today's Argentine players I think is probably not right because their were multiple regional leagues with NT players. Teams from different leagues rarely played each other and rarely saw each other play I'm sure with little of it being televised. They may know each other through brief glimpses and reputation. Maybe there is an argument to be had that Brazilians at that time all played a congruent style of football that translated well to the NT. But I'm not an expert here. The Maradona one I think begins to just be a stretch. For Messi, Argentina was sometimes lesser than their talent because they were organizationally a mess (like Maradona 2010) but to say subpar teammates rubs me the wrong way. Argentina is obviously a power house in international football. In everything single tournament Messi played Argentina, they were at very least an outside favourite, but basically always in the top 5, and for CA, often top 2. Not sure if these can be considered definitive odds, but here are some pre-tournament bettings odds: 2006: Pinnacle Sports Brazil 5/2 England 8/1 Germany 8/1 Argentina 8/1 Italy 19/2 2007: couldn't easily find, assuming 2nd favourite after Brazil 2010: Brobury Sports Spain 4/1 Brazil 9/2 England 6/1 Argentina 13/2 Holland 10/1 2011: Gambling 911 Argentina 5/6 Brazil 2/1 Uruguay 10/1 Chile 11/1 Paraguay 16/1 2014: Business Inside Brazil, 3-to-1 Argentina, 5-to-1 Germany, 5-to-1 Spain, 6-to-1 Belgium, 16-to-1 2015: sports-king . com Argentina: 9/4 Brazil: 3/1 Chile: 6/1 Colombia: 6/1 Uruguay: 10/1 2016: sports-king . com Argentina: 15/8 Brazil: 9/2 Chile: 15/2 USA: 9/1 Uruguay: 9/1 2018: CBSsports Brazil 9/2 Germany 19/4 Spain 6/1 France 13/2 Argentina 19/2 2019: talksport Brazil – 11/10 Argentina – 7/2 Uruguay – 13/2 Colombia – 9/1 Chile – 12/1 2021: CBSsports Brazil +120 Argentina +275 Columbia +600 Uruguay +800 Chile +1200 2022: BetMGM Brazil +400 Argentina +500 France +600 England +800 Spain +800 Average favourite position: 2.272727
No, qualities like composure and spirit lead him to actually making "actual valuable impact" in concrete actions on the pitch. Messi has in the past had a tendency to let his head drop in when the game is slipping away, and has been criticized for walking around and disappearing when it gets tough. When that happens, you don't get on the on the end of a goal deep in ET, and continue to have a big influence. Messi has also missed important Pks in the past; he didn't here, he kept composure. And speaking of actual concrete on-pitch contribution, Messi in this final 2 goals, hand in build up to another, scored in PK shootout. Messi in other finals: 0 of everything. You have a reductive logic that is plainly only used because it can be in the service of elevating Messi in your arguments.
Players who replicated their club form at international level Continued Firstly R9 never did replicate his club form at international level In the world cups R9 scored 15 goals in 19 appearances In the champions league R9 scored 14 goals in 40 appearances How stacked was the Brazilian NT that R9 joined Brazil won the 1994 World cup with R9 as a squad player(0 seconds played) Brazil reached the 1995 copa America final (losing on penalties) and R9 played 1 game this tournament The equivalence with Pele 62 is false Pele played and Pele contributed However minimal it was he still did R9 absolutely did not On top of this R9 was a notably less impressive dribbler in international tournaments then he was in la liga for Barcelona or Serie A for inter Milan When R9 curtailed his dribbling runs he won the most trophies of his career When he was doing all the ball hogging instead of Ronaldinho and Rivaldo his teams won practically nothing R9s dribbling licence yielded spectacular YouTube moments but hardly any major trophies This is a fact that can't really be disputed "Fenomeno" R9 didn't improve any of his club teams history in any significant way Since Lionel Messi is being discussed here He joined the NT In 2005( Im guessing) The last trophy Argentina won prior to this was in 1993(copa America) Messi was 6 years old R9 was a unused squad player watching his team win the world cup Messi was not even born the last time Argentina won the world cup Cristiano Ronaldo joined the Portuguese NT in 2003 The last trophy Portugal won before his NT debut was... never World cup Tournaments Portugal qualified for pre cristiano Ronaldo 1966 1986 2002 World cup tournaments Portugal didn't qualify for pre Cristiano Ronaldo 1930 1934 1938 1950 1954 1958 1962 1970 1974 1978 1982 1990 1994 1998 World cup tournaments Portugal qualified for with Cristiano Ronaldo 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022 World cup tournaments Portugal didn't qualify for with Cristiano Ronaldo 0 Context flies into the dustbin when some players are being discussed
This is interesting information. I’ll note a couple quick things: 1. Those betting odds aren’t entirely reflecting the quality of the rest of his team, since they are also reflecting the fact that oddsmakers and bettors know how great Messi is. His existence shortens Argentina’s odds a lot each time. That said, I agree that the rest of Argentina has not been a bad team. They always have talented players (obviously some years more than others, but they’re still always Argentina), though I do think they still generally haven’t been as talented as Barcelona and nor have they been as talented as the teams some other NT greats have had (Pele, Zidane, Xavi, R9, etc.). We can see this even recently, with people largely speaking agreeing that the WC 2022 squad was on the low end of talent in terms of WC winners. 2. The point about adaptability is a good one, and I get why you’re thinking SexyBeast is just seeing the results and going searching for an explanation. But I will note that Messi has actually proven pretty adaptable in his club career. Of course, he spent almost all of it at Barcelona—so one can say he always played for the same team with the same general style. But that obscures that the context at Barcelona changed a lot over time. He has been an absolutely elite player at Barcelona under *eight* different managers, with the composition of the squad also changing completely multiple times in that timeframe. Those managers actually played very different tactics, which changed Messi’s role a lot. For example, he was a winger under Rijkaard, he played as a false nine in a 4-3-3 most of the time under Guardiola, he played as a nominal support striker who dropped super deep a lot in a 4-4-2 under Valverde. I could go on. These managers actually changed his role and the tactics around him a lot, and he was always great because he’s a player who can adapt to many different roles and tactical schemes. And while Barcelona is always a possession-based team to some degree, the amount of this ebbed and flowed quite a bit (i.e. they sometimes played a lot more directly than they did under Guardiola). When your club teammates, manager, tactical scheme, and role change many times over the course of many years and you consistently still play amazingly, I think it’d be hard to say you’re not an adaptable player. And so, if the level actually did go down a bit at NT level (emphasis on “a bit” since, as I’ve said, Messi was still really great for his NT), then I think it perhaps starts to make sense to look for reasons why that aren’t just that Messi isn’t adaptable.
Interesting discussion about international career of Messi. And I can see only 2 players had better international career (both impact and honours) if we talk about goat candidates: Pele and R9. Maradona had obviously worse international career, not even close. Cruyff too. Di Stefano even worse. Zidane had great career, but he isnt exactly GOAT candidate. International career GOAT: 1. Pele 2. R9 3. Messi\Zidane 4 Garrincha?
Wanting to compare NT achievements in absolute terms I think is my issue. I think to do so leaves out crucial context with contextualizes Messi's performances. You may want to do something like this: Messi: 1 WC in 2 Finals, 1CA in 4 Finals, 2 Golden Balls, 2 CA Best Player awards Pele: 3 WC in 3 Finals, 1 CA Final, 1 Golden Ball, 1 Silver Ball, 1 CA best player award Maradona: 1 WC in 2 Finals, etc... Zidane: 1 WC in 2 Finals, 1 Euro in Finals, 1 Golden Ball, etc... ... and compare the achievements of each in absolute terms, coming to the conclusion that maybe only Pele has the superior achievements. I disagree with this. (note I do think Messi has a great NT career, but not as high as you probably put him for the reasons below) I ask, "Did these players perform consistently? What was the average level of performance? What was the expectations going in (tournament favourites? favourite to win golden ball, boot? etc...)... and many more contextual questions. Earlier when discussing Cristiano's FKs, we agreed that total volume is not the best way to determine his freekick ability; we needed context of conversion rates and xG difficulty and what not. It is the same with Messi and NT. Yes, longevity is something to admire, but its also true that players from earlier generations could not be realistically expected to achieve the longevity of modern greats due to tech, nutrition, etc... so I cna only give Messi so much credit for having so many bites at the apple. Did Messi consistently perform above or below expectations for Argentina in major tournaments, and in the Finals? Here's what I found quickly: "In everything single tournament Messi played Argentina, they were at very least an outside favourite, but basically always in the top 5, and for CA, often top 2. Not sure if these can be considered definitive odds, but here are some pre-tournament bettings odds: 2006: Pinnacle Sports Brazil 5/2 England 8/1 Germany 8/1 Argentina 8/1 Italy 19/2 2007: couldn't easily find, assuming 2nd favourite after Brazil 2010: Brobury Sports Spain 4/1 Brazil 9/2 England 6/1 Argentina 13/2 Holland 10/1 2011: Gambling 911 Argentina 5/6 Brazil 2/1 Uruguay 10/1 Chile 11/1 Paraguay 16/1 2014: Business Inside Brazil, 3-to-1 Argentina, 5-to-1 Germany, 5-to-1 Spain, 6-to-1 Belgium, 16-to-1 2015: sports-king . com Argentina: 9/4 Brazil: 3/1 Chile: 6/1 Colombia: 6/1 Uruguay: 10/1 2016: sports-king . com Argentina: 15/8 Brazil: 9/2 Chile: 15/2 USA: 9/1 Uruguay: 9/1 2018: CBSsports Brazil 9/2 Germany 19/4 Spain 6/1 France 13/2 Argentina 19/2 2019: talksport Brazil – 11/10 Argentina – 7/2 Uruguay – 13/2 Colombia – 9/1 Chile – 12/1 2021: CBSsports Brazil +120 Argentina +275 Columbia +600 Uruguay +800 Chile +1200 2022: BetMGM Brazil +400 Argentina +500 France +600 England +800 Spain +800 Average favourite position: 2.272727" Argentina fell below their odds/expectations here in 7 tournaments, equalled them in 2, and surpassed them in 2. This is crucial context when evaluating Messi's NT. How did Messi play in each of these tournaments according to expectations? If a player doesn't play up expectations, that is obviously a disappointment. So if a player achieves something great, but were in circumstances where they were expected to achieve even more, I consider that when comparing achievements next to others.
Yes, but the team still under-performed with Messi on the team 7 out of 11 times, achieving expectations twice, and surpassing them (by one place; winners instead of 2nd) twice. With Messi on the team. So I don't think this really matters in the grand scheme of evaluation Messi's performances.
I’m not particularly persuaded by those betting odds as suggesting Messi was a lesser NT player than his achievements suggest. For one thing, as I noted, Argentina’s betting odds were certainly massively affected by having Messi in the first place. In essence, the odds are assuming a huge performance by Messi commensurate with his Barcelona form. And I’ve already acknowledged that he did not generally reach his Barcelona form with Argentina, so it wouldn’t be surprising at all for his team to generally not meet expectations that were set with the assumption that he would. But that doesn’t mean his performances weren’t amazing compared to other great NT players’ performances. All you’re showing is indirect evidence that he didn’t meet his own uniquely sky-high expectations when I’ve already acknowledged that he didn’t and have explained that that’s not mutually exclusive with being one of the top few NT players of all time. For another thing, comparing the results to the betting odds is a bit misleading, since many times you suggest that they “under-performed” were in tournaments where they actually lost to a team that had better (or equal) odds as them. For instance, in WC 2006 they lost to Germany—which, according to your odds above, had equal odds to Argentina. In WC 2014, they lost again to Germany—which again, according to the above odds, had equal odds to Argentina (and I recall was the favorite going into the finals itself). In WC 2018, they lost to France—which had better odds than them. In CA 2019, they lost to Brazil—which had better odds than them. So there’s actually only four tournaments there where they actually lost to a team that had worse pre-tournament odds as them: WC 2010, CA 2011, CA 2015, and CA 2016. This is more than the number of times they beat expectations (twice), but is significantly different than “under-performing” 7 times. Moreover, betting odds are not hugely accurate representations of team quality, because (1) there’s so much informational asymmetry, where oddsmakers and bettors don’t know tons of relevant information—including about players’ form, injuries, personal relationships, manager tactics, etc.; and (2) casual bettors tend to bet on superstars’ teams more than is rational—artificially improving those teams’ odds. Given all this, often times there are teams that end up showing the betting odds to have been quite wrong about them. And what’s telling here is that Argentina lost to the eventual winner in all but two tournaments (WC 2006 and WC 2010). And Messi didn’t even play in the loss in WC 2006. So Messi has only lost once to a team that did not win the tournament (and that was against a really good Germany team when he had Maradona as manager), meaning that he was pretty much only losing to teams in great form in the tournament (i.e. teams very likely outplaying the oddsmakers’ pre-tournament expectations). Finally, there’s a really big luck component here that is, in many cases, determinative of your assessment. Three of Argentina’s losses—including three of the four tournaments that they actually lost to a team with lower pre-tournaments odds than them—were in penalty shootouts. Meanwhile, they won penalty shootouts in the two tournaments that they “overperformed.” If we’re using a measure where the result of penalty shootouts is determining whether Messi’s team (and therefore, per your argument, Messi himself) underperformed or overperformed in a tournament, then I think that’s a red flag that there’s something a bit off with the methodology/assumptions. Of course, perhaps they shouldn’t have needed penalty shootouts against teams they had better odds than, but I still think your assessment is giving much too much weight to the result of the penalty shootout lottery, as penalty shootout results were determinative of more than half of your “overperformed” or “underperformed” assessments. I guess my point is precisely that the “average level of performance” for Messi was pretty obviously amongst the best ever. You don’t win 4 player of the tournament awards and 1 best young player award without having a very high average level of performance (not to mention that he has played great even when he didn’t win an award—CA 2016 being a great example). As for performing “consistently” and meeting “expectations,” I see that as mostly a sideshow—or at least merely indirectly relevant—to the ultimate question. On consistency, let’s say Player A has the following match ratings: 7, 7, 10, 9, 8, 7. Player B has the following match ratings: 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7. Player B is more consistent, but Player A was better. That’s a simplified illustration, but I think ultimately Messi performed better on average for his NT than virtually anyone ever, so I’m not sure it matters if someone that didn’t play as well was more “consistent” (and, by the way, Messi was almost never *bad* for Argentina, so I’m not sure consistency goes against him anyways). Similarly, for expectations: Let’s say Player A has expectations to be a 10, and only plays at an 8 level. Meanwhile Player B has expectations to be a 7 and plays at a 7 level. Player B met expectations and Player A didn’t, but Player A was better. The difference is just that Player A had higher expectations. And that’s ultimately pretty obviously the case for Messi—he’s been considered a major GOAT candidate in his prime for the vast majority of his career, so his expectations have been beyond what virtually anyone else has ever had. Thus, he can (and I think has) simultaneously failed to meet those expectations for his NT while still being better than virtually everyone else has been for their NT. It’s an interesting point about longevity these days. But I’m not really sure that modern football actually does inherently result in greater player longevity—despite vast strides in technology, nutrition, etc. That’s because modern tactics require players to do so much more (for instance, pressing being way more intense nowadays, such that the game hardly even looks the same), and modern teams’ fixture lists are much longer (and therefore puts more mileage on players’ bodies throughout their career), that I’m not sure the strides in technology have done more than keep up with that. Indeed, as a factual matter, it seems to me that players these days really don’t seem to necessarily have higher longevity than in the past. There are some players that are good at old ages (Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Modric), but those are still the exceptions. And those exceptions existed in the past, perhaps even more so. For instance, Puskas was an elite player player for Real Madrid through to age 37 or 38. Same with Di Stefano. Stanley Matthews was a great player into his 40’s. Matthaus won footballer of the year in Germany and was top 10 in Ballon D’or voting at age 38. Baggio was still really great around Messi’s current age. Maldini won UEFA’s club football defender of the year award at age 39. I could go on. Of course, there’s lots of players in the past that didn’t play at a high level to a late age, but that’s true in this era too. Indeed, the vast majority of the world’s best players now are pretty young. And, more generally, you can look at the average age of players nowadays and see they aren’t higher. For instance, the average age of players on EPL teams this season range from 24.1 to 27.9 (and the top-table team is the one with 24.1). Meanwhile, the average age of players on EPL teams in the EPL’s first season (1992-1993) ranged from 24.6 to 27.7. In La Liga this year, those age ranges are 24.0 and 28.8, while in the 1974-1975 season that range was 25.4 and 28.5. So, overall, I’m not really convinced that we can or should just discount Messi’s longevity as a product of his era—that sentiment doesn’t seem supported by the general history of the sport IMO. Furthermore, a lot of Messi’s longevity is just having been so good at a really early age, which is not something that can be attributed to modern technology/nutrition/etc. Indeed, being great-but-not-as-good-as-before at age 35 is not particularly exceptional, as much as it is exceptional when combined with also having been elite as a teenager. I basically addressed this above. I’ll just reiterate that I don’t think it makes sense to talk about essentially counting it as a negative “if a player achieves something great, but were in circumstances where they were expected to achieve even more,” when we are talking about a player who has been considered so great that his expectations went well beyond virtually anyone else’s ever. No one else at NT level met the expectations that Messi had at NT level, so why should some players be considered better NT players than him just by virtue of having met their own substantially lower expectations? I realize to some degree you’re talking about Messi’s team’s expectations, but his team’s expectations were affected massively by his own uniquely high personal expectations.
I dont know. I was throwing ideas around but it makes absolute sense that certain players will have fortune of not needing to adapt that much between club and NT football. Who and when and for what reason, that can be discussed further. I am not making amy definitive comments about that. But this: is definitely subpar in quality comapred to Barcelona 2010 and Guardiola as a manager. Those odds include Messi, without him, odds would look a lot different. 2018 wc odds are hilarious. 5th best team in the world pre-tournament? Thats the team that barely qualified for wc because of heroic efforts of Messi in qualifiers. Messi clearly couldnt utilize his ingrained playing style from Barca days in that Argentina team requiring him to heavily adapt early on, which he eventually did. Messi could have walked into that Spain team and have immediate impact similar to that of in Barca.. i am not saying anybody else was having the fortune to walk into an analogous team, but it could be..
How am I elevating Messi by undermining his apparently only great final he played? I am just saying the truth. Outcomes always influence peoples opinion without them even knowing. Once you realize that, you will see it everywhere and youll see why I am insisting on it. From team of the tournaments consisting primarily of players from the winning team, often 7, 8 players from the same team, to every players peak magically coinciding with teams success like Carvajal peak being being 2016-18 and Modrics and Kroos' and Marcelos and Navas' and Varanes, etc. To Varane being the 4th best player in the world in 2018 according to ballon dor, Jorginho being top 3 in 2021 and so many more ridiculous ideas. I mean I get it, biases exist for a reason. Its very energy expensive to thorougly think through everything so we are bound to base most of are conclusions and decisions on mental shortcuts and they are mostly right but they fail in predictable ways all the time. One of the basic and most common ones is outcome bias. And as a person who has actively followed in extreme detail most of Messis career I know from his first step on the field is he in the mood, what is he thinking and whats going to happen. Aboit walking on the field.. its agaim just outcome bias. People create narratives just to accomodate the outcome. Messi has been "walking" for a better part of his career, in his absolute best performance that put him in the goat conversation adn in his most humiliating defeats, but its not an issue when he wins, is it? Its not an issue when Messi loses the ball after which Mbappe scores because Argentina won, but the same situation is an issue when he lost the ball against PSG in 2017 for 3rd or 4th goal in a 4-0 defeat. Narrative is just that. Narrative and it usually has no substance to it.
Thank you for the more concise answer, for once it is far more manageable to digest your points and respond to them. Pray tell, how many assists did Messi garner in knockout stages of the WC prior to 2022? The fact of the matter is Messi is a player of extroardinary ability, and being a GOAT-level player comes with expectations commensurate with his abilities. We praise these players for being able to make the difference. If we are talking about a player who is objectively one of the clear best goalscorers ever, you expect that player to find the solution to win. At the end of the day, top level athletes are competitors. It is incumbent on them to do everything it takes to win - especially when you have that level of ability. Messi without any trophies would be forgotten. It is what he did on the field in combination with what he won that makes him a GOAT. 2 or 3 dribbles and a few passes in the middle of the park are not game-winning actions and do not constitute the barometer for a top performance for a player of Messi's caliber. No all-time goalscorer would get away with zero goals in knockouts in 4 world cups. It is unheard of beside his contemporary Cristiano who was also relatively underwhelming.
Is a performance against Nigeria in the group stages the barometer for judging Messi? Have we come to that? We are talking about arguably the best player of all time. That is not the standard and the truth is that he was at the peak of his powers for years and looked like a fish out of water (in relative terms) with Argentina in tough matches. Where are the legendary performances against great NT squads? He is one of the few GOATs you simply do not have that reference point. Name a Top 10 player, and you will be able to reference a legendary NT performance. Why is that not the case with Messi? With Messi, we talk about Higuain, his teammates failing him, etc. I would say his WC final against France is the closest thing - because he truly went above and beyond in my eyes.
The walking is relevant. In the WC final, he showed more "grinta", chased after balls, played "dirty", tackled and showed the spirit of a true fighter. Narrative is contextual analysis, something you seem to want to do away with entirely. Every match and encounter has a different demand and requirement on a top level player. If Messi loses the ball when his team is winning 3-0 and it leads to the goal is not an equivalent scenario to losing the ball when down 2-0.
The point about Messi walking being outcome-bias/narrative is definitely a good point. As you say, Messi has almost always done that. It was less true in his early years, but he’s almost always been a player that has strolled around a lot and then picked his moments to shift up multiple gears. As you say, he’s done that in his greatest matches and his worst matches, but it gets criticized only with the latter. To be clear, I think it’s a valid criticism of him as a player in general. With a better work rate, he could provide more defensively and probably generate *even more* scoring opportunities for himself as well as more often providing a passing outlet to teammates. Of course, he’s been ridiculously good even taking this low work rate into account, but in a vacuum it’s true that he’d be even better if you kept all things equal but gave him a higher work rate. But it’s not so clear to me that his career would be better if he’d always played more intensely, since I think it is a big part of his longevity and consistency as a player. The low work rate is what has allowed him to play virtually every match year after year, putting less mileage on his legs and lowering the chance of injury. People forget that Messi was pretty injury-prone as a youngster, and one of the big things he did to mitigate that was to pick his moments more instead of always going all out. And at a more micro-level, his quick runs/dribbles are something you need to conserve energy to do optimally. It’s why Cristiano Ronaldo also had a pretty low work rate—he needed to conserve energy to make dominant sprints on the counterattack. Finally, this is also something that, oddly enough, defenders have repeatedly talked about as making Messi hard to mark, because they get lulled into a false sense of security.
How do we make sense of this: Worst conversion rate at the #WorldCup (1+ goal)1. L. Messi -- 5.6% #ARG 2. J. Lingard -- 5.9% #ENG 3. I. Rakitic -- 6.7% #CRO https://t.co/BINmTx7nUa pic.twitter.com/jKq3YKvSJv— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) July 16, 2018 Especially, when we are talking about one of the best finishers of all time?
Regarding how many assists Messi had in knockout-stage matches of the WC prior to WC 2022, the answer is 4 assists in 7 starts (with 1 substitute appearance). Really good stuff. But of course, he also is astoundingly good at areas of the game that aren’t goals or assists—as evidenced by the fact that he won a WC player of the tournament award in a tournament where he had 0 KO-stage goals and 1 KO-stage assist. In any event, you can talk all you want about how Messi needed to “find the solution to win” and how “it is what he did on the field in combination with what he won” that matters. In fact, I agree with you about that. But the reality is that Messi’s NT resume includes as many or more major tournament wins than virtually anyone else in history, and “what he did on the field” was good enough to win him more player of the tournament awards than anyone in history. So obviously, “what he did on the field in combination with what he won” puts him amongst the very top NT players in history. That’s my whole point. Your post answers itself. You say “Name a Top 10 player, and you will be able to reference a legendary NT performance. Why is that not the case with Messi?” But then you acknowledge that actually Messi just had a legendary NT performance. You self-evidently have no point here anymore, and are just clinging to the same arguments you made for years, before Messi upended those arguments by winning the 2022 World Cup with a legendary performance. Retire the outdated argument. You’re really hanging your hat on a sample size of 17 shots (most of which were from outside the box)? Leaving a group-stage penalty miss aside (which obviously is bad, but didn’t affect how the group played out), Messi only had a xG of 1.4 in that tournament anyways, so your argument mostly comes down to just saying Messi once underperformed his xG by…drum roll…0.4. Congratulations, I guess. But a pretty self-evidently low-value argument.
Yes, I think there is a valid criticism in there but not quite the way you describe it because, as you somehwat touched upon it, there is also a strategic part to it. If every player did that on the pitch, it would be a catastophe, but Messi is not every player so its really about risk and reward. You are sacrificing a bit of toughness in a strucutre of defense for having a fresh Messi for a slowly built attack or if its an opportunity for a counter attack woth Messi in an advantegous position. As Van Dijk puts it: "The difficult thing about him is when we are attacking, he is chilling somewhere in a corner or something." Transitions from defense to attack and from attack to defend have become the most important segment of modern football, and having Messi freely drift to different pockets of space makes him incredibly difficult to mark. So tactically, strategically, there is a real value to it. Its still up to Messi to recognize when defending is necessary from him. The balance is key.. Usually, in big games he has no problem with the balance: https://youtube.com/shorts/tXnKPc7QScs?feature=share And in WC i think he has done fantastic with the balance. However, thats not criticism of him per se, thats just a strategic choice he intentionally makes with managers and everyone on board. But what Ive seen from Messi is that sometimes he overthinks too much, in a sense that he gets stuck in his own head trying to overanalyze the game and outsmart opposition when he just needs to put on a gas and have more faith that things will happen by itself. So he doesnt get the balance right in a sense that he soemtimes strategically "walks" too much. Basically all of his bad performances are because he doesnt get the balance right. Thats the only thematic, reoccuring criticism that I can think of him. Apart from that, his decision making is virtually perfect. I thought of another criticism.. he sometimes out of frustration will drop to deep and try to force things.
You dont understand how walking is beneficial for his team. Here is an example of disinterested Messi walking in a counter attack: Just look at him walking there when all of his teammates want to win and work hard.
Very weak arguments that are easy to refute. If you go back to the discussion, I clearly praised Messi's WC win. I even explained how previous struggles elevated this WC win in my eyes. Had he won in 2014, I do not think it would resonate as strongly as this one, because we all innately understand what happened in 2022: This is an older Messi, who is physically and perhaps consequently technically less capable, who did not have the same capacity to be involved in the play as before, a worse dribbler, and yet he produced moments of magic, showed grit and leadership and mental resilience, and performed actions that determined the outcome of games, after years of not quite doing so in the WC. That is what I said. It is not an outdated argument to discuss that Messi struggled during his peak at the WC - which was a trend with him in high-pressure games. You discuss incessantly about Messi's so-called contributions besides goals. There are a lot of flaws here. The first obvious one is that Messi is a match-winner. His quality is such that for a player of his caliber, you expect him to find the goal to win the game. That is the expectation that we place on the game's best players -why? Because they have the ability to do so, but we wait in anticipation for them to do so when the going gets tough. That is the spirit of an elite sportsman. Regarding, xG or whatever, that is an abysmal conversion rate. Secondly, the best players are legendary because they performed feats beyond "expectation". Maradona outperformed his xG in 86.
Does he struggle in high-pressure games? Did he struggle in ucl? El clasicos? So I guess James Rodriguez doesnt struggle with high pressure because he had a great world cup? Klose is a big game player? WC is played every 4 years for few games and football is a sport with low probabilities of scoring.. its so random in a small smaple size. You guys are putting way too much expectation on a single player and attributing too much influence on them.