PARC DES PRINCES — You know the pattern by now. We have witnessed it so often that it has become natural. Some players might rely upon muscle memory to perform a particular type of pass or to arc a run with a certain shape. Lionel Messi uses it to complete an entire move.
The drift into space, predicting where the counter attack will spring from. The gliding run past two defenders who barely enter into the same postcode to stop him. The give-and-go with a team-mate, each conveying messages of where the ball will be received and played only through a glance. The curling shot into a corner of the goal that renders any goalkeeper a statue.
These are the connected moments that have become the Messi stereotype. As with every great signature move, knowledge is no weapon. Knowing what Messi will do and stopping it are two very different things.
We went to Paris expecting – perhaps even fearing – to witness a different Messi. He had not yet scored for Paris Saint-Germain (three games constitutes a drought in Messi nomenclature; his consistent majesty changed those rules).
He had been substituted against Lyon, prompting a predictable mania about his emotional state. In some way, we probably wanted to believe that he was a little broken, the tears shed in his final Barcelona press conference falling to the ground like Samson’s locks.
Messi was quiet for long periods of Tuesday evening. He failed to create a chance, something that only happened twice in La Liga or the Champions League last season and only once when completing 90 minutes. But then that is reflective of the strength that now surrounds him.
Without the burden of responsibility to carry a superclub – his superclub – on his shoulders, Messi can become more of a latent threat than a potent one. That may well help to extend his career; there’s at least one thing to celebrate in his move to PSG.
But what was far more striking than what had changed in Messi after leaving his spiritual home was how much was still the same: The “Messi…Messi…Messi” chant that once rang around Barcelona on nights like these, the surge of electricity and noise when the ball arrived at his left foot, the signature move. Close your eyes to block out the stadium and the shirt and you could be sat on the top tier of the Camp Nou.
Perhaps that makes a relevant point on the homogeneity of modern elite football. We might like to think that the grandest clubs in the world are each unique – their stadiums, their supporters, their preferred style and therefore the specific type of player that suits them best. But that is an idyllic, anachronistic assumption. At the highest level, superstar players are able to exist in a bubble of homogeneity that makes acclimatisation easy.
But there is a more romantic view that we are happy to acquiesce to: that it is Messi’s greatness that makes this possible. We should not mourn the fact that Messi at PSG may be remarkably similar to Messi at Barcelona, quite the opposite. Despite the geopolitical grubbiness, the extreme wealth that precipitated this deal and the promotional photos of Messi publicising PSG’s winter tour that will “showcase Qatar as a tourist destination”, Messi’s talent is so alluring that it becomes an effective temporary distraction. Perhaps that is his greatest achievement – making all this feel like normal?
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3oiaT39
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