Is Messi finished?

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Psycho Sonny said:
aguero and higuain are goalscorers they don't create they finish. as for lesser teams croatia has arguably one of the best midfields in the world. 1 from barca, 2 from madrid, and 2 from inter etc. nigeria has very strong, physical and really good defensively minded players, mikel, ndidi, moses, etc. you need real quality in midfield to beat them comfortably. iceland well i take it you watched the euros? enough said. they are a good squad, little individual talent but a really good team who plays as a unit.

di maria is a winger he's also completely 1 footed. all you need to do is show him onto his right foot and he fails. he is easy to subdue so long as you can match his pace. so you don't know much about him tbh. he isn't that good when you know how to play against him. take away his goals for PSG as we all know the french league is crap. he scored 25 goals in 5 years playing for 2 of the biggest teams in the world. in 30 appearances in ligue 1 (a crap league) he has made 6 assists. 1 assist every 5 games. he has scored a lot there more than he has before and that is in particular due to him being very greedy, likes to overdo things when a simple pass is on he would rather take another player on as he maybe beat 1 or 2. this works in ligue 1 and that is why he is scoring. psg are leagues ahead of the pack.

so no he isn't good enough to destroy teams like nigeria, croatia or iceland by creating chances. so they are relying on the likes of banega and biglia and let's face it they aren't exactly world class playmakers.

they need a manager who can play to their strengths. they have 4 world class forwards. aguero, higuain, messi and dyabala. but with no real playmakers. it's far from just ,messi and only messi. their team is great lacking creative midfielders therefore they need to use tactics to compensate. something their manager seems incapable of.
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Aguero and Higuain have chipped in with a few assists for their clubs and are players that win games with something from nothing. They have been doing neither for Argentina and there's more to that than who is playing behind them.

The issue is not just for these championships, this has been going on for a long time. It seems as though Messi manages the team a lot of the time and it is clear that whenever an Argentinian player gets the ball in the opposition half they look around for Messi, even to the point where sometimes they lose the ball as they lose track of what is going on about them. Either that or they play stupid balls to him rather than take the better options. None of that has anything to do with Di Maria or whoever.

The manager though is terrible for the fact he seems completely overwhelmed by the job if nothing else.
 
B1gbeard said:
Aguero and Higuain have chipped in with a few assists for their clubs and are players that win games with something from nothing. They have been doing neither for Argentina and there's more to that than who is playing behind them.

The issue is not just for these championships, this has been going on for a long time. It seems as though Messi manages the team a lot of the time and it is clear that whenever an Argentinian player gets the ball in the opposition half they look around for Messi, even to the point where sometimes they lose the ball as they lose track of what is going on about them. Either that or they play stupid balls to him rather than take the better options. None of that has anything to do with Di Maria or whoever.

The manager though is terrible for the fact he seems completely overwhelmed by the job if nothing else.
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all strikers will get assists. simply for the fact they play in and around the box. sometimes there are more than 1 striker in the team so one striker will pass to the other if he is in a better position to score, etc. so just because they get assists doesn't mean it's their job to create goals it's to score them.

like i have said nobody is scoring for argentina simply because they don't have a de bruyne type player. put de bruyne in their team and i can guarantee you they would be scoring goals for fun.

the manager has no plan for having no real playmaker. so he is making messi the playmaker. that is why they look to messi. messi is trying to be de bruyne. but messi cannot play that position. at barca he had xavi, iniesta, fabregas, etc playing that position not him.
 
Thekwango said:
doubt it. their problems seem to go much deeper. a poorly managed team isn't going to suddenly get infitely better with the introduction of 1 player.
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You honestly don't think one of the world's best playmakers playing behind 3 of the best forwards in the world is going to make zero difference?

Just look at the ball coutinho fed paulinho for his goal. Dear Bruyne would be pinging them every 5 seconds.
 
Thekwango said:
doubt it. their problems seem to go much deeper. a poorly managed team isn't going to suddenly get infitely better with the introduction of 1 player.
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I dunno I agree in some ways but whoever it was they brought on in the number 22 position seemed to have far more synergy with Messi and for awhile they had some good movement going that they could have got some goals off if they'd put a bit more focus on it but a lot of the time they seemed to ignore it in favour of whatever other strategy they were playing when those little back and forth plays with 22 and Messi looked far more positive. It could have made up for quite a lot of the obviously poor management if those two had been a bit more on the same page in terms of ignoring anything else and doing what worked well.

B1gbeard said:
even to the point where sometimes they lose the ball as they lose track of what is going on about them. Either that or they play stupid balls to him rather than take the better options. None of that has anything to do with Di Maria or whoever.
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I think it goes deeper than that - you see Messi playing the ball off into a good spot for another player and they totally stuff it either not anticipating the play or just being dispossessed easily or not managing to control challenging but not completely unviable balls.

I noticed quite a bit as well Messi plays the ball off to another player and sneaks into a good spot but the other player just isn't even on the same page as well - only about half the time are they so concerned about getting the ball back to Messi they pass up better options or aren't paying enough attention to what is going on around them.
 
If Ronaldo wasn't such a posh-looking boy, he'd easily be my personal fav over Messi. As it stands tho, I just enjoy both of them fairly equally. I hope Messi & co. can somehow sort things out and be a big threat in the knockout stages; regardless, no - he isn't finished in general.
 
mike62 said:
Not even the best Argentinian.

Pele, Maradona and Cruyff were all better, Ronaldo it could be argued is the better of the two.
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it's impossible say comparing different era's

pele was playing against guys who didn't train as much, drank, took drugs, etc. football has progressed leaps and bounds since then. if pele was playing today IMO he wouldn't even be in the top 20 worldwide. ronaldinho in his prime is the best brazilian player ever. people would be in awe every time he got the ball.

i'd say ronaldo is better simply because of his athletic and technical ability, he can literally score any type of goal and is deadly in most if not all situations. messi is certainly the better dribbler and much more accurate finisher however he won't be scoring anywhere near as many headers, etc. they are 2 completely different types of player. is it fair to compare someone who is 4 foot 8 to someone above 6 foot?

messi needs good players around him to shine. whereas ronaldo can do it on his own because for me he works a lot harder. he makes a lot of runs off the ball. he gets into the right positions, etc. whereas messi needs to play with people on the same level who can do quick 1 touch passing.

if we are talking all time greatest then it would be hard to choose between the likes of zidane and ronaldinho. ronaldo is probably on par with them tbh. it's just that people love to hate him so will never give him the credit he deserves.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
it's impossible say comparing different era's

pele was playing against guys who didn't train as much, drank, took drugs, etc. football has progressed leaps and bounds since then. if pele was playing today IMO he wouldn't even be in the top 20 worldwide.
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And if Pele played today don't you think he would be doing the same training as everyone else? There is something else you haven't considered, Pele played in an era where the game was much more physical. He would literally be targeted from the start of each game with bone crunching tackles. Imagine how well he would play today without having to worry if his leg would be broken in every tackle.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
if pele was playing today IMO he wouldn't even be in the top 20 worldwide
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words fail me.....just when i thought the debate was going so well and so sensibly........while everyone is entitled to their opinion, to say that pele wouldn't make the top 20 players in the world were he playing today just negates/nullifies/renders irrelevant any opinion you have had or ever will have. what an utterly ridiculous thing to say.
 
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Is this the Twilight Zone?

A player that's generally thought to be the best ever or one of the two best ever players by former players, players, pundits, commentators, supporters and the media is now ranked lower than Pele, Cryuff, Maradona, Zidane, Ronaldinho, Di Stéfano and Henry.

Give it a week or two and people will be listing players from pub teams they used to play in.
 
Thekwango said:
words fail me.....just when i thought the debate was going so well and so sensibly........while everyone is entitled to their opinion, to say that pele wouldn't make the top 20 players in the world were he playing today just negates/nullifies/renders irrelevant any opinion you have had or ever will have. what an utterly ridiculous thing to say.
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he wouldn't it's as simple as that john terry in his prime would have had him in his back pocket.

ronaldinho on the other hand i don't think anyone could stop him in his prime not even 3 players on him.
 
I can't remember the last time I actually laughed out loud at a thread on this forum but bloody hell, John Terry would have Pele in his pocket ha ha ha!!!!!!!!
 
Thekwango said:
you're a crackpot it's as simple as that :p. john terry.....jesus man catch yourself on.
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Oh I forgot Pele played in the best leagues in the world.

Oh yeah the Brazilian league and the usa league. I forgot they were the pinnacle of football. With the best players.

You guys are really kidding yourselves on here. He played in diddy leagues against diddy players.

What he achieved with the national team was because of the rest of the team being good as well. here is a direct quote
"1962 World Cup

When the 1962 World Cup started, Pelé was the best rated player in the world at the time.[51] In the first match of the 1962 World Cup in Chile, against Mexico, Pelé assisted the first goal and then scored the second one, after a run past four defenders, to go up 2–0.[52] He injured himself in the next game while attempting a long-range shot against Czechoslovakia.[53] This would keep him out of the rest of the tournament, and forced coach Aymoré Moreira to make his only lineup change of the tournament. The substitute was Amarildo, who performed well for the rest of the tournament. However, it was Garrincha who would take the leading role and carry Brazil to their second World Cup title, after beating Czechoslovakia at the final in Santiago."

so they won the world cup without him he played in 1 full game at the start.

Pele wishes he was as good as ronaldinho

during that same decade celtic won the european cup. they played the south american winners and basically got kicked off the park in both games which ended up in a draw. by the third final game which was the decider the celtic players had enough and the game ended up with several celtic players being sent off for punching the opposition in the face, etc. jock stein vowed never to go there again.

so that shows you the standard of players. they were just thugs over there in south american leagues with little football talent except those in the national team which could actually play.
 
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