The Guardian recently published a wonderful text about Lionel Messi and his homage to Diego Maradona. In the first game for Barcelona after Maradona’s death, Messi scored a goal exactly as Maradona once did for the joint ex-club Newell’s Old Boys. On purpose.
That sounded a little too good to be true, it probably was. Because even if Messi was blindly trusted over the years to score as he wanted, he is currently a long way off. He rarely gets out of the game at all.
If you take all the competitive appearances for FC Barcelona this season together, Messi’s record reads like this: 13 appearances, seven goals. Five of them were penalties. For someone who has scored around 50 goals this season over more than a decade, that’s a slump. As if he had lost his goal instinct. As if he were a good striker, but no longer the best.
An accident?
Is Messi in shape?
Or is he – getting old?
In the evening, Messi, 33, meets with Barcelona in the Champions League against Juventus and thus against the old rival, Cristiano Ronaldo (9 p.m., stream: DAZN). The Portuguese, 35, is even older than Messi, but he is currently scoring and scoring and scoring. Last Saturday the club honored its star player. Ronaldo had scored his 750th competitive goal in the game before. It was his tenth goal in his eighth season. A quota just like it used to be.
A few hours later that same Saturday, Barcelona faced Messi in Cádiz and lost 2-1. Messi tried again and again in the game, firing ten shots. He didn’t hit.
These are troubled times for Messi and Barcelona. The Argentine wanted to leave the club in the summer, but was not allowed. The then president has since left, and his interim successor recently announced that Barça should have let Messi go and that the transfer was in dire need. And in this environment, Messi now has to play football.
One reason for the lower goal rate is tactical. He’s related to the new Barcelona coach, Ronald Koeman. The Dutchman, who joined Quique Setién in the summer, seems to be the first Barça coach in a long time not to try to find a system that is entirely Messi-oriented. Koeman also wants to bring in Antoine Griezmann and Philippe Coutinho, the two former starting transfers of the Catalans, which are said to have cost a total of 265 million euros.
Against Cádiz they all started in a 4-2-3-1: Messi on the right, Griezmann on ten, Coutinho on the left, in the center of the attack: Martin Braithwaite. The big difference between Koeman’s 4-2-3-1 and Barcelona’s starting line-up, the 4-3-3, is the offensive midfielder. This can be a problem for Messi. He who works best when he can decide for himself when and where; Who can read a soccer game like no other, makes a number of decisions about positioning for each game: When do I stay outside, when do I move in the middle, when do I jump into the penalty area, when do I let myself go? Messi’s success rate on these decisions is phenomenal, it is a big part of his quality.
But that only works if the players around him react accordingly. They have to create space for Messi by avoiding him and luring opponents with them.
Against Cádiz, Griezmann is in the center, but above all Coutinho is always drawn from the left to the center. The Cádizer defense block pushes there accordingly.
Messi has to see where he stays.
Anyone who says Barcelona must become less dependent on Messi should take a closer look these weeks: Griezmann, Braithwaite, Coutinho, Ousmane Dembélé will now meet. But Barcelona are ninth, twelve points behind first place. In each of the six league games in which Messi failed to score or prepare a goal, Barça missed out on victory.
Messi manages to initiate less often and complete
Koeman changes his tactics against Cádiz during the break. He brings Dembélé for Coutinho; the French do not move into the center, they stay on the far left. Messi finds spaces. Of his ten shots on goal, he gives up eight after the changeover.
But Messi also loses balls himself. Sometimes he plays a bad pass, sometimes he doesn’t see an opponent rushing up in his own back. And, this also explains the current low: it no longer reliably initiates attacks and complete. Just like he did over the years.
Messi can still go his own way, he still manages to play off opponents in a confined space. With the ball in his foot over medium and long distances, however, he rarely dribbles. Understanding the game, technique, quick action – that’s where Messi still embodies world class. Only now he appears less often in front of the opposing goal.
Messi’s quota dropped a little last season. He scored an average of 0.73 goals per 90 minutes. That was the lowest value since 2009. It is currently at 0.56 hits.
Maybe that’s a snapshot anyway.
Game data suggests Messi has also been unlucky with his finals so far of the season. Accordingly, his goal rate should increase soon. So it is quite possible that Messi will score more soon, that he will prepare, that he will lead Barça to great victories and that we spectators will be amazed, enthusiastic and cheered for him.
But the data also show that Messi would be a long way from his former goal rates even then. Even a Lionel Messi has to pay tribute to age.
So these big moments may become rarer. Messi may have been able to override the rules of the game of football. But not that of biology. Maybe we just have to accept that: That he no longer shows dream passes and solos and miracle goals at the same time in every game. That the biggest gets a little bit smaller.
He still towers over most other footballers in the world.
