How Messi has shown again that his genius is beyond our comprehension
THERE are some things that Lionel Messi can do that are unique to him in the history of the game but that still, on a physical level, make sense.
Like dribbling at speed with the ball never more than inches away from his feet. Across a bobbly pitch that hosted a world heavyweight championship bout 11 days before. Through a swarm of Spurs defenders for whom stopping people like Messi has been their speciality.
Twice within three second-half minutes Messi did exactly this, before clipping identical finishes onto the same far post. Both moves were remarkable, but also believable. All it takes is better balance, better control of one’s limbs, and more precise movements at speed than almost any other sportsman. That is one category of Messi’s actions: the unprecedented, but physically comprehensible.
What really stands out with Messi are the moments he does something that defies physical understanding. Because it feels as if Messi has a view of the pitch unlike anyone else.
Gary Lineker remarked that Messi’s vision is so good that he plays as if he has a top-down view of the pitch.
In the first half at Wembley, Messi provided perfect examples of it. The first goal came from his pass, curling agonisingly in front of a scrambling Kieran Trippier, into the path of Jordi Alba overlapping down the left. How did Messi, turning into space just over the half-way line, see Alba’s run, the space behind Trippier, and map out the route the ball would have to take to get there?
With a top-down view of the pitch, like the one TV commentators have, Messi’s viewpoint might have made sense. About 30ft up in the press box it did not. How Messi, eyes five feet above the ground, could have that view defies belief. And just to rub it in, he did it again.
Picking up the ball in space, he spotted a route to Luis Suarez’s chest, curling around the back of Davinson Sanchez. As ever with Messi, the technical execution is remarkable, but seeing the pass itself even more so.
But football is a professional sport and while we could obsess about the technical level of Messi’s performances, they attain another level of meaning in the competitive context. Wembley was where Messi had one of his greatest nights, the 2011 Champions League final, an outlier on the axis of brilliance. And while this display was as good as any Messi has put in this year, it was still only a group stage game.
Looking back at the World Cup this summer, Messi’s brilliant three-touch goal in St Petersburg will always be remembered, but that was just a group game against Nigeria. Argentina were nearly eliminated that day, just about survived, but went out in the last-16 anyway.
When was the last time Messi produced the highest level of football in a match of equivalent importance? The last minute winner in last season’s Bernabeu Clasico? Knocking a tired Chelsea out of the Champions League earlier this year? Arsenal two years before that? Or do you have to go all the way back to 2015, his Maradona goal in the Copa del Rey final against Athletic Bilbao, or running the Champions League final win over Juventus?
This would be a list to make any other player an all-time great, but when it comes to Messi, whose boundaries are unlike anyone else’s, it feels as if the last few years have been a slight disappointment. Especially in the Champions League.
That is why he is so obsessed about turning that around this year and winning this competition for a fourth time. It is an open field and Messi, now 31-years-old, is determined to drag this rather unbalanced Barcelona team to victory in the final in Madrid next May. That medal would be one more tribute from the material, measurable world to a genius that still defies comprehension.