03 Oct 2018 23:07:03
Question for Ed001 and fellow supporters, something away from all the doom and gloom lol, but did any of you see Lionel Messi tonight? I absolutely love him! How can you be that good, i genuinely cannot get my head around it.

{Ed001's Note - no mate never saw anything other than an after match report.}


1.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 07:26:55
He is a phenomenon scholes. Watching him play i find myself asking 'how did he do that'
Great player.


2.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 08:56:29
The only player in world football (perhaps ever? ) who picks the ball up on the halfway line and you think, 'oh, this is a chance here. '


3.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 10:16:26
Run out of words Ken for him. And how are you feeling now mate? If you manage to find some time, try watching some of the highlights Ed, on another level he is, i'm sure you might have realised he's my absolute favourite player. 😬.

{Ed001's Note - he is a great player but I am not a fan of highlights.}


4.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 10:39:19
Too selective for you?

{Ed001's Note - yeah, I like to see how they got themselves into position to receive the ball in the first place. What a player does off the ball is at least as important as what they do on it, imo. Cruyff used to say a player only spends, on average, 3 minutes on the ball in a match, so what they do in the other 87 minutes is what makes the real difference. I agree. The runs off the ball to open up space, the tracking back when the ball is on the other side of the pitch etc etc all make the difference between great players and good players.}


5.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 11:15:39
Great post Ed001 fully agree!

{Ed001's Note - I really dislike the advent of highlight reels, it makes players who offer little look like world beaters, while genuine quality like Kante, for instance, get ignored for years after they have become truly world class. Highlights don't show, for example, how the opposition react to Messi when he doesn't have the ball. How he draws players over to him as teams are terrified of giving him time and space and so open up gaps for his team-mates to exploit. That is just as important to Barca as his impact when on the ball imo.}


6.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 11:21:12
Great great great player. However, he will always have the 'one team' tag hanging over him. Seems all his snr team achievements are with Barca. Unlucky with Argentina as well.


7.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 14:05:11
Bang on Ed001, skills and dribbles on highlights are very deceiving, like Match of the day, one good moment possibly clouding over a poor performance. And as you say, players like Kante go unnoticed, Busquets aswell, do a pointless skill in the middle of the field gets you plaudits nowadays.

{Ed001's Note - Pogba has made a career out of being a highlight here....}


8.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 15:02:38
Genuinely the first name that came into mind, him, Shaqiri, Isco, J. Rodriguez aswell.


9.) 04 Oct 2018
04 Oct 2018 15:32:03
Messi is a once in a generation player, and we have been lucky to have seen him at is peak. I don't think he has been unlucky for Argentina rather than the side have had a poor attitude. You watch how the Argentina side play when Messi is unavailable, they work their arses off. Yet when Messi is on the pitch its like they think "I don't need to work as hard, Messi will win us the game".

Too often the weakness in the Argentina side is them sitting back waiting for Messi to carry them.