Messi: THE ONE ARMED MAN COMETH / Boring Liverpool Get Results Now / Sancho, Alcacer and the World's Most In Form Futbol Players
We know Messi has had some rest the last week or so, but up til then, he was being played into the ground, every minute.
So why is this so frustrating? Because this isn't the type of injury that comes from being mishandled on the training ground...this was a freak version of a fall that happens 7 or 8 times a match, if not more when you're Messi and everyone has to foul you or you'll score on them...
Ever since Salah went down in the Champions league final, I always wondered how Messi would have survived or dealt with an injury like that.
Sadly...now we know..
Messi went to challenge for the ball on the cusp of the right wing, ramming hard into a Sevilla player and crunching his chest, which sent him to the ground. When his right arm went out to catch the fall, it snapped at the worst angle, fracturing a bone within his arm.
Cause that other guy is a rapist.
But anyhow, This is awful to see Messi writhing on the ground in agony, in any pain at all. We've been so blessed to see such a special talent be fostered and truly flourish, such as Henry at Monaco and Arsenal under Wenger, Pep Guardiola gave us the man that became a myth and then a legend before our eyes.
Messi was already forming preternatural relationships with Ronaldinho, one of his best friends especially then as a young player, partnering with Samuel Eto'o too and of course, bossing the ball with his La Masia pals Xavi and Iniesta.
By 2006, Messi had won a Champions league with Barcelona, although he was only an unused substitute in the final due to an injury. Nevertheless, Lionel would've started under Rijkaard had he been fit, as we fully know.
Then a month later, with Messi mostly at full health, the World Cup for Jose Peckerman's doomed 2006 Argentine national team squad began. They are still regarded as one of the greatest teams to never win a World cup, in what may have seriously been Messi's greatest chance to win one.
Although still a teenager, like Mbappe currently, he was scoring and assisting on the biggest stage of all...his tally of 1 goal and 1 assist coming against Serbia and Montenegro.
Jose Peckerman was Messi's Ahab...
Messi deserved better than that and so did that entire Argentine team, which INcluded Javier Mascherano and other deserving players like Riquelme, and EXcluded jokes on the international stage of current and recent past in the shadowy silhouette of Gonzalo Higuain who was a few years too late. Sergio Aguero, firmly in the deserving side of the table, was actually debuting for Argentina only a month or so after the World Cup, under next manager Basile, after the justifiable sacking of Peckerman, with Messi reportedly wanting to smash the man's pecker...a young Aguero who was only just purchased by Atletico Madrid surely should've been selected for that World cup as well...
But I digress and I digress but the point being...when I see Messi, that genius of a man who I have watched evolve before my eyes for 14 years or so now, writhing on the ground in agony my heart sinks.People laugh and say "we don't know these women and men" who create such happiness through their art, whether that be Messi dribbling through five people and scoring or Janis Joplin hitting a high C while Big Brother and the Holding Company light it up behind her, we get to feel as if we know them, even for that instant..we get to see their insides ...we see what they're really made of...just like Jim James singing a My Morning Jacket song under a bridge in Louisville, or Neil Young accosting a senator with an acoustic elevator rendition of "Rockin in The Free World", what we get is something intimate.
Messi gives us that every time he steps on a futbol pitch. And I brought up Mbappe...
If Messi had a manager with the sack of Deschamps, the bravery He has as a manager (As much as I reel in despair with most, if not all of his decisions, his call to sit my favorites Mendy and Sidibe and stick with relative unknowns in Pavard and Hernandez may have taken them over the top in Russia) he would've won two World Cups by now. Messi never had a manager with any balls, they always look as if they're about to be killed by the mafia: sweat and grime mirroring their foreheads, desperation tactics in the forefront.
If he'd had a manager who was willing to give him a chance in 2006, Argentina surely get through Germany; if he'd had a manager willing to play Aguero instead of Higuain in 2014, he surely wins one...but we'll never know now...as we've only seen Messi mishandled and abused by club and international managers, the Argentine federation and the Barcelona board alike since the days of Tito Villanova's passing and Guardiola's exodus in exile to Central Park and then Germany.
And now with Valverde....
But do we ever stop to appreciate this man and how many times management has gotten in his way of winning things?
Luckily for us all, it's only going to be 3 weeks until we see Messi again, but it could've been so much worse. We've been so incredibly fortunate to have seen Messi in as many matches as we have, over his vast career.
We've been granted the joy to watch him without the horrific leg breaking or ACL tearing that most, if not all, futbol players experience at least once in their careers. Oxlade-Chamberlain would kill The Queen herself to survive one full season without one of these catastrophes, let alone an entire 15 year career. The worst injury Messi's had was the hamstring tear in 2013....
The diminutive master has played an enormous amount of futbol and won an incredible amount of titles, breaks records every time he plays and yet we all still feel there's a mound of unfinished business... That's because when you have the best player on the planet, who can't help but make everyone around him 10x better, you must win it all.
And when we don't, someone has to pay: managers who don't have a clue or a rapport with Messi, at the least a line of communication, must go.
Sampaoli stayed and look how that went.
Valverde's lack of impetus or urgency in the second leg vs Roma in the Champions league, last year and his complete inability to understand how to rotate a squad, while also showing an obsession with negative tactics lead many to wonder why in the hell is this guy STILL here?
The Roma defeat, which also holds the hideous distinction of being the legendary Andres Iniesta's final Champions league match ever, was easily the worst Barcelona has ever performed with Messi on the pitch. Like Sabella in 2014 with Argentina, Valverde opted to put it completely on Messi that day and use only himself and an out of shape, desperate for form Suarez up top against a driven and determined back seven of Roma. Once Roma went into transition with the ball, they'd already bypassed our front line of nothingness and passed the ball easily through a weary, overplayed Rakitic and Busquets. There was no Coutinho, due to the cup tie rule. There was no Dembele...until the last five minutes when it was too late.
This can happen again, even with Messi. The Argentine begged for Dembele to come on in that match, demonstrating that he could manage and play at the same time for our club. Even Gerard Pique was seen protesting to an unfazed Valverde to sub Dembele on during the second half, as well.
All of us Barca fans must remember the lessons of the Roma second leg. We can only watch and hope Valverde has learned those lessons, too.
We better appreciate what we've got in Messi...we will never see him again ... next time, it could be a torn ACL or a broken leg so you better pay attention to his every move, drink it up and soak it in.... because as today clearly declares, Messi is a human after all.
The assistant from Chelsea getting in his face was stupid and messed up, but what's Mourinho gonna do next? Start screaming, after a 5-0 defeat to Burnley, "OH YEAH??? WELL MY PENIS IS THIIIIIS BIG!!!!" ???
Mourinho is embarrassing. And to sub off Martial, who scored twice and was saving Mourinho's job?
What a disgrace the way he wrongly treats, and has always treated, attacking talent. From Martial to Ozil, Lukaku etc he simply doesn't understand goalscoring or creativity in futbol.
Another team starting to not get how to score goals or create chances is Liverpool, who are snapping up good results, but have barely registered 3 shots on target a match in their last few matches, including the erectile dysfunction of the awful City v Liverpool 0-0 fiasco of a match.
Klopp's Merseyside outfit can now win in a few different ways. Thanks to all three of their versatile front line, Salah, Firmino and Mane all can operate up top on their own as the focal point of the attack. They can mix and match the front three and won't feel beholden to starting all three every match, no matter what, which never insured Liverpool's longevity over a season.
They can also play with a massive combination of midfielders. They can opt for a more conservative and structured set up in Milner, Henderson, Wijnaldum; more offensive and creative: Henderson, Keita and Lallana; Pure panache: Fabinho, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Keita. They can use any combination of those brilliant midfielders and get fine, Grade A results...after all, it was that first, more conservative midfield trio that took them to the final vs Madrid and helped score more goals than any Champions league team before them, with Milner creating the most goals in a single season in Champions league history.
Liverpool haven't figured everything out yet, which is fine considering they haven't played a complete match (barring the thrilling, Liverpoolesque romping show against PSG), but they're still top of the league.
Who knows what this team may have been capable of if they had Alisson last season.
Then, we forget about the fact they HAD the most in form player of September before his injury, a World Cup champion and now Champions league destroyer of Manchester City: Nabil Fekir, but didn't want him at the final second due to knee concerns over his 2015 injury when playing for France against Portugal in his first start for Les Bleus, an injury which forced him to narrowly miss Euro 2016.
They were dumb not to get that deal over the line, as a player of Nabil Fekir's quality constantly creates goals, no matter how many or how few minutes he's playing. The way in which Fekir brilliantly assisted and scored against City in the Champions league with Lyon, early this season, was comparable to the way Coutinho could barnstorm an opponent with a quick flash of absolute skill.
But instead, Liverpool fans clamoring for the Frenchman, who was an impressive substitute in every match at the World Cup, will have to wait for his services...
This Liverpool team can be scary good. But will they have a hard time getting the goals and the chemistry up top flowing again?
The most brilliant decision by Klopp, not necessarily the most entertaining one, was to forgo the Gegen pressing style for a few matches at the beginning of this embryonic stage of this season, a decision I find shows maturity in his management...as it was this pedal to the metal system that brought Liverpool so much success and notoriety, it is also the system that drained them of their energy, most noticeable when it came to scoring goals at the back end of seasons since Klopp has taken the helm.
If Jurgen Klopp can spare his young team a month or two of taxation on the legs, which it seems he already has been able to do, this will surely benefit them greatly in the second half of the season, the business end...the stage that really matters (hint hint Ernesto Valverde).
Which is why the 0-0 against Man city is all the more impressive for Klopp, than it is an indictment of his new thinking. It'd be more or an indictment on Guardiola with three players each on his team having a 3 assist match last season (De Bruyne, Sterling, Sane), David Silva running the show, Aguero who always scores and creates a litany of goals and all those midfield weapons...with all that firepower, Pep had no excuse for such a tepid performance from his so called "dream team".
But for Klopp, the fact he was able to restrain himself from going all out with intensely high pressing tactics, flying challenges from forwards and an extremely fast rate of play, shows his evolution and ruthlessness to achieve a title. Last season, he approached the same fixture the same way as I pointed out: exactly what you'd expect from a Klopp team. And it got Sadio Mane sent off, with Ederson using the Senegalese World cup scorer's aggression against him, pulling him into a nearly life altering head injury for the City keeper.
After thirty minutes and that Mane red card, it was 3-0 to City.
Klopp learned his lesson this season. He held serve, held his men fast and checked things out, didn't like what he saw and left his men in a wait instead of a rush.
Yes, it was boring and you could call both managers cowards.
But I view Klopp as a shrewd manager who knew a 0-0 would always be better than a 0-5 in the context of winning a Premier League title.
The manager with the fastest tactics in world futbol is finally learning that winning titles is a marathon, not a race
Memphis Depay continues his red hot form for both Lyon and the Netherlands after he scored again for Lyon on Friday after a fantastic few matches for the Netherlands, assisting vs Belgium and scoring vs Germany.
Is he ready for a big league again? Is he ready for defenders who get in your face And give no time on the ball?
He showed he was against Germany and Belgium.
He has been deployed in a central role where he can fold out to his favored left wing to take players on, or stay central and make brilliant runs, creating space for teammates and conjuring goalscoring opportunities at will.
His deliveries on set pieces are beyond majestic, every time he's over the ball a chance is created, at a minimum, from his corners and free kicks.Memphis Depay is the most under the radar player in scintillating form at the moment.
We're back to club competitions, my dear reader and isn't it crazy?
City are still thrashing people like it's going out of style through Silva's 2 assists, Mendy's 5th of the season already, the return of Kevin De Bruyne and the renewed confidence of man of the match Riyad Mahrez.
Arsenal loanee Reiss Nelson goes off for 2 goals in a match with Hoffenheim, now having scored in both matches he's received meaningful minutes in.
Bayern Munich got back to winning ways, as I predicted, despite a Robben red card.
Madrid can't stop losing, or hitting the post....
And Jose Mourinho still has a tiny penis.
Some things just never change.
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