The Football Thread - 17/18 Season

[pastro243]

mZuzek said:

The Fury said:
Messi helped Argentina into the world cup... great, now watch as he, like the last 2 World Cups, does nothing. :P

Yeah, because not scoring in a world cup final is the same as "doing nothing". Come on, dude. He was great in 2014, or at least he was for anyone that was actually watching the matches and not the scoresheets. He didn't score after the group stages, but that was hardly his fault for the most part (he did miss one big chance in the final, but really that's the only one I remember in all 4 games (then again maybe that's the only one I remember because it's the only one that could have changed the result)).

But especially right now, it's ludicrous how people say he doesn't do anything for his country - again, really it shows who's watching matches and who's reading scoresheets. He hadn't been scoring goals before yesterday, but that's because he was usually playing in deeper or wider roles supporting other players, and was our best player, undisputedly, in almost every game in the last couple of years - he could have had loads (and I mean LOADS) of assists had it not been for everyone else's awful finishing and decision making. Right now he's the only player who's actually doing shit for Argentina, and playing alone in a team of 11 isn't very easy. Yesterday, he was played as a forward (finally), and I think even he was a bit tired of his teammates already because he usually decided to just go it himself even when he didn't need to, and thankfully it paid off.

Anyway, all this "Messi doesn't play for Argentina" stuff is so outdated it really hurts reading it. It's true he was crap in 2010, but that was pretty much the last time that happened.

People also don't take into account the difficulty for the other team dealing with Messi. Seriously, you have to build a defense system just to stop him and he will still have chances. I think no other player does that, not even with Cristiano or Neymar