How Messi has been able to evolve to get out of pressing
His evolution with heatmaps
Statsbomb recently opened its data on Lionel Messi and his performances from the 2004/2005 season to the 2018–2019 season in La Liga championship. They have done double duty by delivering the Statsbombpy package, allowing data scientists who are passionate about football to now work with R and/or Python. Here’s the Github link https://github.com/statsbomb/statsbombpy
The Jupyter Notebook that allowed this analysis can be found on Gitlab : https://gitlab.com/bataillema/messi-analysis-with-statsbomb/blob/master/Messi_pressure__not_pressure.ipynb
This article is the first in a series devoted to Lionel Messi. In this first opus, we will try to understand how his placement and his ability to stand out have evolved over the last fifteen years.
The positional game or how to win numerical superiority
Lionel Messi has evolved under the guidance of coaches who are adept at positional play. Barça’s last coach, Ernesto valverde, was sacked for failing to produce a light-hearted game despite the positive results.
As Pep Guardiola explains marvelously well, his positional play requires a perpetual movement of the players and the ball, with the touches of the ball having to be limited in order to create numerical superiority in specific areas of the pitch. Faced with this situation, it is more than necessary for the players to move in the pressure-free zones in order to receive the ball correctly, to give it back even more cleanly …
We will analyze the evolution of Lionel Messi’s positioning over the last fifteen years and his ability to find free zones. It has evolved because of the change in his position (from right winger to false 9) but also because his partners are no longer the same.
For each major period of his career, we will compare two heat maps. The first one highlights the areas of the field where he receives the ball while being alone The second one where he receives the ball while facing a pressing.
2004–2005 : The Advent
In his first season in La Liga, Messi played seven games. He is not a starting player. It’s clear that his scope of activity is wide. He doesn’t hesitate to go down low enough and dive down to the centre of the pitch to receive the ball (Fig 2). However, his free zone is quite narrow and really close to goal (Fig 1).
2005–2006 / 2008–2009 : Right Winger
After a second year of adaptation, Messi becomes a titular on the right wing. We can clearly see this placement during the 2007/2008 season. He receives balls under pressure on his right wing and participates a little in the game in the middle of the field (Fig 5). However, he finds himself free when he positions himself very close to the touchline (Fig 6). He can then start his devastating accelerations and enter the center of the pitch with his left foot (or double with his right full-back).
2009-2010 / 2011-2012 : False 9, Guardiola ’s magic discovery
In May 2009, on the night of Classico against Real Madrid, Pep Guardiola decided to reposition Messi in false 9, taking the place of Samuel Eto’o, who positioned himself as right winger. Guardiola ordered Messi to position himself between the defense and the middle of the pitch in a free zone to receive balls from Xavi and Iniesta. The result was clear-cut. Messi’s barça wins 6–2.
From the 2009–2010 season onwards, this turnaround is clearly visible. Messi receives the balls on a 15-metre strip running from the right wing to the center of the pitch when he is alone (Fig 5). It should be noted that he still often stands out on the right wing to extricate himself from the defense, although most of his play is in the center-right (Fig 6).
By playing this way, he offers itself more solutions to make his accelerations. He can break through the defenses from the right or the left and find new passing lines for his partners. Previously, most of his actions started from the right wing.
In the 2011–2012 season, he scored 50 goals and made 16 assists in La Liga.
2012–2013 — Today : Maturity
The coaches who succeeded Pep Guardiola have kept his legacy. Messi is playing less and less on the right wing (although he did return to it in part during the 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 seasons under Luis Enrique, with a victory in the 2015 Champions League). He participates even more in the game by going down low enough to find free zones (Fig 7). Luis Suarez is in charge of moving on the front of the attack. He receives the ball under pressure when he is on the edge of the penalty area (Fig 8). This seems quite logical because the defenders are legion in this area. So Messi behaves a bit more like a number 10. However, this new position has not hampered his ability to score, as he has an unparalleled quality of finish.
Messi himself evoked this gradual transformation on Catalunya Radio in September 2018.
I like where I play more now. Teams put a lot of people in the middle and it’s easier to take the ball a little lower. Going on the wing, the players don’t know what they have to do. On the point, it’s harder to get the ball because there’s less space and there are a lot of players. It’s been a normal process. I was playing in a different position, in a different way. I changed my way of playing and moving around.
