The Case for Lionel Messi
Messi is the best football player of all time. This is not an opinion but a statement of fact. The question is: why?
Act 1– 2005
“Aux âmes bien nées, la valeur n’attend point le nombre des années.” — Corneille Le Cid
Deep inside, I always knew I was a football polygamist. I like all talented football players regardless of which era they played in, what club they played for, and most importantly whether or not that club was a rival to one my favorite teams. All I care about is their game. This might not sound like a particular trait, but few people in my tribalist community were like me. So deep inside, I also always knew I was an anomaly.
I grew up in a traditional Haitian family that watched football casually and rooted for Brazil in international competition. I’ll be honest, I didn’t quite understand why people loved football so much when I was a toddler. Football actually pissed me off because when games were on television, I could not watch cartoons. Matter fact, I vehemently remember Telemax cutting some cartoons short to air live football games.
Summer 1998 however, was a different story.
I was five years old, I had just graduated from Kindergarten. Some event that was about to happen called the Mondial got everyone in Haiti extremely excited. I still hated football until one afternoon Tele Eclair, instead of running their cartoon hour, re-aired a Brazil-Morocco World Cup game. I don’t know why I didn’t change the channel, I don’t know why I continued to watch something I supposedly hated but thankfully, I did, so that was that.
I was fascinated by the ball movement, the Brazilian national team’s panache, the passes, and the dribbles. Football is a relatively simple game to follow. Even a five year old could watch his first game and understand Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima was the best player on the pitch. Even a five year old could be transfixed by his speed, his power, his grace. Of course Ronaldo became my idol. Of course, I fell in love with the sport.
I went on to become a football addict in the next fifteen years with most of my free time dedicated to reading about the sport, watching it (old videos and current games), playing it, analyzing it and now writing long form essays about it.
Fast forward to fall of 2005. I’m in middle school at Saint Louis de Gonzague and we’re about to head to our first class. My buddy Shleiden Renard was having a heated football discussion with my now-podcast-cohost Cramsci Choute.
Dendenn: Messi is better than Robinho. He’s about to start for Barcelona and he just won the under 20 World cup.
Cram: Naaa braaa, Robinho’s the man. He’s been the best player for Real Madrid this year. He starts most games, Messi is not even a starter, and hell Saviola won the under 20 World Cup and where is he now?
Dedenn out of breath tells Cram to follow him. They come up to me and Dendenn asks:
“Who’s better Benji, Messi or Robinho?”
My answer that day: “Easy, it’s Messi. He’s faster, he’s a better passer and he’s a better dribbler and he’s younger. He’s about to destroy people for the next 10 years”
Denden smiled and said “See even Benji who likes Brazil is saying Messi is better!!!”
At the time, Cram and I weren’t friends. We respected each other though. He looked at me and he responded in a way Cram still does today in Chroniques Sportives:
“Man, all I’m saying is Robinho is better right now and the under 20 world cup ain’t shit.”
Back in 2005, Messi skepticism was common and even understandable. He was good but the best player in the world, Ronaldinho, was on his team. He got injured often and he didn’t even start most games — Ludovic Giuly did that. Football fans were tired of young talent that never live up to their hype— Who remembers d’Allessandro, Djibril Cisse, Denilson, Saviola? Anyone?
In 2017, however, Messi denialism is weird and downright unacceptable which brings us to this piece.
The premise is simple: Messi is the greatest football player of all time. The question is why?
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Personal Tangent 1
I miss Saint Louis de Gonzague’s playground and its barbershop atmosphere. My buddies and I were always comparing players and teams to each other. We watched most league games on week ends and then discussed everything that happened on Monday mornings. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, whenever the champions league was on, we did whatever we had to do to know what was going in the games. This was pre-internet, pre-streaming, pre-smart phone, so we used whatever we could: TV-enabled phones, radio rock-mans, often completely ignoring teachers in the 2:45–4 PM block.
It’s a crime to have classes past 3PM anyways. It was also during those barbershop sessions that Cram and I started our podcasts way before podcasting was a thing.We even had argument with teachers. Most teachers did not know shit about the game though.
Two stand out. Mr Patrice Ennat was a fervent anti-Barcelona fan when Ronaldinho was their best player and he actively rooted for Arsenal in 2006. Now he swears by Barcelona and by Messi… “When life comes at you fast” is what they say right? While Mr Ennat was just a zealot like many in the Haitian community, at least he watched and cared enough to hate and love. Mr Julsaint however definitely didn’t know shit about football. One day he saw me talking Euro 2004 with some kids, I was saying the Czech Republic and Portugal were the favorites. He looked at me and said: “Dalusma, you think you know football but you don’t know anything about football.”
Too bad in catholic schools, 11 year old boys are not allowed to respond to ignorant and insecure men but back then I already knew.
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Act 2— “Illest Motherfucker Alive”
“King Hov, I’m exactly what the fuck you think” — Jay Z, Watch The Throne
In his remarkable autobiography Les Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau reveals himself in provocative fashion. Unlike many biographies, the purpose of Confession was not simply to give readers an inside look of who the man was. The entire book serves rather as a justification of his life, of his choices and of his achievements. Rousseau makes no excuses for who he is. It’s a very sincere book but it’s also a work of pride.
The most iconic part of Confession is when Rousseau, more or less affirms that he is the best man who ever lived:
“Let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.”
What exactly made Rousseau a better man is a topic the book explores at length. It’s a question I still struggle with even after reading both tomes from Confessions twice. Whatever you think of Confessions and eighteenth century French literature, there should be an equivalent quote about Lionel Messi’s career. If Messi ever gave yours truly the honor to write his biography it would go something like this:
After looking at my career, what I’ve won, how I’ve won and what I’ve done over the course of my 20 years playing football, can anyone from any era say with any form of sincerity, I was better than this man.
Messi is no Kanye. He would never allow anyone to write something like this but the question remains valid: who has been better at playing football than Lionel Messi?
Messi’s been the baddest man in the game for ten years now. Bar none. That in of itself is remarkable. That in of itself should end the GOAT debate.
Football is a dynamic sport, players don’t usually keep the “best player in the world” title for a very long time. Now more than ever, it is harder to evaluate football talent because of the forces of marketing, money and hype. That’s why most football fans for instance would rather have Neymar Jr on their team than say Thomas Muller or Antoine Griezman.
Also the Ballon d’Or, which should theoretically be the objective measure of world class talent, has been fraudulent for many years now. I can’t rely on any institution that rewards Fabio Canavaro, I just can’t.
I like to think that the best way to settle this is to think about the question in simpler term. Instead of who was the Ballon d’Or in 87 (Rud Gullit), the question should be who was The Illest Motherfucker Alive in 87 (Diego Maradona). Forget stats, forget titles, who was the baddest man in the sport?
There’s only been a few illest motherfucker alives in history and if you look at the list, it’s close to what the All time list is or should be. From 70 onward, It’d go something like this:
70: Pele.
71–77: Kaiser — Cruyff tie.
78–82: Keegan/Pibe/Zico/Kempes
82–84: Platoche-Zico
84–90: Pibe
90–93: Van Basten (Injured for half of 93 but I still give it to him)
94–96: Romario
96–98: R9
99: R9/Zizou
00–01: Zizou (R9 was injured)
02: R9/Zizou
03: Zizou
04–07 Dinho
07–17: Messi (I’d concede that you could argue that the title 07 was Kaka, 08 perhaps CR7 but that’s about it and 10, Messi is tied with Iniesta)
Players don’t usually stay on top of the game very long. Usually it’s only a couple of years. Even Pibe didn’t do it for more than 6. In the last ten years Messi has the best player in every game he’s played.
‘Nough said! Take THAT FOR DATA!
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Personal Aside 2
If you think about it, Yeezy is the Rousseau of our time: Misunderstood by his contemporaries, arrogant to a fault, last but not least, vastly superior to his competition.
Hot Take Alert: The “Good Fridays” compilation, not “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is Yeezy’s best work. “Jesus Walks” is obviously his best track.
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Act 3— Denialism
“Ou pa kwè nan letènèl ou menm? Espèce d’athé. #D10S” — Jetry Dumont
The anti-Messi argument is often weak, often lazy, almost always based on hypothetical situations, almost never based on actual football. At best, it is anachronistic, at worst it is downright inattentive.
It is centered around the only hole in Messi’s resume: the World Cup and purports that his failure with Argentina somehow prove that Messi is a Barcelona fantasy, ostensibly that he wouldn’t be that good were he playing for another team.
It is legitimate to question how well Messi would have done were he not surrounded with all-time quality talent. What I find lazy however is to assume that the World Cup holds a divine right of blessing on the football pantheon. I understand the prestige the Word Cup still carries but if we’re being honest, international football has sucked for almost twenty year. Everything about international football is inferior to club football… Everything: Coaching, talent, tactics, intensity and quality of games.
There was a time when the World Cup and the Euro were the most important competitions in the World. In the 80s and 90s European clubs weren’t allowed to field more than three non locals on the starting eleven. There was an uneven concentration of local talent and we didn’t necessarily get the chance to see the best of the best always compete. Heck, Michael Laudrup got omitted from the 1994 Champions League final because Romario, Koeman and Stoichkov were the designated international players that day. Can you imagine how mad Barcelona fans would be if you told them that they could not field one of the 40 best players of all time in champions league final because of UEFA regulations?
Critics also never point out the outright coaching incompetence Messi has had to deal with Argentina. Messi is the best false nine to ever play, he’s the best hybrid offensive player we’ve ever seen, yet somehow, no Argentina coaches has ever tried to put him in a position to be a false nine. You know play the 4–3–3 Barcelona has played for forty years now, put Aguero to his right, Di Maria to his left, dump Higuain as a secondary option to come off the bench and have Messi do his thing. Why is it that difficult? This isn’t rocket science.
I laugh when I hear people say he’s a product of the Barcelona system…
He’s not a system-man, he’s the system man!
If he wasn’t there, Barcelona would not be as prolific. If he wasn’t there, this late 2000's iteration of Barcelona would not be considered as the best team of all time. If he wasn’t there, Barcelona would be very beatable.
Case in point, he’s the system man!
Besides, I don’t need to see Messi lift a World Cup trophy to know he’s the purest I’ve ever seen, to know that no one has ever dominated modern football for as long as he has or to know he’s the best scorer of the last twenty five years. It would be a crime to let Gonzalo Higuain and/or Rodrigo Palacio change my mind.
It’s not even fair to compare Messi to players who came before him anyways, cause he’s that much better. Messi’s game is an alloy: part Cruyff, part Maradona, part Ronaldo Luiz. Ironically, only those three could perhaps be thought as better than him. We’ll talk about Pele another time.
Messi resembles Cruyff the most both aesthetically and career wise. Like Cruyff, he started as a natural winger that could cut inside, like Cruyff his dribbles are deceptively simple but extremely effective, like Cruyff his club career is much better than his international career. Both men failed in the final of the World Cup against Germany. Both were never able to get over the hump in continental football. Both played for Barcelona and epitomize total football.
But neither Cruyff, nor Maradona for that matter, had the flair for goal Messi has and although Cruyff was potent as meneur de jeu he could not do it as well as Messi does it. Messi’s goal scoring at his peak is rivaled by only one player: Ronaldo Luiz. Fenomeno was probably a better natural scorer in his peak than Leo but it’s much closer than most people think it is. A similar conundrum exists tho, Fenomeno was not a great passer like Messi is and he was always uncomfortable going deep in the midfield.
Messi is a more versatile Cruyff, a goal scoring Maradona, a Trequartista Ronaldo.
Case in point, he is better than all three.
Personal Aside 3
While doing some research for this piece, I re-watched the 2014 World Cup final. Fernando Gago, Rodrigo Palacio came off the bench and played crunch time minutes in overtime. Enzo Perez started the game and played 86 minutes. This actually happened… Perez did an ok job and was not a net negative but Fernando Gago and Rodrigo Palacio should never play a minute in World Cup final, not against this 2014 Germany. The saddest part of it all, is that Sabella didn’t call up Tevez for the World Cup and Ricky Alvarez was on the bench the whole time. I’m pretty sure… No, I know that if Tevez plays up front with Messi that day Argentina wins that game.
Another fun fact, I was able to find while researching this piece is the story of how Messi got called up to play for Argentina’s youth team. His father sent videos of him at Barcelona to AFA but got ignored and Messi was not called to play U-17 football for Argentina. At the end of the 2003 U-17 World Cup, semi final between Argentina and Spain, young Fàbregas went to the Argentinean coach and told him they’d have won the game if they picked a player he played with at la Masia. Real recognizes real.
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Act 4— Counterpoint
“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” — Mahatma Gandhi
I recently had an argument with my boy Olivier Sterlin about Messi. When it comes to football, O is a rebel. The man doesn’t conform to conventions and has the most uniquely brilliant opinions in the business.
Some of his takes are just wrong though, sorry O, Miroslav Klose is not the second best striker of the last 25 years: Samuel Eto’o? Titi The King of Highbury Henry? Didier Drogba? Rivaldo whenever he played up front? Peak Sheva? Horrible take O but I digress.
O believes Messi is the smartest player in football history but he’s not necessarily the greatest, at least not yet. This honor in his opinion still remains to Pibe and/or Fenomeno. We went back in forth about it and although he didn’t change my mind on this, damn his arguments were good.
The question he posed me is pretty simple: who can do whatever they want, whenever they want on the pitch? Instead of asking who’s the illest motherfucker alive, O wants to know who’s the illest motherfucker to ever live?
To answer this question, you can’t use goals, ballon d’ors, champions leagues. You can’t rely on statistics, you can’t rely on hype, you can’t let post-modernism affect how you think. You can’t rely on the conservative “Did he win a World Cup?” argument.
You need to win a game, your life depends on it, you can chose one guy, who are you taking?
Are we sure it’s Messi. Damn it, I’m not sure it’s Messi…
Unfortunately, I have to concede that Mighty O is onto something.
Fenomeno was an unstoppable force of nature. Peak Fenomeno will get you a couple by himself if you need them. Peak Fenomeno destroyed brutal Calcio defenses every week end. Peak Fenomeno was the terminator: no emotions, give me the ball and let me wreak havoc… Hasta La Vista Baby!
Even post-peak Fenomeno could still destroy. Man United anyone?
Ditto for Pibe.
Obviously 86 was impressive. Obviously putting Napoli on the map might be his greatest accomplishment, but people don’t talk enough about 1990. Are we sure Messi takes a bunch of scrubs to the world cup final and nearly wins the damn thing by himself at age 30? Are we sure Messi goes to the final with Canigia as his second best player? He’ll be 31 next year so I guess we’ll get an answer.
Messi is a better football player than Pibe or Fenomeno. But for all of his talents, I just wished sometimes he took over games more often. Sometimes it’s as if he isn’t there. He’s passive, he’s lurking. Mighty O once compared him to Inzhagi or a more efficient Podolski in a sense that he can dissapear for 30 minutes yet still find a way to score when it matters. That’s a tad bit too far but when Messi ain’t engaged, Messi ain’t playing. Its a relatively new phenomenon though. 22 year old Messi never took a minute off. I suppose it’s tough to stay motivated when you’ve done it all.
Germany was ready to be got in the 2014 final.
Does Pibe win that game for Argentina? Maybe… But I don’t think so, Higuain would still be on the team, and Higuain always finds a way to fuck things up. Even Pibe could not overcome horrible coaching, Rodrigo Palacio and Gonzalo Higuain. Fenomeno definitely wins that game though cause you know he’s scoring before the end of regulation.
But that’s nit picking, it’s just one game, Ronaldo had bad games. Pibe had bad games. So who am I picking, my life depends on it?
You already know…
This is an excerpt of Ben’s upcoming book “During the Summer, Football Makes Haitians Dance: A Football Memoir”
Ben
