How is lionel messi so good

Barcelona and Juventus were about to contest the Gamper Trophy, an exhibition match Barcelona plays at the beginning of every season in honor of Joan Gamper, one of the founders of the club.

He pointed across the pitch at a gnomish year-old with a terrible haircut and translucent skin. View Iframe URL. The Messi story starts—well, wherever whoever's telling the story wants it to start.

There are the bombs: legend has it that 15 explosives were detonated in Argentina on the day that Messi was born in Or how about this one: Barcelona decided they wanted to sign him because someone at the club saw a video of him juggling an orange and a ping-pong ball.

He is a virtuoso, a magician. His dribbling is considered to be the best the game has ever seen, and he passes and shoots the ball with the precision of a brain surgeon.

He makes eye-popping moves that leave people speechless and overwhelmed. Nowadays, soccer is more dynamic and athletic than ever. The game has become faster, stronger and more demanding in most aspects of physicality.

His athleticism is second to none; he combines dizzying pace with powerful shooting and a jumping ability of an NBA star, which makes his headers a serious threat to the opposition.

Ronaldo, more than Messi, is the ideal model of the next generation of players. Messi has an advantage over Ronaldo: Messi has won more titles mostly because he plays for a better team, not because he is a better player than Ronaldo. Throughout his entire career, Messi played for arguably the best side to ever play the game.

While Messi has the added value of an unforgettable team, Ronaldo is the driving factor of his. In fact, Messi has never won an international trophy. Meanwhile, Ronaldo led his Portugal side to win the European Championship. Is his dribbling ability innate and genetic?

Or is it something you can learn? It was believed to be due to "hormonal problems," and leading medical professionals believed "he would grow no taller than 4'7". Now, consider research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine states: "Within the field of sports science, elite performance is understood to be the result of both training and genetic factors.

This means Messi developed as a young player while being dramatically handicapped by "genetic factors. An often overlooked aspect of all great dribblers of the ball is their combination of speed and endurance.

Research conducted by scientists from the School of Human Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK found: "Unorthodox modes of motion—running backwards and sideways, accelerating, decelerating and changing direction—accentuate the metabolic loading.

Put simply, the unpredictable way in which Messi dances around opposition is arguably far more tiring than a straight sprint down the wing. His run-in with known roughouser Tomas Ujfalusi in , where Messi somehow survived a horror tackle with just a sprain, was recovered from in just 10 days, astonishing considering the impact. He has always struggled with his hamstrings, indeed when he was younger there was a serious concern that he may be missing regularly due to his weak and susceptible muscles, but when it comes to impact injuries, he is built to last, as Scott Brown will attest to.

And if you watch any career retrospective, of which there are thousands on YouTube, you watch him develop from not just a provider of chances to team-mates but improve in the quality of the opportunities for both them and him.

Aside from free-kicks, he is not a purveyor of low-xG shots, subscribing completely to the Pep Guardiola philosophy of getting the ball into as straightforward a position as possible. Lionel Messi form and statistics for Barcelona. Declan Rice has withdrawn from the England squad due to illness, but the Three Lions remain strong favourites. There is nothing on the line for Ireland, while Portugal are hoping to reclaim top spot in Group A. Atletico Madrid threw away two points as Valencia scored twice in injury time on a weekend when Real Sociedad went top.

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