The Argentinian football genius, Lionel Messi, deserved all the hype and attention to his person. The right-winger was incredibly fast and at his under-30 period, but improved his playmaking abilities after this age and remained super useful on the pitch. Even in the struggling Barcelona of the last years, Messi was scoring dozens of goals and assisting regularly.
However, his move to PSG in 2021 looked like a logical step taking into account multiple facts. Thus, Barca couldn’t pay his huge salary as the club failed with transfers in recent years and lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Leo himself was also under huge pressure from mass media, who criticised the Argentinian a lot as the team’s captain and most-earning player in the team.
However, the move to France was also caused by football reasons. The strongest teams of recent years are often linked to great pressing ability. The latter requires a lot of work on the pitch without a ball – running to protect some zones on the field or cover the potential passes’ lines. However, Messi is a too creative player to run a lot on the pitch as he prefers to play with the ball, but not without it.
It seems OK for the great players, but not in the 2020th. Lewandowski, Benzema, Salah, Mbappe, Haaland, De Bruyne, Kane – all those attacking and creative players are working hard on the field even when the team is without a ball possession. Of course, the guys like Messi, Ronaldo, or Neymar deserved the right to be passive in defence, but that is out of the modern football trends. By the way, we recommend visiting the site Odds2Win and getting the latest football predictions.
Not surprisingly, the presence of Leo and Neymar on the pitch simultaneously means problems for PSG in the top matches. The rest nine players could not deal with the whole opponent’s team, so the Parisians lost their games to Manchester City or Real Madrid in the Champions League. So, now we should say that the era of Messi-Ronaldo is finished, and not because of their creative efforts – because of their passive moves on the pitch in defence, while modern football requires much more than only a talent.
