Shadowthrone, on Dec 6 2008, 06:54 PM, said:
On pitch awareness? He has more on pitch awareness then Ronaldo does now even. His passes rip defenses apart. I'm not sure about this, maybe you are talking about a different Messi?
Well I did say from the little I've seen. But from that little, it's not his passing that does teams, it's his dribbling. He gets into positions to
make good passes, sure, but he's no Kaka or Fabregas who regularly take out entire defences with one pass.
Against us he had the ball time after time after time, but he never once looked incisive - no nifty throughball, no little run across the defender pulling the team out of shape. Sure, he beat players again and again, but he was running down the same blind alleys. That doesn't shout 'savvy' to me. If you look at the stats, Barcelona had 73% of the possession at their gaffe but only hit the target six times out of 20 shots. For that amount of possession that's a poor return.
As opposed to Ronaldo, who's natural talent doesn't come close to Messi's, but who works so hard on playing to his strength and ironing out his weaknesses. Three years ago his movement was poor and his team play generally not good, now even when he's off form like right now he's making contributions like today's flick-pass to Berbatov.
That said, I don't think Ronaldo's natural awareness is that good and never said it was, but he's a beast physically and clearly takes time to work on his weaknesses off the pitch. If you're looking for one of our players to big up for natural awareness, pick Rooney. His passing and movement are unbelievable at times. Pity about his temperament.
I'm puzzled by your views on best dribblers. Ronaldo's not close to it, his close control isn't really that good at all. If you watch him nowadays he very rarely takes a player on directly. I'm not going to argue otherwise than that Robben is inconsistent, injury-prone and has attitude issues, but I don't see how you can say he's not a fantastic dribbler - I reckon not as good as Messi close in (who is?) but much
much faster. When he wants to be he's genuinely unplayable. That's just not very often.
I probably sound like I'm making Messi out to be worse than I'm trying to. When I say his awareness is poor I'm comparing him to the best of the best, not to your average player. I think he's a great player, I just think he's marginally overrated and I certainly don't think he's 'by far the best player in the world' like Macros says. He might be the best to watch at the moment, but that's not the same thing.
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I would have to disagree with your disagreement thumbsup.gif
Well fair enough. As you say I haven't seen that much of Messi and I could be completely wrong, I'm just giving my impression (for the record, the Barca player that does terrify me is Eto'o). I'd be terribly bored if everyone agreed with me...
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But the point which I wanted to make is to show the competitivness of all the "big" leagues. Two of the names listed for England aren't in the top flight anymore and Aston Villa is not making it into the CL just yet. The teams that make it to the CL from England these days are there mainly because of the massive financial clout behind them. While teams from Spain and Italy are generally smaller(financially) teams coming through due to an excellent scouting system and a excellent coaching system. Example: Sevilla, Villarreal, AS Roma, Foirentina, Valencia, Udinese etc. These clubs will always remain competitve becuase of the system in place. While certain other clubs will last as long as the backer remains interested.
