BarcafaninIllinois
New member
Outstanding performance tonight.
10 - Lionel Messi - v1
- Thread starter Evil
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T
Trillske
Guest
I complain anyway. He seriously screwed up a few times. When I was already really frustated by it, he has an excellent chans with two different options. He choose the third: Running with his head first straight into a wall of defenders. Looked incredibly silly.I agree that he was a little selfish but you can't complain when he scored twice either
But yeah, he was amazing otherwise as usual. Heres hoping he´ll improve his split vision and such as well. Or whatever it is he didnt have today.
diegomessi
Anxiously waiting for the next match
Messi was out of this planet good today...
BarçAFan10
"Made it, Ma! Top Of The World!"
Necro Spaaw
NeSaVlaDiV
I was mesmerized by Messi's work when he set up Keita.
haha you're not the only one - the whole atletico defense were like watching from the stands.. everybody was, actually -xcept for keita who sees it in practice every day so he knew the routine. credit where it's due tho and thats zlatans brilliant lob to messi and a lil messi magic for atletico annihilation
and yes, he should've passed to ibra on that one occasion.
1
10 Messi
Guest
He was awesome last night mind. The work he put in to set up Keita and also the class of his first goal. Awesome!
Necro Spaaw
NeSaVlaDiV
yea his second goal came on the right foot. improving still!! unbelievable
Necro Spaaw
NeSaVlaDiV
Messi comfortable in Barca!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/sports/soccer/21iht-SOCCER.html?_r=1&ref=soccer
On Friday, Barcelona’s president signed a piece of paper that committed the club to spending at least €100 million on one player.
Barcelona's Lionel Messi celebrates scoring a goal against Atlético Madrid on Saturday.
It is the salary — a reported €9.5 million, or nearly $14 million, after tax per year until 2016 — that Barcelona agreed to pay to keep Lionel Messi.
Messi needed 24 hours to show his appreciation. On Saturday, he danced, he dazzled and he led a Barcelona performance that utterly destroyed a decent Atlético Madrid team, 5-2.
The scoreline, by the way, was a travesty: Had Barcelona kept its foot on the gas after going four goals up in 40 minutes, had Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Messi been given the clear penalties their movement earned, had Thierry Henry not hit the crossbar, it could so easily have reached double figures.
The team and its leading man, Messi, are that good. You could watch soccer played anywhere else on earth at the moment, and see nothing to compare to Barça’s amalgam of joy, expression and choreographed brilliance.
Earlier, in two televised English Premier League games, Liverpool, with its fine Spanish striker Fernando Torres on fire, beat West Ham 4-2, away from home. An unsung, troubled Englishman, David Nugent, scored two remarkable goals for Burnley — one a powerful header, the other a turn away from two defenders to curl the ball into the top corner of the net with his supposedly weaker foot.
But none of it had Barcelona’s sweet science, or Messi’s incorrigible ability to lift a crowd of 82,678 people to their feet so many times in one performance.
It wasn’t just the way Messi popped up in the goalmouth to score twice, once with his left foot, once his right. It wasn’t simply the act of creative genius with which he set up another goal, for Seydou Keita. And it was more than the early signs that Ibrahimovic and Messi can exchange passes other men could never imagine making.
It was something Messi said, and meant, that proves he and his club are in a special moment.
“I want to finish my career here,” he told Barça TV. “The club has understood my feelings. This is the result of everything I gave to the team last season, but not just me.”
“I’m one more in a very special group of players, of a great team that is very united,” he added. “The new contract is not about the money, it is about feelings. I have always felt loved here.”
After a summer in which Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United for Real Madrid and Ricardo Kaká also moved to Real, from AC Milan, a player talking about love rather than money is likely to be challenged.
But examine the facts: Messi arrived in Catalonia when he was an undersized boy, a 13-year-old who needed growth hormone treatment that his family could not afford in Argentina. He entered La Masia, the renowned Barcelona training school, at the same time as seven of his current teammates, following in the footsteps of the player who now coaches Barcelona, Pep Guardiola.
When Messi talks about feelings, about belonging to a team, to a place, he cannot be accused of talking through his bank account.
There is talk that Cristiano Ronaldo is experiencing some anxiety, some alienation even at Real Madrid. Why wouldn’t he? The boy from Madeira had known only two football homes, Sporting Lisbon and Manchester United, since he started his sporting education about the same age as Messi.
One coach, Carlos Queiroz, was central to Ronaldo’s development because Queiroz had left Sporting to be assistant to United’s manager, Alex Ferguson. So it is understandable that Ronaldo, marvelous showman that he is when the confidence flows through him, might need time to grow into the new surroundings, the regimen, the style, a different soccer culture.
Messi has that same transition to make when he travels home, to play for his national side. Argentina has changed coach three times in his short career, and the third of those, Diego Maradona, is beginning to look like he is no coach at all.
Barcelona, then, rather than Argentina, has become Messi’s reference point. His club has responded to speculation that covetous club owners, at Inter Milan and Manchester City, want to buy him.
Fine, says Joan Laporta, the Barcelona president. Break Messi’s feeling of belonging, tempt him with even more riches than he knows what to do with, and there is from this weekend a €250 million buy-out clause in the contract.
That clause is meant to be prohibitive.
“Its an immense piece of news for the club, and for the player, that Messi is renewing his contract,” Guardiola said.
The team also signed its goalkeeper and midfield creator to new contracts.
“It was also immense for us when Victor Valdés and Xavi did the same,” Guardiola said. “People go to football to see the best, and that’s what they are.”
And they showed it on Saturday. Henry hit the bar. In less than two minutes, Ibrahimovic casually struck a goal, his third in three league matches.
Atlético’s defenders, sensing humiliation, tried to get their retaliation in early, with brutal kicks on the heels of Messi in particular. However, to kick him, you have to catch him. To catch him, you have to nail down just where Messi is likely to run.
The same goes for Ibrahimovic and Henry: Seek them here and they go there. On 16 minutes, Messi cut in from the right to collect Xavi’s exquisite pass, dart toward the goalkeeper, and trick him with a sway of his hip and a disguised low shot.
Daniel Alves made it 3-0 with a free kick. Then Ibrahimovic and Messi conjured the fourth for Keita. Ibrahimovic flicked up the ball to Messi. The Argentine played it from his right foot to his left, dragging two defenders to him, and then swept it across the face of goal for Keita to score.
When Barcelona sat back, Atlético’s Sergio Agüero and Diego Forlán punished its careless errors to make it 4-2. The last act was Messi’s. He was still being kicked, and responded with a goal.
It was a masterpiece of quick, incisive, elusive passing and movement between Alves, Andrés Iniesta and Messi before Messi struck the final shot.
“He’s comfortable here,” Laporta had said. “That’s why he plays the way he does.”
:2145960713mundoemot
:2145960713mundoemot
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/sports/soccer/21iht-SOCCER.html?_r=1&ref=soccer
On Friday, Barcelona’s president signed a piece of paper that committed the club to spending at least €100 million on one player.
Barcelona's Lionel Messi celebrates scoring a goal against Atlético Madrid on Saturday.
It is the salary — a reported €9.5 million, or nearly $14 million, after tax per year until 2016 — that Barcelona agreed to pay to keep Lionel Messi.
Messi needed 24 hours to show his appreciation. On Saturday, he danced, he dazzled and he led a Barcelona performance that utterly destroyed a decent Atlético Madrid team, 5-2.
The scoreline, by the way, was a travesty: Had Barcelona kept its foot on the gas after going four goals up in 40 minutes, had Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Messi been given the clear penalties their movement earned, had Thierry Henry not hit the crossbar, it could so easily have reached double figures.
The team and its leading man, Messi, are that good. You could watch soccer played anywhere else on earth at the moment, and see nothing to compare to Barça’s amalgam of joy, expression and choreographed brilliance.
Earlier, in two televised English Premier League games, Liverpool, with its fine Spanish striker Fernando Torres on fire, beat West Ham 4-2, away from home. An unsung, troubled Englishman, David Nugent, scored two remarkable goals for Burnley — one a powerful header, the other a turn away from two defenders to curl the ball into the top corner of the net with his supposedly weaker foot.
But none of it had Barcelona’s sweet science, or Messi’s incorrigible ability to lift a crowd of 82,678 people to their feet so many times in one performance.
It wasn’t just the way Messi popped up in the goalmouth to score twice, once with his left foot, once his right. It wasn’t simply the act of creative genius with which he set up another goal, for Seydou Keita. And it was more than the early signs that Ibrahimovic and Messi can exchange passes other men could never imagine making.
It was something Messi said, and meant, that proves he and his club are in a special moment.
“I want to finish my career here,” he told Barça TV. “The club has understood my feelings. This is the result of everything I gave to the team last season, but not just me.”
“I’m one more in a very special group of players, of a great team that is very united,” he added. “The new contract is not about the money, it is about feelings. I have always felt loved here.”
After a summer in which Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United for Real Madrid and Ricardo Kaká also moved to Real, from AC Milan, a player talking about love rather than money is likely to be challenged.
But examine the facts: Messi arrived in Catalonia when he was an undersized boy, a 13-year-old who needed growth hormone treatment that his family could not afford in Argentina. He entered La Masia, the renowned Barcelona training school, at the same time as seven of his current teammates, following in the footsteps of the player who now coaches Barcelona, Pep Guardiola.
When Messi talks about feelings, about belonging to a team, to a place, he cannot be accused of talking through his bank account.
There is talk that Cristiano Ronaldo is experiencing some anxiety, some alienation even at Real Madrid. Why wouldn’t he? The boy from Madeira had known only two football homes, Sporting Lisbon and Manchester United, since he started his sporting education about the same age as Messi.
One coach, Carlos Queiroz, was central to Ronaldo’s development because Queiroz had left Sporting to be assistant to United’s manager, Alex Ferguson. So it is understandable that Ronaldo, marvelous showman that he is when the confidence flows through him, might need time to grow into the new surroundings, the regimen, the style, a different soccer culture.
Messi has that same transition to make when he travels home, to play for his national side. Argentina has changed coach three times in his short career, and the third of those, Diego Maradona, is beginning to look like he is no coach at all.
Barcelona, then, rather than Argentina, has become Messi’s reference point. His club has responded to speculation that covetous club owners, at Inter Milan and Manchester City, want to buy him.
Fine, says Joan Laporta, the Barcelona president. Break Messi’s feeling of belonging, tempt him with even more riches than he knows what to do with, and there is from this weekend a €250 million buy-out clause in the contract.
That clause is meant to be prohibitive.
“Its an immense piece of news for the club, and for the player, that Messi is renewing his contract,” Guardiola said.
The team also signed its goalkeeper and midfield creator to new contracts.
“It was also immense for us when Victor Valdés and Xavi did the same,” Guardiola said. “People go to football to see the best, and that’s what they are.”
And they showed it on Saturday. Henry hit the bar. In less than two minutes, Ibrahimovic casually struck a goal, his third in three league matches.
Atlético’s defenders, sensing humiliation, tried to get their retaliation in early, with brutal kicks on the heels of Messi in particular. However, to kick him, you have to catch him. To catch him, you have to nail down just where Messi is likely to run.
The same goes for Ibrahimovic and Henry: Seek them here and they go there. On 16 minutes, Messi cut in from the right to collect Xavi’s exquisite pass, dart toward the goalkeeper, and trick him with a sway of his hip and a disguised low shot.
Daniel Alves made it 3-0 with a free kick. Then Ibrahimovic and Messi conjured the fourth for Keita. Ibrahimovic flicked up the ball to Messi. The Argentine played it from his right foot to his left, dragging two defenders to him, and then swept it across the face of goal for Keita to score.
When Barcelona sat back, Atlético’s Sergio Agüero and Diego Forlán punished its careless errors to make it 4-2. The last act was Messi’s. He was still being kicked, and responded with a goal.
It was a masterpiece of quick, incisive, elusive passing and movement between Alves, Andrés Iniesta and Messi before Messi struck the final shot.
“He’s comfortable here,” Laporta had said. “That’s why he plays the way he does.”
:2145960713mundoemot
:2145960713mundoemot
Necro Spaaw
NeSaVlaDiV
:flagvl8::beer2::flagvl8:
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