You keep repeating that he lacked movement and that he should've been moving more when in reality what chance did he have to do that? Most of the time before Song's sub, the team was either defending or struggling for possession deep in midfield. How often did we even have the chance to transition to attack, let alone Messi running everywhere and driving our buildup forward. All of our play was way too deep with the likes of Adriano and Montoya or Song getting the most touches, and most of the time pushed out well wide. There wasn't a chance for Messi to run back, collect the ball, and then find a channel to create something. Even when he did, he had very few passing options in his area with the lack of a forward moving team so unless he actually dribbled everyone he couldn't do anything effective.
If he ran more, it'd have no use and ultimately that'd correlate with your description of "Headless Chicken Alba". Your demands for Messi correlate with the scenario where the team was holding possession but playing very slowly and without the dynamism to get forward and overall being poor and useless. In that scenario, it's up to Messi to turn on and create something the way he does to inspire the team to score. This scenario was where we rarely transitioned out of defense, let alone midfield, and the system was so disconnected that our play was anarchic and had zero fluidity. There were few scenarios where Messi could get involved to influence the team, and even if he had tried it'd be needless running as there was no support to create anything.
