serghei
Senior Member
Nice effort BBZ8800. But that is not just Barcelona without Messi. That is Barcelona without Messi, Pique, Iniesta, Alves, Pedro, Villa, and a bunch of other incredible players. As I said, you can see that losing one important player like Alves has an impact in how the right wing is performing, regardless of Messi. Believe it or not, there are many factors that have to do with the collective aspects of football, and those factors determine the success or failure of a team. Not a singleplayer.
Even the Bayern game, 3-0, the first goal is as much the work of Alves (gets the ball back from Bayern's control, dribbles 2 players and finds Messi at the edge of the box, unmarked), as it is the work of Messi. But, of course, the die hard Messi fan and the average football fan will say that it was a solo goal. Because people like simple, biased things, and that's why they reduce arguments to claims like 'Messi won us this game', or that game, without actually looking behind just Messi, at the fact that we kept Pep's Bayern to an astounding zero shots on target the whole 93 minutes of the game. Instead of remembering the game as a masterful performance in which Messi was MotM, they remember it as a proof of Messi carrying Barca.
So, posting some pictures doesn't do anything. That is a different team. It's not only the Messi 'variable' that is missing when comparing those teams with the recent Barcelona, in order to make the conclusion that Messi alone must be the difference. There are a lot of fundamental things that were different back then, and most are not tied to Messi.
According to some, it's a pure coincidence that Spain have been World Champions during Pep's period of domination, with a team primarily based on the Spanish Barca players contingent. Just like it is a coincidence that Germany were World Champions in 2014 with a team based on a treble winning Bayern Munich. Spain's success in 2010 should permanently eliminate the 'Messi is carrying Barcelona' argument, and the reason that it doesn't is because Messi's die hard fans continue to fuel it, in spite of clear signs that it doesn't work like that.
In reality, both the Barca and the Bayern teams had an incredible set of spanish/german players, like Xavi, Iniesta, Pique, Puyol, Villa, Muller, Klose, Lahm, Neuer, Schweinsteiger, Boateng. That is even more important than having one single extraordinary player above all others, as Argentina is proving. That helps, but is not nearly enough. There are other, more important things.
The team comes first, there is no such thing as teams that are carried by players. This works both in favour of Messi, and against Messi. In favour, because he doesn't have to win the World Cup 'on his own' with Argentina to be considered the best ever, and against, because people can't really say he carried Barcelona. Barcelona was a great team as a whole. Just the absence of Messi (replaced by some other top class player, obviously) wouldn't be enough for that team to not be a dominating best team in the world in that era. The 'best ever' claim would have been less agreed on by football experts, that much is true, and having the best player ever surely completed the team and it's place as the best team in history probably.
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