Barcelona: Lionel Messi answers two questions over two league matches
Lionel Messi has been leading Barcelona for quite a long time now, but his performances of late have put across a signal of determination from him.
F.C. Barcelona legend and captain Lionel Messi had the worst possible start to the month of December when the Ballon d’Or rankings were released. Shockingly, the 31-year-old finished fifth in the standings and was behind the likes of Luka Modric, Cristiano Ronaldo, Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe who finished from first to fourth respectively.
A few days later, it got slightly worse for Lionel Messi who was the subject of comments from Pele. While the Brazilian is considered to be someone with a legendary status in the game and is one of the greatest players of all time to step onto a football pitch, his comments about Lionel Messi were not warmly welcomed by the footballing faithful.
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Messi did not respond to those verbally but he made his gameplay do the talking and put on utterly sensational shows over the last couple of weekends in Barcelona’s La Liga outings. Barcelona visited Espanyol and Levante over the course of the matches and once again, Lionel Messi was the protagonist for them as the scored nine goals over the two games.
The Argentine winger put on a magnificent show at the RCDE Stadium in the Barcelona Derby. Messi scored twice of sensational free-kicks in either halves of the match and assisted once. It looked like we had seen one of Lionel Messi’s best performances but he went on to better that as well on the following weekend.
Barcelona made complete mockery of Levante with a 5-0 victory at the Ciutat de Valencia and unsurprisingly, Lionel Messi stole the show. The Barcelona captain and one of the greatest players ever scored a hat-trick, one of which was a goal sublimely finished off with his right foot (hope you watched it, Mr. Pele!) and set up two more goals for his teammates.
With that said, football players like the little Argentinian are perfect examples of how one should do the talking with his actions. Messi provided two answers within a course of days and did so in the best possible manner to two entities which are highly regarded. While Pele keeps changing his opinion every now and then, factually, Messi proved that his Ballon d’Or ranking was truly horrific.
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I still believe that Modric and Ronaldo were rightfully ranked, but Messi deserved to be placed third. Barcelona contest their final match of 2018 over the coming weekend at the Camp Nou versus Celta Vigo and yet again, all eyes will be on Lionel Messi. When the new calendar year starts, so will Lionel in a bid to win the Ballon d’Or for an unprecedented sixth time and the teams he faces could be subject to his wrath.