Messi closing in on remarkable record

Posted Thursday, October 20, 2011 by ESPN

Messi closing in on remarkable record
So long as Messi stays healthy, Ronaldo will remain second-best.

I know that Ronaldo is consumed with the idea of how to improve his game (his generosity and intelligence in providing goals to teammates have significantly increased over the past few seasons) until he is judged to be the best of the current breed and, he hopes, eventually the best ever.

So long as Messi is fit, motivated and playing for a club that understands how to get the best out of him, that won't happen.

Think about it: How far have players like Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Robin Van Persie, Arjen Robben, Kaka, Mesut Ozil, Sergio Aguero, Wesley Sneijder and their ilk fallen behind Messi? If you really stop to analyze it, perhaps, the two Barca teammates he left in silver and bronze position last year, Xavi and Andres Iniesta, are still within a distance where they can see Messi's heels -- but only just.

When you look at those blessed with nonpareil talent -- people like Elvis, George Best, Maradona, Paul Gascoigne, John Lennon -- it's often those who appear to have everything who, in fact, don't. The coping mechanisms, the lack of ego, the equilibrium, the family support network -- they are usually missing among the world's most extraordinary people. Messi is fortunate to possess them.

And what is often forgotten, particularly now when the majority of the football fans who love him probably think that Messi could levitate if he chose to, is that his genius already has been blighted by bad times. He has overcome some bleak and threatening moments in his footballing life. Currently, he's one of the few senior players at Camp Nou who isn't being plagued by niggling injuries. But he once was.

From 2006 though 2008, Messi lost nearly 11 months of football -- eight to hamstring problems and three to a broken metatarsal. When his last major problem struck, against Celtic in the Champions League in Spring 2008 (yes, that recently) Messi departed the pitch in a flood of tears, anguished at the repetitive, damaging nature of his affliction.

There was a genuine threat that although his physique had developed, his career would be stunted.

Barcelona's board at the time devised new regimens for his nutrition, lifestyle, training and stretching, and it invested in making sure that his personal trainer, Juanjo Brau, could be with Messi constantly to ensure that all measures would be taken to keep him in prime condition. Txiki Begiristain, Ferran Soriano, Marc Ingla, Jorge Messi, Brau and Joan Laporta, particularly, are hidden heroes in Messi's story. They realized that something magical was in danger of slipping away and acted with vision, speed and intelligence.

When Ronaldinho, Deco and Thiago Motta were squeezed out of the club, it was because Barca felt that their lifestyle, by then patently unacceptable, was increasingly tainting Messi's. Despite the way those seasoned Brazilian professionals looked after Messi while he found his way in the first team, their friendship and mentoring of their young apprentice was on the verge of having detrimental effects. Throw in the fact that Messi lost a lot of years when his strength and stamina should have been finding their foundations while his growth hormone deficiency went untreated, and it's clear how remarkable his current domination of the world game should be considered to be.

It's not, by any means, simply about his talent.

His attitude, his lifestyle, his will to score, his need to win and, above all by a long, long way, his incredible mental and physical toughness mark him out as someone, I think, pound for pound may eventually be considered as the most special, most complete footballer of all time.

That's an increasing belief -- not a statement, nor an abandonment of my principle that starting to call him the best ever now robs us of so much that is still to come. I've been watching him, interviewing him and thrilling to his exploits even before his first-team debut. It has been uplifting.

So here's to the first seven official years of a guy who is in the process of redefining what somebody can do with a football at his feet.

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