As the Bundesliga resumes, it demonstrates just how impressive this German league is when it comes to players’ overall performance. That being said, Ligue 1 has a star player who stands out as not only one of the best in his league, but one of the best in the world. That player is Lionel Messi. Keep reading to see our list of top reasons he’s one of the best players in the world today.
He is amazing at goals and assists
Lionel Messi is called the “Goal Machine” by many fans and for good reason. He is doing the moniker justice. In the Spanish La Liga, Messi claims the record of most goals, racking up a total of 423. For a single season, Messi also lays claim to the record for the most goals, scoring 50 goals in just one season. When it comes to Europe’s biggest club competition, the UEFA Champions League, Messi holds the most hat-tricks of a player with 8 in total. For Copa America, he rings in at 13 goals, the highest number of any South American soccer player. Aside from goals, Messi was the best player in the Spanish league, known as La Liga, with the highest number of assists at 173. Additionally, he’s the all-time best goal-scorer for Argentina’s national football team, with 68 in total. Messi has scored a grand total of 676 goals across 831 games for his league and his nation.
He’s sitting on a huge cache of trophies for league and country
As a highly creative player, Messi’s abilities have garnered him not just goals but accolades, too. From the beginning of his career, the Argentina native has demonstrated that he was the future of soccer. Since winning his first title with La Liga during the 2004-05 season, Messi has since won 9 more, bringing the total La Liga trophies he’s earned up to 10. He has taken the UEFA Champions League title on four separate occasions, as well as thrice claiming the UEFA Super Cup title. Messi has also respectively won the Spanish Super Cup and Spanish Cup eight and six times, as well as the FIFA Club World Cup on three occasions.
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He has incredible skills as a dribbler
The reputation that precedes Lionel Messi has come along with some undesired attention from some world-class defenders. Typically, these players are larger and stockier than the Argentine-born soccer star, and they will often not give up until they’ve made sure he loses the ball. Still, Messi is able to skirt his way around these defenders with his patented dribbles. A piece by the British Journal of Medicine mentions the fact that peak performance in sports is associated with the combination of training efforts as well as good genes. Messi was simply born with speed and stamina, but he’s shorter and smaller than a lot of players. As a result of rigorous training to combat these shortcomings, Messi has become one of the greatest dribblers to have ever graced the field.
He has received an impressive number of individual laurels
In his career, Messi has taken home quite a few individual laurels, which have made him one of the most decorated soccer players in the 21st century. He took home the FIFA Ballon d’Or a total of four times, the FIFA World Player of the Year one time, the Best FIFA Men’s Player one time, the FIFA World Cup Golden Boot one time, and the UEFA Men’s Player of the Year Award twice. He has also been named top scorer in a variety of competitions fifteen times.
His coordination with his team is fantastic
In accordance with comments by his Barcelona teammate Gerard Pique, Messi—who was captain of the side—generally shares the same sentiments as his fellow players when it comes to strategy. When Messi has trouble fending off the opposing team’s defense on the field, he always takes care to set up his teammates so they can finish on their own—this helps explain why he has more assists than any other player in La Liga.
Of course, he has since moved to PSG and hopefully, he can replicate this form in France.
Messi simply has god-given gifts
As with most successful people in every medium on Earth, Lionel Messi has amazing natural soccer talent and has had ever since he was a child. Those gifts were the driving force that made Barcelona choose to sponsor a series of life-altering therapies for Messi, who battled a serious form of growth hormone deficiency. Paired with dedicated training, Messi’s gifts have carried him to the ranks of one of soccer’s greatest legends.
Teamwork makes the dream work
As a young man fresh on the professional soccer scene, Messi had played with incredible players in the game of soccer, and he was known to interact with these players amazingly well—especially when it came to pitching. As a rookie in Barcelona, he competed alongside legendary players, including Samuel Eto’o, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Ronaldinho. He then went on to band together as a dynamic trio with Andres Iniesta and Xavi, who came in the final three in the FIFA Ballon d’Or in 2011.
The goals that he scores are high-quality
Besides the number of goals scored, the quality of goals offers a look at the caliber of one’s abilities as a player—and the quantity and quality are equally impressive in Messi’s case. One of his best-known goals took place back in 2007 during a game against one of La Liga’s top rivals, Getafe. A still-green Messi dribbled from one half of the field to the other in order to score what is now considered one of the highest quality goals in La Liga history.
Conclusion
All of this and more help contribute to the legend that Lionel Messi has become over the course of his long—and highly accomplished—career in soccer. There is no question that the soccer star has done his league and his country proud, but it goes deeper than that—Lionel Messi is a credit to the sport, demonstrating exactly the kind of talent that it can attract with his impeccable style.
