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Lionel Messi helped Barcelona defeat Valencia at La Mestalla on Saturday, as he cooly converted a 94th minute penalty to give Barca the 3-2 win. He also happened to lose his damn mind after Valencia fans struck Neymar with a bottle.
The match was tied at 2-2 as the minutes bled away, and it seemed destined to end as a draw. Thankfully for Barcelona, Valencia defender Aymen Abdennour was in a charitable sort of mood as he hacked down Luis Suarez in the 92nd minute to concede a penalty.
Despite his frequent troubles from 12 yards, Messi dispatched it perfectly to grab all three points. Then, all hell broke loose.
See, the Barcelona players chose to go celebrate in front of the Valencia ultras, which, as you can imagine, didn't go over too well with them. It also didn't help that Messi appeared to taunt Diego Alves in the Valencia goal (then again, it's the old Brazil-Argentina thing, so what else do you expect?).
Photo: @messi10stats | Twitter
During the celebrations, after mouthing something to the crowd, Neymar was struck by what appeared to be a water bottle thrown from the crowd. Luis Suarez also appeared to have been struck by the projectile. That's when the usually cool-headed Lionel Messi pretty much lost it, delivering a tirade full of curse words at the home crowd. (Fast forward to the end to see Messi's reaction.)
To say the incident was out of character for Messi is quite an understatement, however it serves to highlight just how testy the match was at times. The precedent was even set earlier in the match, as ex-Valencia man Paco Alcacer was struck by a bag of sunflower seeds on the way to the bench. It's been a horrible season so far for Valencia, so you can understand the frustration of the fans, but you hope not to see this sort of behavior in top-level matches.
Somehow, we don't think Messi will lose sleep over it though. He's now scored 11 and assisted five in his last six games.
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