You might be angry with the headline, but it’s the truth. It’s not click bait, a click bait article, by definition, doesn’t give you the information promised in the headline. Theo Walcott, as now certified by the Guinness Book of Records, has better control than Lionel Messi. It's the truth, I mean, if you can’t trust the Guinness Book of Records, who can you trust?
So it’s a subjective form of control, and by subjective I mean it’s based off of who can control a ball dropped from a ridiculous altitude, but it’s a form of control no less.
Messi, back in the day, controlled a ball dropped from 18 meters — almost 60 feet. If you’ve watched a lot of Messi videos, you’ll probably remember it as having gone down on that strange Japanese TV show that also had him shoot at a robot goalkeeper.
It was so entirely weird that many believed he’d hold the record, unchallenged, for all eternity. Who else was going to attempt such nonsense?
The folks at Betfair, the world’s largest Internet betting exchange, that's who. They brought a large lift to the Arsenal Training Center to see if the record could be broken because that's good marketing for a sportsbook. Enter Theo Walcott, the man Barney Ronay once described as “a job-swap wide receiver”.
There you have it. From a height of 34 meters - nearly 112 feet - Walcott managed to convince a judge from the Guinness Book of Records that he, certifiably, has the best control of all time. I'm sorry, this was kind of click bait, wasn't it?
(H/T: FOX Soccer)
