Marking Lionel Messi is like marking the smoke monster in Lost, even on a good day. When La Pulga is feeling particularly motivated, as he has been so far this season, it's like if the smoke monster could also teleport and shoot lasers.
Eibar found that out the hard way, finding themselves on the wrong side of a 6-1 demolition by Barcelona, four of which came from Messi.
Think of a meteor that unexpectedly appears in sight. It moves at remarkable speed through the atmosphere, in flames, dazzling the beholder. Harry Kane is such a force of nature. Not only that, he is also a romantic.
After his stunning brace against Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday night, everybody is talking about (and wishing they could sign) Harry Kane.
But what are the keys to the young striker’s success?
Messi is amazing at everything, but the thing he's most amazing at is wriggling out of tight spaces. As the best player in the world, he constantly finds himself surrounded by three to five members of the other team who have no qualms about getting all up in his personal space. This does not seem to bother Messi as much as it should. It would bother us a lot, and we are not even claustrophobic.
To illustrate just how good Messi is at navigating very small spaces, here's eight minutes of Messi doing exactly that.
Juventus arrived at the 2016-17 Champions League Final having surrendered only three goals in 12 matches. Thanks in large part to Lionel Messi, that total was matched in the 2017-18 edition of the competition after only one match, or 69 minutes to be precise.
Messi scored a fantastic brace and Ivan Rakitic added one of his own as Barcelona throttled an under-strength Juventus 3-0 at the Camp Nou to begin Champions League group play.
For a man that has nearly done everything on the football pitch, the one thing evading Lionel Messi was scoring on Gianluigi Buffon. Lets check that one off the list.
Lionel Messi = still v good. https://t.co/1h1zrEqCxm
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) September 12, 2017
Lionel Messi is a very tattooed man and he has a penchant for tattoos some folks might consider strange. For example, the one on his left leg, which is almost completely black, like someone colored his lower leg with a sharpie.
He has a new tattoo which could be considered weird, a pair of lips (presumably modeled on those belonging to his wife) on his abdomen, which he shared a picture of after Barcelona's 5-0 win against Espanyol in the Catalan derby, in which Messi scored a hat trick.
Lionel Messi is a man of singular talents on the football pitch. He does pretty much everything better than everyone else. You would be forgiven for thinking Messi's soccer talents necessarily mean he has not been endowed with any other type of talent. I mean, how lucky can one guy get?
You would be wrong, though, because Messi does have other talents, as Adidas has helpfully informed us in this video of Messi playing the Champions League song on the piano.
A recent interview with Espanyol midfielder Esteban Granero by Spanish daily El Pais has revealed a hilarious and insightful anecdote involving a 15-year-old Lionel Messi and a clash between the youth teams of Real Madrid and Barcelona.
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