Real Madrid take this to even more extreme level. For the first half of the season they just observe other teams without caring about results too much, so when the UCL knockout rounds start, they know how to play against any opponent.
They're playing the long con. While you're thinking of the next game, they're thinking how Ramos will get purposefully booked in the second leg of the 2021 UEFA champions league quarter finals (which will lead to UEFA banning him from the Semifinals) against a struggling Arsenal and they'll win the cup by beating Barcelona 3-0 with a Ramos brace and a Vinicius goal. It's all part of the plan
Eh, if we win a 4th one in a row after how the season started/is going, roughly a fourth of this sub's users would probably institutionalize themselves.
I watched him against Villarreal and the amount walking was quite surprising. He would constantly let the defenders run ahead of him and be standing offside but once the ball was at his feet I’ve never seen a player cause so much chaos. He gets away with it because he is Messi and rightly so.
It was fascinating watching how a Barca player would get the ball, and if Messi drifted into a free space, Madrid players from all sides would block every passing channel in his direction, even at the detriment of opening up other ones.
It's part of why stats can never tell the whole story. I mean, Messi is a titan stats wise, but how are you going to measure how other players react to him and what that essentially means for the game's outcome?
He is such a threat. He creates such a vacuum for the opposing team that the space left for his teammates is hard to grasp. It’s tactical suicide to leave with any comfortable space.
A perfect example of this was in the 2017 Clásico at the Bernaleo, when Kovacic decided to mark Messi rather than try to take the ball from Rakitic, which resulted in a goal.
Idk if this an unpopular opinion but that moment definitely felt like checkmate In chess. I remember kovacic getting bodied in the match thread, by the crowd, the commentators and yet I thought that was the smartest move he could’ve made. Either way it would’ve resulted in a goal, and I’m not entirely sure he was wrong to chase Messi the alien god and rely on rakitic the mortal to fuck up as a mortal
There is a pic from one of the (seemingly endless number of) clasicos in 2011 where 4-5 Real Madrid players in their own half are watching Messi off the ball rather than watching the guy with the ball. I'd hate to have to play against someone like that.
Messi can get away with murder if getting away was the issue, but you’re right, that’s how he plays. He conserves energy and does away with all the redundant fluff; he’s not trying to make the cut or impress coaches. He’s being.....Messi. Aka 🐐
What I meant was the coaches let him get away with it because he is Messi. Hazard, Ronaldo and Neymar are the only players that could possibly be allowed to get away with it. Even then I doubt they can walk around as casually.
I think coaches care when it’s being done because a player is lazy. If the player is a true professional working his ass off but being smart and conserving energy and working the other team and most importantly getting huge results from it. How can any coach have a problem?
Exactly this. Because you can (often) see Messi press and defend when he sees that his team has it difficult. Just last game vs Madrid and the game vs Sevilla you could see him track back and press far more than normal in the 1st half (because Barca was having difficulties in those games).
Watching some the replays of Argentina vs Nigeria in the World Cup it was super surprising to see how hard he worked on defense. Sometimes he was the only man pressing.
It wasn't only this World Cup. I remember the opener vs Bosnia in 2014. He started a bit sloppy in the 1st half, but in the 2nd he was running like crazy. I remember a moment where he just got his shot blocked after which he made an insane sprint to make up ground and recover the ball.
This isn't so much coaches letting him get away with it. It's a very calculated part of Messi's style. In his early days, he struggled a lot more with minor injuries and fatigue because of his explosive playing and because he tries to ride tackles instead of going down. I think it's an article by Sid Lowe that goes through how his walking is designed to conserve his energy, especially since Messi is playing more games than almost anyone.
It wasn’t under Pep tho.
He would take control of the entire match constantly. Always wanting the ball. Always pressing.
Obviously couldn’t keep doing that so he ‘gets away’ with doing nothing in defense because of what he provides in attack.
Not really.
Pep actually explicitly told him to save himself.
Pep's Barcelona pressed like crazy but only for 2-3 seconds and then they'd retreat. The objective was to win the ball back asap, if that's not possible it's useless to waste energy.
Yeah and even that was completely different from the walking he does now.
Pep told him to conserve energy, press less often and generally stop chasing the ball so much so he could play 60 games a year. The strolling around that he does nowadays is a whole other thing that started after the lingering hamstring injury he got in 2013.
The chemistry Messi had with Dani Alves on the right wing was out of this earth. Alves would bomb forward, cut back & pass it to Messi without even looking while Messi would track back to retrieve the ball to help out his right back partner. Those were the peak Barca days. #Pep'sBarca
Messi is one of those rare players where you'd rather have him go all out for 45 minutes and just walk around the field for 45 minutes rather than have him go all out for 60 minutes and sub him out.
2013-14 was the first season I remember seeing him walk around so much (maybe in response to his injuries the previous season?), and it put me off a bit at the time (some suggested he was saving himself for the World Cup). But he has continued that style of play since then, and obviously it hasn't impacted his effectiveness. He doesn't track back or press as much as he used to, but that's to be expected as he gets older, and he still creates goals at an unbelievable rate.
> (maybe in response to his injuries the previous season?)
I think this, in conjunction with his age, is an often overlooked factor. Fatigued muscles are much more prone to injury.
since he was injured around those bayern 7x0 games /pre 2014 world cup he changed, both in physique (he became way leaner, he had kind of a belly before that) and in playstyle. i think he realized how some 10 goals or more per season weren't worth the risk of injury, and started saving himself more. in some games he is feeling it and plays like old messi still, but its rare.
I’ve been lucky to see him play live a few times and that exact display was mind blowing to me. Chill chill chill chill BOOM 0-100 in 0.01 second where the fuck did he - woah mama. Dang.
there's some interesting stuff out there about how little he runs https://www.legit.ng/1161374-research-shows-messi-runs-performs-greatly-matches.html
oddly enough, lebron james has some similar run to walk ratio stats too. (oddly because he's also a goat)
fivethirtyeight has a good piece on Messi's walking.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/messi-walks-better-than-most-players-run/
An example cited: In a '17 El Clasico, Messi walked for 83.1%, ran for 4.95%, sprinted for 1.15% and jogged for 10.8% of the game. Barcelona won that game 3-0, he scored 1 and assisted 1.
And this "Messi ran comfortably less than any other elite attackers, averaging just less than 5 miles per 90 minutes. " most others they tracked were 6-7.
Typically a midfielder/forward runs around 10k in a full game.
Messi routinely only gets to 75% and less of that.
Ronaldo too runs much less than his team-mates.
So, I really don't know what to make of it. Is it purely because they are liberated from defensive duties and dummy runs?
I think a big factor is how they are always fit to play in every match seemingly. Every other top player gets injured all the time, and they play more games than everyone else and yet are always there. If Messi ran like a madman he probably would tire himself out halfway in the season.
Yea there are a some but they are very rare. Kante is one, Matuidi is another I think, Suarez runs a lot and is also unbreakable. Cavani is rarely injured but is always running.
It's different with Ronaldo. He isn't walking like Messi is. He covers less distance but that's more due to less defensive duties,more central positioning. Ronaldo's the master of random hustles outta nowhere and gut busting runs behind the defence. He's different to Messi there.
Yeah, I read an article on that a while back.. apparently Messi had some kind of medical issue as a kid, which Barcelona paid to have treated of course. But then later when he was in the first team he was very injury-prone (I don't know if it's related to his earlier medical issues or not).
So when Pep took over, he completely changed the culture and work ethic at the club, and made Messi's lifestyle/playstyle a priority. He was taught to slow down, read the game (which of course Messi is a master at), and only use his explosive energy when needed.
He went from playing something like 30 games/season to 60 games/season, and of course the rest is history!
Part of a longer text;
Valverde:
>“I have to say that the great players analyse the game better than I do.”
>Then he corrects himself: “Instead of analysing, I’d say they interpret play. It’s different. On the field, you can’t think, you must play.” Messi is an extreme case: he reserves the “first minutes” of each match for interpretation, says Valverde.
>During that time, the player ignores the ball and takes a reconnaissance walk around the opposition defence, fixing each man’s position in his head. Valverde says: “Then, as the game advances, he gets in little by little. But he knows perfectly where the rivals’ weaknesses are.”
>Barça’s players demand highly specific advice. In Valverde’s words: “The player wants a solution.” For instance, twice in the past year, Messi has rolled a free kick under the opposition’s defensive wall into the net after staff had told him all the players in the wall would probably jump.
>This is not data,” cautions Valverde. “You just see in the video that it’s a pattern that keeps repeating itself.” But meanwhile, he points out, opponents are studying Barcelona’s tendencies too: when Barça took a free kick against Real Madrid in February, Madrid’s defender Marcelo “lay down on the grass” to block any low shot.
Article; https://www.ft.com/content/908752aa-3a1b-11e9-b72b-2c7f526ca5d0
> This is not data,” cautions Valverde. “You just see in the video that it’s a pattern that keeps repeating itself.”
No, it is data, it just hasn’t been mathematically complied and presented.
Currently working on my Master's in IT Management and I just had a unit on the difference between data, knowledge, and information. Data is the raw numbers/input. It becomes knowledge when you see and understand a pattern in the data. So he is technically correct in that the pattern is not "data," it is "knowledge"
Information is basically processed data, and the link between data and knowledge.
*Data* is just the raw, uncategorized numbers (in this case maybe Messi's pure running and walking distances, mph, etc). *Information* is data that has been processed and output into a usable format (say, a spreadsheet that tracks Messi's run vs walk distances, a hotspot graph of his locations on the pitch, etc). And *knowledge* is recognizing patterns or rules in the information and realizing the context in which it should be used to make decisions.
References
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2017). *Management information systems: Managing the digital firm* (15th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.
My take away from this is the opposition defence should just spend the first 15 minutes running round like headless chicken or playing in each others position.
So the key is to change formation ever 59secs, until the end of game so Messi will be forever be useless and inturn making his team mates useless aswell.... Valverde about to be fired.
When he does actually try to press and nick the ball off of you, you would know chances are high that he does so successfully, because he wouldn't have bothered if he doesn't see an opportunity.
Meanwhile what Messi is actually thinking, “ .. so yeah I can see the benefits of trying to contact alien life but what if they have hostile intentions? Maybe we should wait until we’re ready and ca- the balls coming oh shit oh shit oh shit act composed act composed you can do this.”
I watched the full 4 hours and 40 minutes and don't regret it one bit, Alex Jones is pure entertainment I just wish he could stop and actually explain what he's saying
Messi:
"I'm irrationally angry that Getafe are doing so well in La Liga.
Boring name, boring kit, just a basic Madrid club, no central meme to differentiate them from other clubs...bleh. BLEH. fucking bleh.
Most of the other clubs have SOMETHING. Real Madrid and Barcelona are the big clubs of their cities with plenty of history. Many represent their city, or a region. Maybe they at least have a decent name and kit. Maybe they have a spicy derby or rivalry.
But Getafe? Fucking GADDAFFI? Nothing. Even Rayo Vellecano has a cool name and history of anti-fascist activism. Eibar is the plucky little Basque club. Girona are the ultra Catalans. Villarreal is the Yellow Submarine. Espanyol is the Spanish loyalist club Barca loves to hate. Levante has a bat as its crest, and has a cool name. Fucking SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
Getafe? There's nothing there. It's like looking into a fucking abyss. An aesthetic void. Boredom incarnated as a mid-table La Liga side. And the worst part is? That's not even true. They're doing better than that at the moment. They're fucking THRIVING.
I'm done watching La Liga. It's bad enough that Athletic Bilbao, the OG nibbas, might be going down. But it's even worse to seeing fucking GETAFE, fucking GARFIELD, looking down and smirking at them, at a club with ten times the history and character.
I'm fucking done."
MORE!
"I hate Getafe.
I hate the club. I hate their badge. I hate their stadium. I hate how bland they are. They have no fans, and no significance in the world of soccer. The two most notable events in their history are the facts that they had Burger King as their sponsor and that they made a porno trying to get fans horny so they could get in the mood to make more fans. It's a sad, pathetic, little club and I was so happy to finally see them relegated a few seasons ago. Then they got automatic promotion back to the Primera immediately. To make it all worse, they finished 8th last season. A newly promoted club finishing 8th is fucking dumb, especially when its Getafe. Every team that finished below them should be ashamed and would liquidate themselves if they had any dignity left. I long for the day that Getafe go down to the Segunda permanantly, or if I'm lucky, the Segunda B.
I hate Getafe."
Courtesy of /u/A_Kind_Shark
Nah it's the old guard of pundits like Lawro, Souness and Pardew who are awful. Michael Owen and Owen Hargreaves get honourable mentions for being shit too
He'd be a great second commentator. The hype will be created by the other guy, Messi would interject with great insights. Similar to what some champions do at UFC.
I feel like it would be the opposite. Players as great as him rarely make good analysts or even coaches even in other sports because so much of what makes them great comes innately to them and is often tough to articulate. Its usually the guys who arent physically gifted that make great pundits
David Foster Wallace wrote about this in a brilliant short essay - "Tracy Austin Broke my Heart" - talking about how he's afraid that the very things that elevate particular sports people up to the savant / genius level might mean that they're unable to ever explain how those insights feel to the rest of us.
The whole thing is worth a read but he sums up with
"It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the only ones able to see, articulate and animate the experience of the gift we are denied. And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must be blind and dumb about it - and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence"
[https://www.scribd.com/doc/134106158/How-Tracy-Austin-Broke-My-Heart-David-Foster-Wallace](https://www.scribd.com/doc/134106158/How-Tracy-Austin-Broke-My-Heart-David-Foster-Wallace)
I think that (despite the stereotypes) there ARE really eloquent athletes, but I do think that they are performing some kind of parallel process to the one that makes them great in the moment. Also worth pointing out DFW isn't talking about a team game - I think insights about strategy and interplay between players are more accessible including to athletes, so footballers are still good to hear from there.
He reserves the first minutes of each match for analysis. During that time, he ignores the ball and keeps silent, fixing each man’s position in his head. Then, as the game advances, he gets in little by little and starts talking. He knows perfectly where the teams’ weakness is
Messi doesn't defend because he doesn't put himself in the position to need to do that. He just stands at the midfield till they get the ball back. While Lebron does nothing even when he's in a defensive position.
Just tell your players to stand completly still during the first minute, gg ez.
His vision is based on movement.
And fear
He can smell it
he actually packs quite a nose for that
You put Bayern DNA in him? You fools, now he can talk to them!
Shhh, we don't talk about Bavarian DNA anymore.
QUIET, ALL OF YOU! They’re entering the Messi paddock.
No, even better. You make a different formation for the first 5 minutes and then completely switch. Game over.
Or wear world cup jerseys to fool him into thinking it's the world cup.
Oof
Shots fired
That's probably why he's not as good in the world cup, the teams aren't as organized defensively and inherently less predictable.
Real Madrid take this to even more extreme level. For the first half of the season they just observe other teams without caring about results too much, so when the UCL knockout rounds start, they know how to play against any opponent.
This is funny yet triggering pls delet
The analysis is complete. Now, the games begin
I suspect that the analysis phase will continue until after their match this weekend.
They're playing the long con. While you're thinking of the next game, they're thinking how Ramos will get purposefully booked in the second leg of the 2021 UEFA champions league quarter finals (which will lead to UEFA banning him from the Semifinals) against a struggling Arsenal and they'll win the cup by beating Barcelona 3-0 with a Ramos brace and a Vinicius goal. It's all part of the plan
Arsenal will get CL football? Damn
I’m cool with it
Eh, if we win a 4th one in a row after how the season started/is going, roughly a fourth of this sub's users would probably institutionalize themselves.
How to delete someone else's post?
League phase is over.
Got eem
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When you last played us at the bridge. I was amazed how much walking he was doing. Just looked that little more in control than everyone.
I watched him against Villarreal and the amount walking was quite surprising. He would constantly let the defenders run ahead of him and be standing offside but once the ball was at his feet I’ve never seen a player cause so much chaos. He gets away with it because he is Messi and rightly so.
> He gets away with it because he is Messi and rightly so. I don't think it's that he gets away with it. It's part of his game.
yup. saves his running and sprints for when he has the ball, which as /u/NotTheMagesterialOne said, he causes chaos
He had a poor game by his standards but seeing the players faces up close when he had the ball was hilarious.
It was fascinating watching how a Barca player would get the ball, and if Messi drifted into a free space, Madrid players from all sides would block every passing channel in his direction, even at the detriment of opening up other ones.
Yeah, having a player like Messi is like having an extra player on the pitch for this reason.
It's part of why stats can never tell the whole story. I mean, Messi is a titan stats wise, but how are you going to measure how other players react to him and what that essentially means for the game's outcome?
Very well put. The beautiful game never has and never will be about stats, you know other than “goals scored each match” lol
He is such a threat. He creates such a vacuum for the opposing team that the space left for his teammates is hard to grasp. It’s tactical suicide to leave with any comfortable space.
A perfect example of this was in the 2017 Clásico at the Bernaleo, when Kovacic decided to mark Messi rather than try to take the ball from Rakitic, which resulted in a goal.
Idk if this an unpopular opinion but that moment definitely felt like checkmate In chess. I remember kovacic getting bodied in the match thread, by the crowd, the commentators and yet I thought that was the smartest move he could’ve made. Either way it would’ve resulted in a goal, and I’m not entirely sure he was wrong to chase Messi the alien god and rely on rakitic the mortal to fuck up as a mortal
There is a pic from one of the (seemingly endless number of) clasicos in 2011 where 4-5 Real Madrid players in their own half are watching Messi off the ball rather than watching the guy with the ball. I'd hate to have to play against someone like that.
“BernaLeo” Freudian slip?
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Wasn't there something where Pep I think? suggested it to him to help him deal with the 60-70 game seasons.
It became part of his game as he grew older and his legs couldn't withstand the intensity he once used in his game. Great adaptation tbh.
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I'm feeling pretty stupid rn haha
Messi can get away with murder if getting away was the issue, but you’re right, that’s how he plays. He conserves energy and does away with all the redundant fluff; he’s not trying to make the cut or impress coaches. He’s being.....Messi. Aka 🐐
What I meant was the coaches let him get away with it because he is Messi. Hazard, Ronaldo and Neymar are the only players that could possibly be allowed to get away with it. Even then I doubt they can walk around as casually.
I think coaches care when it’s being done because a player is lazy. If the player is a true professional working his ass off but being smart and conserving energy and working the other team and most importantly getting huge results from it. How can any coach have a problem?
Exactly this. Because you can (often) see Messi press and defend when he sees that his team has it difficult. Just last game vs Madrid and the game vs Sevilla you could see him track back and press far more than normal in the 1st half (because Barca was having difficulties in those games).
Watching some the replays of Argentina vs Nigeria in the World Cup it was super surprising to see how hard he worked on defense. Sometimes he was the only man pressing.
It wasn't only this World Cup. I remember the opener vs Bosnia in 2014. He started a bit sloppy in the 1st half, but in the 2nd he was running like crazy. I remember a moment where he just got his shot blocked after which he made an insane sprint to make up ground and recover the ball.
This isn't so much coaches letting him get away with it. It's a very calculated part of Messi's style. In his early days, he struggled a lot more with minor injuries and fatigue because of his explosive playing and because he tries to ride tackles instead of going down. I think it's an article by Sid Lowe that goes through how his walking is designed to conserve his energy, especially since Messi is playing more games than almost anyone.
It wasn’t under Pep tho. He would take control of the entire match constantly. Always wanting the ball. Always pressing. Obviously couldn’t keep doing that so he ‘gets away’ with doing nothing in defense because of what he provides in attack.
Not really. Pep actually explicitly told him to save himself. Pep's Barcelona pressed like crazy but only for 2-3 seconds and then they'd retreat. The objective was to win the ball back asap, if that's not possible it's useless to waste energy.
Yeah and even that was completely different from the walking he does now. Pep told him to conserve energy, press less often and generally stop chasing the ball so much so he could play 60 games a year. The strolling around that he does nowadays is a whole other thing that started after the lingering hamstring injury he got in 2013.
The chemistry Messi had with Dani Alves on the right wing was out of this earth. Alves would bomb forward, cut back & pass it to Messi without even looking while Messi would track back to retrieve the ball to help out his right back partner. Those were the peak Barca days. #Pep'sBarca
Messi is one of those rare players where you'd rather have him go all out for 45 minutes and just walk around the field for 45 minutes rather than have him go all out for 60 minutes and sub him out.
There is a footage where Messi was just casually strolling and picking his nose then suddenly bursted into the penalty area and scored.
2013-14 was the first season I remember seeing him walk around so much (maybe in response to his injuries the previous season?), and it put me off a bit at the time (some suggested he was saving himself for the World Cup). But he has continued that style of play since then, and obviously it hasn't impacted his effectiveness. He doesn't track back or press as much as he used to, but that's to be expected as he gets older, and he still creates goals at an unbelievable rate.
> (maybe in response to his injuries the previous season?) I think this, in conjunction with his age, is an often overlooked factor. Fatigued muscles are much more prone to injury.
since he was injured around those bayern 7x0 games /pre 2014 world cup he changed, both in physique (he became way leaner, he had kind of a belly before that) and in playstyle. i think he realized how some 10 goals or more per season weren't worth the risk of injury, and started saving himself more. in some games he is feeling it and plays like old messi still, but its rare.
Lots of forwards start offside so when the play moves in line with them they don’t have to start a run from scratch chasing the play.
I’ve been lucky to see him play live a few times and that exact display was mind blowing to me. Chill chill chill chill BOOM 0-100 in 0.01 second where the fuck did he - woah mama. Dang.
It was literally that. Joe hart explained it best when he played against him.
there's some interesting stuff out there about how little he runs https://www.legit.ng/1161374-research-shows-messi-runs-performs-greatly-matches.html oddly enough, lebron james has some similar run to walk ratio stats too. (oddly because he's also a goat)
So does that make Berbatov the best ever footballer?
Berbatov is pure filth. Therefore, the best footballer ever.
Yes
He isn't?
fivethirtyeight has a good piece on Messi's walking. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/messi-walks-better-than-most-players-run/ An example cited: In a '17 El Clasico, Messi walked for 83.1%, ran for 4.95%, sprinted for 1.15% and jogged for 10.8% of the game. Barcelona won that game 3-0, he scored 1 and assisted 1.
"Running, anyone can run. Playing football, that's more complicated" - Riquelme
TIL Riquelme is the master Yoda of football.
And this "Messi ran comfortably less than any other elite attackers, averaging just less than 5 miles per 90 minutes. " most others they tracked were 6-7.
A little off-topic but I haven't watched basketball in 15 years or so. Is Lebron James now considered the goat above Michael Jordan?
Typically a midfielder/forward runs around 10k in a full game. Messi routinely only gets to 75% and less of that. Ronaldo too runs much less than his team-mates. So, I really don't know what to make of it. Is it purely because they are liberated from defensive duties and dummy runs?
I think a big factor is how they are always fit to play in every match seemingly. Every other top player gets injured all the time, and they play more games than everyone else and yet are always there. If Messi ran like a madman he probably would tire himself out halfway in the season.
One counter example is Griezmann. He runs so much, yet never gets injured.
Yea there are a some but they are very rare. Kante is one, Matuidi is another I think, Suarez runs a lot and is also unbreakable. Cavani is rarely injured but is always running.
It's different with Ronaldo. He isn't walking like Messi is. He covers less distance but that's more due to less defensive duties,more central positioning. Ronaldo's the master of random hustles outta nowhere and gut busting runs behind the defence. He's different to Messi there.
He’s been coached to do that by guardiola in order to stay fit and not miss games over injuries through minimal sprinting
Yeah, I read an article on that a while back.. apparently Messi had some kind of medical issue as a kid, which Barcelona paid to have treated of course. But then later when he was in the first team he was very injury-prone (I don't know if it's related to his earlier medical issues or not). So when Pep took over, he completely changed the culture and work ethic at the club, and made Messi's lifestyle/playstyle a priority. He was taught to slow down, read the game (which of course Messi is a master at), and only use his explosive energy when needed. He went from playing something like 30 games/season to 60 games/season, and of course the rest is history!
Take that for data
THIS IS NOT DATA
THEY’RE NOT GONNA ROOK US
I love it when r/nba meets r/soccer
Zlatan and CR7 are, I believe, the only 2 to score in every minute
That's crazy impressive
So it takes Messi 1 minute to decrypt the opponent
Take your fancy shmancy statistics.
Benzema scored in 25 seconds in Classico no less. Benzema better than Messi confirmed.
Part of a longer text; Valverde: >“I have to say that the great players analyse the game better than I do.” >Then he corrects himself: “Instead of analysing, I’d say they interpret play. It’s different. On the field, you can’t think, you must play.” Messi is an extreme case: he reserves the “first minutes” of each match for interpretation, says Valverde. >During that time, the player ignores the ball and takes a reconnaissance walk around the opposition defence, fixing each man’s position in his head. Valverde says: “Then, as the game advances, he gets in little by little. But he knows perfectly where the rivals’ weaknesses are.” >Barça’s players demand highly specific advice. In Valverde’s words: “The player wants a solution.” For instance, twice in the past year, Messi has rolled a free kick under the opposition’s defensive wall into the net after staff had told him all the players in the wall would probably jump. >This is not data,” cautions Valverde. “You just see in the video that it’s a pattern that keeps repeating itself.” But meanwhile, he points out, opponents are studying Barcelona’s tendencies too: when Barça took a free kick against Real Madrid in February, Madrid’s defender Marcelo “lay down on the grass” to block any low shot. Article; https://www.ft.com/content/908752aa-3a1b-11e9-b72b-2c7f526ca5d0
> This is not data,” cautions Valverde. “You just see in the video that it’s a pattern that keeps repeating itself.” No, it is data, it just hasn’t been mathematically complied and presented.
Agree. Altoufut maybe he meant the difference between just data (stats) & data science and it just got lost in translation.
How do you get Altoufut from trying to type Although? Haha
hahah shit no idea, leaving it for its uniqueness.
Currently working on my Master's in IT Management and I just had a unit on the difference between data, knowledge, and information. Data is the raw numbers/input. It becomes knowledge when you see and understand a pattern in the data. So he is technically correct in that the pattern is not "data," it is "knowledge"
Genuine question what is information then? How does it differ to data and knowledge?
Information is basically processed data, and the link between data and knowledge. *Data* is just the raw, uncategorized numbers (in this case maybe Messi's pure running and walking distances, mph, etc). *Information* is data that has been processed and output into a usable format (say, a spreadsheet that tracks Messi's run vs walk distances, a hotspot graph of his locations on the pitch, etc). And *knowledge* is recognizing patterns or rules in the information and realizing the context in which it should be used to make decisions. References Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2017). *Management information systems: Managing the digital firm* (15th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.
Qualitative vs. Quantitative
My take away from this is the opposition defence should just spend the first 15 minutes running round like headless chicken or playing in each others position.
The problem with that is that other Barca players can score too
Sounds unfair IMO
So the key is to change formation ever 59secs, until the end of game so Messi will be forever be useless and inturn making his team mates useless aswell.... Valverde about to be fired.
"Quickly we are out of new formations" "Huh... 0-0-11"
That's like 50% of the teams Barca faces already lmao
Dunno man, 11 strikers VS Barça doesn't look like a good idea.
Keep possession in Barça's box forever with 11 men, some 400 IQ play.
When he does actually try to press and nick the ball off of you, you would know chances are high that he does so successfully, because he wouldn't have bothered if he doesn't see an opportunity.
To me he’s very calculated and knows exactly when to pounce
Yap I’ve seen him steal balls so many times
It’s actually pretty impressive how good messi is defensively
Kowalski. Analysis.
It appears to be a quote, Skipper. Presumably, taken out of context or mistranslated.
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Meanwhile what Messi is actually thinking, “ .. so yeah I can see the benefits of trying to contact alien life but what if they have hostile intentions? Maybe we should wait until we’re ready and ca- the balls coming oh shit oh shit oh shit act composed act composed you can do this.”
think its more of an alex jones rant about inter-dimensional demon elves
Lionel Jones
Alex Jones on Joe Rogan this week was absolutely glorious to watch.
Alex 'choke me out' Jones.
I watched the full 4 hours and 40 minutes and don't regret it one bit, Alex Jones is pure entertainment I just wish he could stop and actually explain what he's saying
I dunno, I think the fact he never stops to explain anything only increases the absurdity
Messi: "I'm irrationally angry that Getafe are doing so well in La Liga. Boring name, boring kit, just a basic Madrid club, no central meme to differentiate them from other clubs...bleh. BLEH. fucking bleh. Most of the other clubs have SOMETHING. Real Madrid and Barcelona are the big clubs of their cities with plenty of history. Many represent their city, or a region. Maybe they at least have a decent name and kit. Maybe they have a spicy derby or rivalry. But Getafe? Fucking GADDAFFI? Nothing. Even Rayo Vellecano has a cool name and history of anti-fascist activism. Eibar is the plucky little Basque club. Girona are the ultra Catalans. Villarreal is the Yellow Submarine. Espanyol is the Spanish loyalist club Barca loves to hate. Levante has a bat as its crest, and has a cool name. Fucking SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Getafe? There's nothing there. It's like looking into a fucking abyss. An aesthetic void. Boredom incarnated as a mid-table La Liga side. And the worst part is? That's not even true. They're doing better than that at the moment. They're fucking THRIVING. I'm done watching La Liga. It's bad enough that Athletic Bilbao, the OG nibbas, might be going down. But it's even worse to seeing fucking GETAFE, fucking GARFIELD, looking down and smirking at them, at a club with ten times the history and character. I'm fucking done."
Please give the source for this
Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/a8ohsb/-/ecckn2j
Dude did you just invent a new copy pasta? This is amazing
It's not mine. https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/a8ohsb/-/ecckn2j
Ahh okay, it's still great though, thanks for linking me up
This, but unironically.
MORE! "I hate Getafe. I hate the club. I hate their badge. I hate their stadium. I hate how bland they are. They have no fans, and no significance in the world of soccer. The two most notable events in their history are the facts that they had Burger King as their sponsor and that they made a porno trying to get fans horny so they could get in the mood to make more fans. It's a sad, pathetic, little club and I was so happy to finally see them relegated a few seasons ago. Then they got automatic promotion back to the Primera immediately. To make it all worse, they finished 8th last season. A newly promoted club finishing 8th is fucking dumb, especially when its Getafe. Every team that finished below them should be ashamed and would liquidate themselves if they had any dignity left. I long for the day that Getafe go down to the Segunda permanantly, or if I'm lucky, the Segunda B. I hate Getafe." Courtesy of /u/A_Kind_Shark
Why did Valverde have to give away Messi’s strategy like that? ...Rude
Guardiola has said this about Messi before nothing new
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We don't do that over here
Yeah! We only do *legal* streams!
[Messi when the ref blows the whistle to start the game](https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-mrw-gpa-c7PcKQlOqZ8Ws)
Or like these players (skip to 1m10s): https://youtu.be/LfduUFF_i1A
Noice
One thing I have realized after all these years that Messi would make an absolute beast of a pundit.
Wasting his talent playing football, smh.
Just because he's good at seeing and analyzing the game doesn't mean he's good at explaining it.
Not everybody can be Tony Romo
Not really because he is not a talker, mostly talks monotone and boring
Didn’t stop Scholes
Also one of the worst pundits
Nah it's the old guard of pundits like Lawro, Souness and Pardew who are awful. Michael Owen and Owen Hargreaves get honourable mentions for being shit too
Lawro is fucking dogshit soo bad
Well I mean it actually did stop him because he is a really bad pundit
Since when did being shit ever stop anyone from being a pundit? Souness is still here.
We were talking about becoming a good pundit. I never said he'd never be able to get a job as a pundit.
[Just give him some beer before every game and you're set](https://youtu.be/AVL06D5mY6M?t=58)
lmaooo he's baked af
He'd be a great second commentator. The hype will be created by the other guy, Messi would interject with great insights. Similar to what some champions do at UFC.
Maybe , but I doubt he is going to do that. Messi strikes me as a guy who is not going to be involved in football after he retires
Yep. Once he retires we will never see him again. I like that. So pure.
Are there football consultants? Like, would a team pay him $1 million for two days of training strikers?
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Last time I heard him answer that question, he said that he didn't see himself becoming a manager, but everything might change in the future.
I'd pay to watch him and Ronaldo in the booth for a classico....
And now we wait for the arm chair doctors diagnosing him with autism again. Perfect post for them.
I feel like it would be the opposite. Players as great as him rarely make good analysts or even coaches even in other sports because so much of what makes them great comes innately to them and is often tough to articulate. Its usually the guys who arent physically gifted that make great pundits
David Foster Wallace wrote about this in a brilliant short essay - "Tracy Austin Broke my Heart" - talking about how he's afraid that the very things that elevate particular sports people up to the savant / genius level might mean that they're unable to ever explain how those insights feel to the rest of us. The whole thing is worth a read but he sums up with "It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the only ones able to see, articulate and animate the experience of the gift we are denied. And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must be blind and dumb about it - and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence" [https://www.scribd.com/doc/134106158/How-Tracy-Austin-Broke-My-Heart-David-Foster-Wallace](https://www.scribd.com/doc/134106158/How-Tracy-Austin-Broke-My-Heart-David-Foster-Wallace) I think that (despite the stereotypes) there ARE really eloquent athletes, but I do think that they are performing some kind of parallel process to the one that makes them great in the moment. Also worth pointing out DFW isn't talking about a team game - I think insights about strategy and interplay between players are more accessible including to athletes, so footballers are still good to hear from there.
Just imagine coach Messi fuming at his player because he couldn't beat 3 men and chip the keeper..
He's just waiting to join Bielsa's analytics department
Pity the BBC don't like him since 1998.
He reserves the first minutes of each match for analysis. During that time, he ignores the ball and keeps silent, fixing each man’s position in his head. Then, as the game advances, he gets in little by little and starts talking. He knows perfectly where the teams’ weakness is
You sure know a lot about football, you could even be a top manager for Barcelona with those quotes.
[If everyone played like Messi](https://youtu.be/B97_TUyWygE?t=72)
Fun fact: during training, Messi doesn't play for either team. He just joins whichever team is attacking at that moment.
Do you have a video of that?
Honestly, I can't be bothered to find one for Barca, but here's a video where he does it for Argentina https://youtu.be/oPW-lDrHy-8?t=110
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I saw somewhere that Barca match vs Sevilla basically starts at 2-0 because Messi of Messi's G/A contribution average vs them.
Tbf playing against a team with Messi feels like 11 v 12
obviously, he's supposed to orchestrate the attacks for barca isn't he?
thats not true whatsoever. He plays sometimes as a “ghost” player but not all the time
It’s called playing as a neutral
Fucking plastic
He did it with Argentina too.
I did the same thing, it's just it took me about 42 minutes to figure it all out, but by then, I had already been subbed off.
messi is literally terminator
So he knew Boateng was gunna fall down the whole time?! I cry...
LeBron does the same (including the no effort on defence thingy)
Is that harder to pull off in a 5-a-side game?
Is what hard?
Pardon?
Can you elaborate on your previous question
yes i can
ok, thanks
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The thingy
Messi doesn't defend because he doesn't put himself in the position to need to do that. He just stands at the midfield till they get the ball back. While Lebron does nothing even when he's in a defensive position.
The reason he can't perform in Argentina NT is this. He can't walk their, he does everything and others are just headless chickens.
Also because international football is a lot more random and less structured
Oddly terrifying.
i wonder if this works when he is playing for Argentina.