Messi is as much of a failure as Argentina if not more

Brace yourselves, only 20 minutes until 10 poor souls get thrown under the bus for letting down a serial WC chocker.

To be fair, Higgy and Aguero are just as good of a letdown so it's a fair description...for those two anyway.

The starting 11 does look dire though

Flopssi strikes again.

Can't blame Higgy this time. Wonder who the scapegoat is

Lol everyone not Argentina/barca fan knows who the problem is.

He flopped plain and simple. His passes were off. He missed a pen. The few chances he was able to create went wide. Hit the wall.

That being said Sampaoli is not setting him up for success, he often had to drop to the defense to get the ball and then try to dribble and one-two his way to the goal. Didn't give him a partner to share the creative load.

Can't blame Aguero either as he was Argentina's best player today... he was sensational imo. But Argentina don't use him enough. He made some great runs that were ignored.

No one was sensational lol.

Messi tried but no one else on the team tried to take the initiative, every single time they got the ball they gave it to Messi regardless of the situation.

None of them played with any balls, i get Messi is your best player but try to show some balls please.

At least Banega and Pavon tried to create, but the rest where in full pass to Messi and hope he does something auto-pilot mode.

That's the reason i'm not going to be too critical of him, his team mates just stood around and hoped he could win the game for them and he couldn't.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:He flopped plain and simple. His passes were off. He missed a pen. The few chances he was able to create went wide. Hit the wall.

That being said Sampaoli is not setting him up for success, he often had to drop to the defense to get the ball and then try to dribble and one-two his way to the goal. Didn't give him a partner to share the creative load.

Argentina and Messi will never see success as long as they are both together. They are both each other's problem.

You have to score the penalty obviously, so there is deserving blame. He also took 10 shots today, the match was very much about him, too much so though.

But fixating on one player, as big as that player may be, just sort of emphasizes the amount of pressure and dependence he faces each game.

The team drew, definitely did enough to win but that's how it goes

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:No one was sensational lol.

Messi tried but no one else on the team tried to take the initiative, every single time they got the ball they gave it to Messi regardless of the situation.

None of them played with any balls, i get Messi is your best player but try to show some balls please.

At least Banega and Pavon tried to create, but the rest where in full pass to Messi and hope he does something auto-pilot mode.

That's the reason i'm not going to be too critical of him, his team mates just stood around and hoped he could win the game for them and he couldn't.

That's because they are trained to do that. That's the mentality every single manager has instilled into those players since Riquelme retired. It's a defeatist mentality.

Laughable how he gets away from criticism because he is the reason Argentina will never play to their potential. It's not his fault, but he is the problem.

But ignoring all of that. Argentina did not win because he failed to score the penalty. There is nothing else to it. Iceland didn't have another goal in them.

That's like saying Real Madrid did the same thing with Ronaldo before Zidane, as when it mattered we saw similar things there too.

I really doubt that's the case and you are just searching for a narrative tbh.

They showed zero individualism but i really doubt they are specifically told to do that.

He failed to score penalty which would have given Argentina the win. Hence he is the main culprit. Plain and simple.

Lucifer wrote:He failed to score penalty which would have given Argentina the win. Hence he is the main culprit. Plain and simple.

I know GL likes to be as reductive as possible but football really isn't that simple.

He needs to do better if he wants to compete with CR. It's as simple as that. He reminds of many footballers who look great in training and unimportant matches but fall apart once it matters.

Youtube footballer.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

Lucifer wrote:He failed to score penalty which would have given Argentina the win. Hence he is the main culprit. Plain and simple.

I know GL likes to be as reductive as possible but football really isn't that simple.

It is actually. You score goals and you win. Messi losing golden opportunity for his team was due to his own incapacity and not due to other players mentality or mangerial tactics. If he really thinks about team first he should stop taking them forever.

Nope, even if he scored the penalty you don't know how the game would have gone.

It's a 90 minute football match, one moment doesn't change everything.

They lost the game because they (including Messi) weren't good enough over 90 mins and had more enough of the ball to change that but couldn't.

A missed penalty is just the footnote on the performance overall.

Even ignoring the penalty, he was dire. Super wasteful.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Nope, even if he scored the penalty you don't know how the game would have gone.

It's a 90 minute football match, one moment doesn't change everything.

They lost the game because they (including Messi) weren't good enough over 90 mins and had more enough of the ball to change that but couldn't.

A missed penalty is just the footnote on the performance overall.

I can't believe we are actually arguing about this. And no Iceland didn't had in them to score second time especially if Messi had scored and Argentina had gained the momentum.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Nope, even if he scored the penalty you don't know how the game would have gone.

It's a 90 minute football match, one moment doesn't change everything.

They lost the game because they (including Messi) weren't good enough over 90 mins and had more enough of the ball to change that but couldn't.

A missed penalty is just the footnote on the performance overall.

That's true to be fair. They also lost the game when Messi shot that freekick into the wall and they also lost the game when Messi skied that freekick and they lost the match when Messi ruined a promising counter attack when he ran into a single defender who was barely moving.
It's not just the pen.

How do you know that? Iceland looked like they could score every time they went forward, they just didn't attempt to very often.

Argentina looked literally incapable of defending any long ball what so ever.

RealGunner wrote:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:No one was sensational lol.

Messi tried but no one else on the team tried to take the initiative, every single time they got the ball they gave it to Messi regardless of the situation.

None of them played with any balls, i get Messi is your best player but try to show some balls please.

At least Banega and Pavon tried to create, but the rest where in full pass to Messi and hope he does something auto-pilot mode.

That's the reason i'm not going to be too critical of him, his team mates just stood around and hoped he could win the game for them and he couldn't.

That's because they are trained to do that. That's the mentality every single manager has instilled into those players since Riquelme retired. It's a defeatist mentality.

Laughable how he gets away from criticism because he is the reason Argentina will never play to their potential. It's not his fault, but he is the problem

It is but obvious IMO.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:How do you know that? Iceland looked like they could score every time they went forward, they just didn't attempt to very often.

Argentina looked literally incapable of defending any long ball what so ever.

So you mean to say Argentinas real golden chance would have been nullified by Iceland's hypothetical one.