dat clutchness

I don't care if people say he had a bad game, he was clinical.

Albiceleste wrote: dat clutchness

I don't care if people say he had a bad game, he was clinical.

Tapessi

Ray Hudson - "It's absolutely suicidal to leave him with this much space, you may as well invite Jack the Ripper into your house."

I would say Brazil and Argentina are polar opposites in terms of "flashiness" of an individual getting past a defender. Messi fits right in with traditional Argentine individual play.

Albiceleste wrote: dat clutchness

I don't care if people say he had a bad game, he was clinical.

Thats why, for me, Messi is in a league own his own. Even when he is having an awful game, he is still decisive

Alex it seems to me, as others have noted, that you're only comparing him to Brazilians and Maradona under the label of "South American", and of course he doesn't play like a Brazilian - no Argentines do. I would say he plays like an Argentine in the sense that we dribble the most out of all countries - Argentine players when they leave for Spain or Italy usually have the most trouble adjusting to is the speed with which the ball travels. In the Argentine league it is much more common for players to try to dribble past a defender than in other leagues. While Messi picks his dribbles more smartly now, I would say his style fits into that one, he still attempts dribbling past 5 players at times.

Most Goals in 2012 - Europe's top-5 leagues (all official comps, Club and Country):

1- Messi - 57 (Games: 41, Assists: 15)
2- Cr7 - 40 (Games: 44, Assists:
3- Ibra - 26 (Games: 34, Assists: 9)
4- Huntelaar - 25 (Games: 29, Assists: 6)
5- Falcao - 25 (Games: 33, Assists: 5)
...

Alba should have lobbed that chance, it was easy for a pro footballer. Montoya's was more difficult, but he could have made it easier cutting in instead of going wide. A pitty. Great game by Messi.

Messi

I hope he really does win Ballon D'or but there will probably be more votes now for Ronaldo. Clearly from people who don't WATCH his games and only see the highlight reel.

shinigami99 wrote:Messi

I hope he really does win Ballon D'or but there will probably be more votes now for Ronaldo. Clearly from people who don't WATCH his games and only see the highlight reel.

atleast a marca journalist will not vote their.........how can you even think of people from other country when there is a more deserving one in yours....!!!

I think it's fair to say that the votes won't change much from this voting to the next, it's fair to say that the journalists will spread their votes evenly between all three (Iniesta had 19 and Messi and CR7 17 each). These kinds of awards really end in June so it's unlikely they'll change their minds too much, although for the Ballon D'Or the entire world votes, not just Europe, and it's likely that most of South America will vote for it's only representative.

So the Ballon D'Or will likely be decided by the other half of the voting procedure, the club managers and captains.

I really want him not to play every single game in la liga.
Ending up first scorer is nice but keeping his energy for more important games is essential

Apparently Messi is playing in pain. That's why he did not press during the last games and this has been going on for a while (if you could trust my spanish, please some native speaker clarify a bit more)

http://www.marca.com/2012/09/04/futbol/equipos/barcelona/1346766564.html

Yes, it does say he has pain in his adductor muscles.

It would explain a lot.

I guess this would be the second time in recent times that some deficiency in performance of a player turns out to be due to injury. Remember we started criticizing Villa last season when it turned out he was playing in pain.

Two things to be said: 1, Medical staff should be much more assertive in these cases.
2, Maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions about a player's commitment without ruling out the possibility of an injury.

Anyway, I hope it turns out to be minor and that he might be be given some rest for Argentina.

Messi: "Physically, I'm feeling good. I had a good preseason, and played already some friendlies and official games."

Messi's new car Maserati GranTurismo MC Stradale

Does anyone agree with me?

Tito should instruct Messi to start going down if he is tackled hard in a dangerous position (messi territory)

He is becoming lethal @ free kicks.

Today's goal vs Paraguay was

He also hit the post with an equally brilliant free kick in the same game.

Xavi's freekick was also today.

I'm expecting more freekick goals from these two this season. Defenders will have to think twice before dragging messi down near the area now!!!

Messi has 3 freekick goals in his last 12 matches, and now that he's pretty good tuned in, will probably start to bag them even more frequently.

TBH freekicks are luck you said it yourself when messi hit the post a number of times so we'll have to see

Luck is always a factor to a certain extent, but that goal in jiopsi's sig, for example, is just pure class.

Well that was a good goal
Hell I even said Messi was good at fks before.. no one believed me

Just a visual insight into Messi's stats from previous season based on jipsi's data.

The upper blue line is Messi; above rest in all the stats that matter




Check this football visualization to play with data. Selecte ranges in the axes to filter out the data.

eelir wrote:Check this football visualization to play with data. Selecte ranges in the axes to filter out the data.

Nicely done, what's the vizualization software used in this?

it is a library that makes visualizations on javascript http://d3js.org/

did you check the visualization. you can interact to filter the data. Pretty neat