Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Well no, I’m going to compare you
to the best summer of my life when the beer and girls were plentiful, the sun
was endless and the music was endlessly sublime. And I’m going to pick your
worst day for that comparison, the equivalent of a miserable wet Wednesday in
Skegness when everywhere else in the country was bounteously sunny but you were
under the only black cloud in the country. I have to be fair you know.
I have immense sympathy for sports writers who have to knock out an opinion
column each day. Who have to try to find an angle on events that everyone else
hasn’t covered eighteen times already. It can’t be easy, and will inevitably
lead to plenty of crap going out between the odd gems. Such a piece is James Lawton’s linking of the Barcelona of Messi and Johann Cruyff’s 65th birthday this week, and his comparing of the man currently dubbed the finest
player in the world with two who have received that accolade in the past.
It’s no bad thing to question majority opinion – indeed, as we’re often
reminded, it’s part of why a free press is a good idea. And neither is it a bad
thing to remind modern fans, to whom Cruyff and Maradona may be merely names
their dad goes on about, that those old guys could play too. But when it’s done in a haze of dubious
assertions it’s quite difficult to take seriously. Let’s take it apart piece by
piece…
‘It was the conviction, impossible to
swerve by anyone seeing both players at the top of their games, that if Messi
is equipped with a stunning array of gifts, there is not much doubt that Cruyff
would have been a more persistent threat to the security of Roberto di Matteo's
hastily reconstituted defence.’
Now I freely admit that I never saw Cruyff at the height of his powers. And
the thing is Lawton couldn’t have seen much of him either – British TV didn’t
exactly broadcast a plethora of Ajax games in those days and neither did anyone
see much of the Dutch unless they played England or were at the World Cup. And
a persistent threat? Well, leaving aside the crashing of a penalty against the
woodwork he created a goal for Iniesta and crashed a shot against the post late
on that would’ve put Barcelona back ahead against a side that had displayed
little attacking intent. There’s also the intelligence displayed when, knowing
he’d be hunted down by a pack of Chelsea defenders every time he touched the
ball, he drew players away to try and create space for others or dropped deep
to try and affect the game. But as his team ended up losing, let’s ignore an intelligent,
hardworking display and say that Cruyff would’ve done better. He may well have,
but equally he may well have ended up as frustrated as Messi. The game of ‘what
if’ is impossible to resolve.
The difference is that while Messi weaves
mesmerising spells at the heart of a gifted team drilled to play the game a
certain, and generally ravishing, way, he has been much less awesome in
changing its direction, and impetus, in the kind of impasse imposed by Chelsea on
Tuesday night, and Real Madrid three days earlier.
Which ignores that he’d done exactly that on the stroke of halftime in
setting up Iniesta’s goal (repeating the feat from the last seconds of the 2009
Champions League semi-final which won the tie) and had pretty much made Real
his bitch with thirteen goals to his name against them. Oh and that he’s
already Barcelona’s record goalscorer at 24 with an extraordinary goalscoring
duel with Ronaldo unmatched in the modern era. Might too much be being read
into one game?
'There is now talk of signs of weariness in the 24-year-old Argentine after
the years of Barça plenty but there is another possibility ignored by the most
fervent of his admirers. It is that while he owns the most beautiful talent,
and that in certain circumstances he has proved unplayable, he may just lack a
quality that was so often the signature of all his rivals at the top of the
all-time list of great players.
This is – maybe, and of course time will tell soon enough – the ability to
carry a team enduring a fall in both confidence and rhythm.
When Cruyff was Messi's age he was
launching himself on a run of three straight European Cup wins with Ajax – and
a World Cup campaign in 1974 which ended in a defeat in a Munich final that
many still believe was due not to any shortfall in Dutch, and especially
Cruyff, brilliance but an overweening desire to make fools of Franz
Beckenbauer's West Germany.'
And when Messi was the age he is now… he already has two Champions League medals
(having scored in both finals) and has just come off the back of being the key player in a hat trick of league
triumphs. In terms of honours he’s over achieved. And neither is he done yet. Judging great players by the
number of medals in their cabinet is, of course, facile - are the likes of
Georges Weah and Best any less great for not having played at a World Cup due
to playing for (in national terms) footballing minnows, much less ever having made
it to a final? Of course not.
‘The elevation of Messi in recent years has
been inevitable and in many ways deserved, at least to a point. If his impact
with Argentina has been limited thus far, his performances with Barça have
touched extraordinary levels. He has been both relentless and luminous, but
then he has operated in a team which has been consistently shaped around his
particular gifts of skill and timing.
His compatriot Diego Maradona led otherwise
unexceptional Argentina and Napoli teams to, respectively, the World Cup and
Serie A titles. Alfredo di Stefano was the very heartbeat of Real Madrid's
first stranglehold on the European Cup – and at half-time in a friendly match
at Old Trafford, the young Nobby Stiles witnessed the great man deliver a
withering dressing-down to a new Real player. It was Ferenc Puskas.’
And here are two more facile comparisons. Maradona’s achievements with
Napoli and Argentina are rightly lauded but on the flip side he was unable to
handle the pressure at Barcelona. Messi does so with a grace and joie de vivre.
Maradona was better suited to being the central genius of the team on the pitch
with no challenge to his authority, Messi is suited to being the star player in
a team built mainly of the finest players in their positions today. And as for
di Stefano dressing Puskas down? That’s just a difference in personality. It’s
no reflection of greatness, more a different way of doing things. How do we know
Messi hasn’t said similar things to his teammates?
Then of course there was Pele, of whom it
was said that he never did anything that wasn't expressly for the benefit of
the team.
That’s not even a judgment, it’s a closing time assertion stated as fact.
'Such men, if you believe all that you read,
have been swept off the high road of football by the sheer virtuosity of Lionel
Messi. Yet this week surely brought the need for a little more caution.
This did not require the downgrading of a
superlative player, the one who remains the great hope of football in its
purest expression. It was more a case of letting history run its course – and
acknowledging one man who, for all his birthday candles, surely remains in the
race.'
Jonathan Wilson, when commenting on Barcelona-Chelsea, quoted Juanma Lillo
in saying that a common footballing error is to judge a process by the results.
Chelsea achieved a quite wonderful triumph based on outstandingly disciplined
defending… and plenty of fortune. Is Messi’s greatness questionable because he
missed a penalty or that his late second leg shot struck the post, to go with
two other efforts at Stamford Bridge which would’ve changed the complexion of
the tie completely? No more so than if a volcano hadn’t erupted to force
Barcelona to undertake a grueling coach journey or Bojan hadn’t had a goal
wrongly disallowed in the 2010 semi-final. Lawton’s point, that one failure
must give us pause for thought is false – every player in history has come off
the pitch having disappointing games, or unable to inspire their team to
victory. Cruyff, for instance, was never able to inspire Barcelona to European
Cup triumph on the pitch. His process of using comparators, to measure one
great player in the middle of a so far magnificent career against long
completed careers, is deeply flawed, serving to attempt to diminish one player
on the basis of one bad night against the rose tinted memory of other greats. If these poor results (and a rewatch of the game
concentrating on Messi’s performance would show it wasn’t a particularly bad
night in any terms bar the result) are repeated then maybe Lawton’s theory may
have some merit. On the basis of one single game decided by the finest of
margins though, it is not. But sometimes flawed processes can produce the right
result – call is stopped clock syndrome. Lawton’s reminder that Messi has other players
from the past who could rival his abilities is a fair one – it’s simply that everything
leading up to it is so much space filling hot air.
But hey, what do I know? I’m not the reigning sportswriter of the year…
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