Lionel Mess and Pep Guardiola - the secret of the magic

For many of the people that watch FC Barcelona soccer games it might seams so simple the way they control the game and pass the ball. The way I see it, it is like a magic. When you think about it –             Lio Mess  is the best player in the world but when you watch Barcelona’s game you see that 90% of the times that he touches the ball – it is a short pass to 7-15 yards. Like any other players in the ‘Barcelona Soccer Machine’. And this is the magic. Pep Guardiola was able to teach the best player of the world to be part of a basic team game and to identify the right situations. When Messi  identifies those situations where there is a gap between the defense team’ slayers – he starts with a fast run with the ball, break the opponent’s team defense structure and dribble or do double-pass with his team mates and create a scoring position.

It is very rare to see that the best player in a soccer team (defiantly if he is also the best player in the world), fits himself into the team’s game plan and give-up on ego elements the nice dribbles and show-offs.  Let me give you few examples how other leading player play in their team:

The first one of Cristiano Ronaldo in Real Madrid – he is the best player in the team but very busy with his game, his repeated tricks and the goals that he scores. He have only 6 assists in 19 games.

The second example is Carlos Tevez in Manchester City – in too many situations during the game it looks like he is more concerned about himself and his goals and you can see that in his statistics – only 5 assists in 20 games.

When you compare the statistics you find out that Lio Messi have 13 assists (lead the Spanish league in the assists category) in 16 games! Another interesting point that shows how Messi learned how to identify the right situation to attack the goal is with the following amazing statistic:  Messi scored goal every 4 attempts! (18 goals out of 74 shots)  For compression - Cristiano Ronaldo have onlt 16% success (22 goals out of 136 shots)

Next time you watch a Barcelona soccer game try to take a closer look on Leo Messi and try to count how many short passes he gives to his team mates and how many individual attempts he takes.  He is a perfect team player that learned to use his high level individual skills in specific situations.

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