Ricky1985 wrote:
I do exaggerate quite alot to make my point, I've noticed that, I often use quite alot of emotive language too, not sure why? It's not a conscious thing, I must just feel strongly about what I'm saying.
I've worded what I said badly, taking Messi out of Barcelona wouldn't turn them into Wolves, but I do really believe it would take away such a big part of what they are. He's just extraordinary, I mean he scored 47 goals last season in all competitions. I really do believe Xavi is great, incidentally I don't think Iniesta is in his class, but Xavi is limited. He's just an incredibly efficient footballer, who plays the right pass, at the right time, nearly every time. Obviously that's extremely important to the proper functioning of the team, but on it's own it doesn't achieve very much. 95% of what he does involves playing a very simple pass and then moving into space to receive the ball again - Denilson-like in fact, the other 5% of the time the right pass is an incisive pass and he invariably knows when to play it and plays it well.
Would Messi look the same player without Xavi finding him early with perfect passes? Would Xavi look the same player without Messi, or other absolutely world class forwards, to do something extraordinary with his perfect passes?
Yes Messi looks different with Argentina but Tim has already mentioned this. Xavi would still make the options available but maybe these non-world class forwards wouldn't finish or make the right ones. Who knows?
If you swapped Fabregas for Xavi, would the quality of our team dramatically increase? Would he make our forwards play significantly better? Would the quality of Barcelona's play drop significantly? Would Messi score significantly less goals, or the other forwards?
I reckon Xavi is slightly different to Fabregas anyway. Fabregas is more box to box or more of a forward. They're not exact like for like, they're just very similar. No we wouldn't dramatically increase in quality and Barca would not significantly drop in quality. Messi would score more or less the same amount of goals imo.
What about if you swapped Nasri for Messi, would the quality of our team dramatically increase? Would he make the midfielders look better because of what he does with their passes? Would the quality of Barcelona's play drop significantly?
We would improve with Messi. Any team would. Barca's style would maybe change significantly but they have tons of top class players so they'd still be league and CL contenders.
I know what my answers would be, but they are genuine questions. I love to watch Xavi, he's perhaps the best midfielder I've seen in my time, but like I said above, he is a limited player. He is 5'6", pretty weak, and pretty slow, but at Barcelona that doesn't matter. The game he plays suits their game perfectly, and his weaknesses and limitations aren't exposed because he is never asked to do the things he isn't good at. Put Xavi in Wolves' team tomorrow and do yo think his strengths would suit their game, make them a better team? Or do you think his weaknesses would be badly exposed and weaken the team?
He would improve Wolves no doubt. Sure, they wouldn't win the league and probably not even Europe at all but just because he's short, weaker than someone like Yaya Toure and slower than him too, (3 attributes that aren't to do with feet which is the most important tool in football), doesn't mean that his vision, movement, precise passing wouldn't release players in ways they haven't been released before. In turn this would lead to more chances and presumably goals.
Messi on the other hand is perhaps the most complete forward I've seen. For me, he is an asset to any team, anywhere, whatever the style, whatever the League. So I agree Barcelona are a great team with great players, but Messi is so good that he takes them up another level.
He's an asset to Argentina but Argentinians complain he doesn't play for Barca like he does for his national team. He didn't even score in the World Cup. He's got so much quality behind him at Barca. He's got quality in the national side too but he doesn't produce enough and Argentina struggled into qualification for South Africa 2010. He doesn't take games and teams by the scruff of the neck for Argentina and this is one of the big differences between him and Maradona. Maradona won massive trophies for fairly average teams. Put it this way, in terms of your comparison, if Messi couldn't even score for Argentina or significantly help them win the World Cup, he wouldn't be able to help Wolves win a league title, the same as Xavi.
