Stop anyone
on the street in Europe, Latin America, Africa and even Asia, and chances are
they'll know the name Lionel Messi — and they'll probably know what he did this
week. The soccer phenom scored his 88th goal of the year, which is widely
thought to be a world record.
And the
year's not over yet.
At
Wednesday's game, Messi, 25, scored two goals for barcelona during
their game against Cordoba in the Copa del Rey (King's Cup), giving Messi's
team a 2-0 win over
Cordoba with the announcer booming, "A new goal
king!"
It was one
more goal for a prolific goal scorer. But the art with which Messi plays soccer
sometimes brings grown men to tears.
"Lionel
Messi rewrites the history book! And we were all there to witness it, and be
privileged by this artisan!" exclaimed the announcer.
The British
TV announcer Ray Hudson, who narrated one of Messi's goals last Sunday,
couldn't avoid poetry.
"Twisting,
turning, like an alligator with a twitch, beautiful give and go! He takes a
million pictures in that crystal ball that's inside of his head!" said
Hudson. "This golden footballer — the most wonderful, stupendously
magnificent player in the history of the game!"
Some
Americans may be asking: Who?
'Not Even
At His Peak'
Messi, who's
from Argentina, doesn't have the playboy glamour that's made David Beckham or
Cristiano Ronaldo famous across the Atlantic, says Mark Elkington, who covers
Spanish soccer for Reuters.
"He's
not what you'd call a classically good-looking guy," Elkington says.
"He's quite small. He has this kind of humble, almost like a teenager,
sort of shuffling along. He doesn't have all the trappings of the big
superstar. And he plays football kind of like an excited teenager as
well."
Messi was
just 13 when he arrived to train with Barcelona. But he's loved even here in
Madrid — enemy territory, home to a rival team, Real Madrid.
In a
downtown Madrid park, Jesus Lerma kicks around a ball with his friends. They're
all die-hard Real Madrid fans — but can't bring themselves to say anything bad
about Messi.
"I
respect him a lot as a football player. He's, like, probably the best dribbler.
I like him a lot — his game, his kind of goals, his team playing," Lerma
says.
With 88
goals, Messi has topped what was widely considered the four-decade-old record
held by Germany's Gerd Mueller. There's now a bit of a dispute, with a
Brazilian team now saying one of its players may have scored 89 goals in
1979.
Whatever the
case, Messi has had a remarkable year and still has two more games to go.
And he's
broken many other records, too, Elkington says.
"He's
been world player of the year for three years in a row, and he's favorite to
win it again. Secondly, the Champions League is the biggest club competition in
the world, and he's been the top scorer in the Champions League for the last
four years in a row.
He's Barcelona's all-time leading scorer. And you've got
to remember, he's only 25. In theory, he's not even at his peak yet,"
Elkington says.
Rise Of
'The Flea'
Messi's
nickname is "La Pulga" or "The Flea," which is what the
opposing team often thinks of him — a tiny 5 feet 7 inches, but an incessant
nuisance that they cannot stop.
"He
seems to run into a crowd of players, and you think, 'Oh, well he's never going
to get through there.' And he seems to come through on the other side with the
ball. And you just laugh and you go, 'That's unbelievable how he's done that,'
" Elkington says.
Near the end
of a tough game last year against Real Madrid, when players were getting sent
off for rough tackles, Messi came out from nowhere, as he does, and scored two
clean goals to win the game for Barcelona.
And as one
commentator said at the time: "Just as it looked like petulance and
bickering would win the day, up steps the 'little maestro' to show us all how
'The Beautiful Game' can still be played."
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