Messi Gol Part Deaux

Is someone laughing at us? Is there someone at the controls of life? Is God a cule? Well, if he’s not, he’s certainly a native of Buenos Aires. It’s ironic that in the same year that Lionel Messi scores a goal to rival the best of Maradona that scant weeks later he replicates the worst that my namesake Diego Armando in Hand of God. It almost worked, Barcelona was 18 seconds from pulling away from their rivals, playing sublimely against well matched rivals Espanyol, but all anyone I knew wanted to talk about was the cheating Argie that emulates his hero just a tad too closely.

Well, I won’t bore you with an old salt like, “Anyone who isn’t cheating doesn’t care enough” but we soccer fans tend to put way too much of the blame for football’s ills on the cheating, diving, whining Latins who have defiled the proper British sport of football.

Frankly, it happens everywhere I’ve been and in every league I’ve seen, but Argentina it seems has a past that rears its ugly head, from Maradona to Simeone, or Kun Aguero to Messi this year. The heart of a Carlos Tevez, the ball skills of Pablito Aimar or El Conejo Saviola, or the guts of a Javier Mascherano are overshadowed by the darker side of their game: one of gamesmanship, professional fouls, negative tactics and time-wasting.

The fact is that a great player from south of the Andes is measured not only by what he can bring to the ball but by what he can do without it. One minute Aimar can pull off a move that will break an opponents ankles, but seconds later he can win a penalty like the one he won against Madrid this weekend, where he trips on himself a foot after he passes Helguera in the area. I guess we need to realize whether we like it or not that the games is and has always been about the balancing both sides of “the Force.”

The Next Maradona

Diego Maradona was arguably, and I hate blogging about him in the past tense because despite hepatitis and an alcohol problem he is still very much with us, one of the best if not the best soccer players ever to play the game. Argentina has had a love affair with him on the level, and oddly  enough in the same manner, that they had with Eva Peron. I won’t go into the gist of that  history. Suffice it to say: they crazy.

Almost from the beginning with Boca Juniors the Argentinian press and the public have worried, fretted about, and prayed (and preyed) for a successor. Each new Argentinian wunderkind to come out of the Boca or River academy (which constitutes every other club in Argentina by the way) is dubbed “the next Maradona” and sent on his way to play in Spain or Italy. We’ve seen since retirement, easily 15 new Maradonas.

The lineage is striking, a group of great Argentinian players like his contemporaries Ariel Ortega, Marcello Gallardo, Gabriel Batistuta, to youger models like Hernan Crespo, Javier Saviola, Pablo Aimar, Juan Roma Riquelme, or even younger still like Carlos Tevez, or Kun Aguero. Some if not all of them at any given time have been given the term “next Maradona” by the master himself. Most of us just laughed to ourselves and called it Diego was talking to himself again. No one believed him.

Until he said it again this past week, about Barcelona youngster Lionel Messi. Now don’t believe me, but look at his goal (it’s on google or youtube) and tell me if that’s not Diego circa Mexico ‘86.

I won’t go as far as to say that the goal was better than Maradona’s. It was great, and Messi did finish it from a harder angle, but you have to factor who he did it against.

Getafe are a small neighborhood cousin of Real Madrid, and while they have had an excellent La Liga campaign and they are one of its best defensive teams, you cannot compare the level of defending to what Diego faced in the England squad of Mexico ‘86.

Still, none of those other “next Maradonas” had the goal. Messi’s goal this week was a Hollywood reimagining of a timeless classic, not Casablanca recolored or Psycho reshot, but one that is as good as the original and comes at the beginning and not so close to the dire end of a remarkable career.

Lionel Messi may be the “next Maradona” or he may not, but I guarantee you that there are going to be youngsters born this week, this month or this year, and for many years to come with the unattainable moniker of the “next Messi”.