While Messi's best moments are with the ball at his feet, he doesn't even need that to help his team greatly. So without further ado, let's look at some of Messi's off the ball movement and skills without touching the ball.
Something great about him is that he tends to know when he's offside, and as he has shown, he's too smart to fall for an offside trap. When defenders expected him to touch the ball, he simply looked at it and let it continue its path. He did so against APOEL in the 2014/15 UCL season, leading to one of his 3 weak foot goals, Barcelona's 4th goal against Granada in the 2015/16 La Liga season (having made a hat-trick beforehand too), Barcelona's 2nd goal against Atlético Madrid in the 2011/12 season (which ended in a 5-0 victory with a hat-trick from him), etc.
There's also his body feints. I will limit myself to show you an 11-minute video showing over 100 examples of Messi's body feints. Another skill that Messi has managed to master.
And now into his off-the-ball movement. This specific thing was exploited back when he was a false 9 (previously explained). In summary, he either had a player mark him and liberate space for Messi's team-mates, or Messi ran havoc with no one marking him. Even today, he still does this, though not to the same extent. The following video explains what Messi used to do with his movement off the ball:
This video explains stupendously how good Messi really is without the ball:
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