Messi and football tennis

One interesting variant to tennis is football tennis, where instead of using a racket, the object used is your body (except the arms, just like in football), while the rest remains relatively the same. Messi is no stranger to this sport, as we'll see in this entry.

Going back to 2005, there's footage of him playing football tennis with Tévez and then with Maradona himself. This was in the show 'Noche del 10'.

And continuing in 2005, he had played football tennis in the show Sin Cassette. He played with Pablo González at Plaza Rosario.

Now we go forward to 2007. This was once again in the show Sin Cassette. As we can see, Messi could easily do keepie-uppies and easily won the friendly match.

Moving forward to 2011, he played football tennis with some friends in Rosario on December 27th while he was on vacation.

In August 9th of 2014, Messi was making pre-season training with Barcelona and decided to play football tennis with his teammates. He even managed to do a bicycle kick and nail it.

Earlier in the year, he was doing some training with the national team previous to the 2014 World Cup, and he teamed up with Di María and Gago to play a 3-a-side football tennis match against Biglia, Agüero, and Lavezzi.

Later in the World Cup, specifically on June 20th prior to playing against Iran, Messi played a particular game of football tennis against Agüero. What separated both players was a fence, which separated the field from the tribune.

In June of 2015, preparing for the game against Jamaica, Messi played football-tennis alongside Di María.

In October of 2017, in a training with the national team prior to a World Cup qualifier against Peru, Messi did some football tennis with his teammates being Mascherano and Di María.

In May of 2018, preparing for the 2018 World Cup (with a friendly against Haiti beforehand), Messi played some football tennis and even did a bicycle kick, just like in 2014.

Then in June, Messi once again played football tennis with Argentina in preparation for the World Cup, playing alongside Di María and Mascherano.

In February of 2020, prior to a La Liga game against Eibar, Messi played football tennis alongside Vidal and once again did a bicycle kick.

As a side note, although not tennis, he played teqball with his son Thiago Messi. Antonella made a 4-second clip out of the match and Messi sent it on his Instagram account.

As we can see, football tennis can be a fun practice for Messi, and he has no problem with this variation, even taking some liberties and doing bicycle kicks from time to time, which he doesn't tend to do in football matches. That is all for today, so I hope you liked this entry, and as always, I'll see you in the next blog.

Messi and rugby/American football

Rugby/American football is another sport that Messi is obviously not known for, but like with basketball, he's had some contact with throughout the years. So this entry will be dedicated to those times Messi and the sport connected.

First, we'll go back to March 2014 when Messi was given a shirt of 'Los Pumas' (Argentina's national rugby team). Martín Rodríguez gave it to Lavezzi so he could give it to Messi seemed to like the gift and even posed with the shirt, which Rodríguez later sent the pic on social media. The rugby player later said on Twitter: "It's incredible that it reached his hands... Thanks Lavezzi you're great!".

In March of 2015, Messi met up with Robert Griffin III, quarterback from the Washington Redskins, as well as two hockey players. They presented Messi with a 'Messi' shirt for their teams in their respective sports, with the Nº 10 of course.

Forward to September 2015, when Argentina did their tour in the USA, Messi met JJ Watt, who was the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in 2014. Watt posted a pic of both of them together and captioned 'The best football player on the planet.'.

In June of 2016, while Messi was in the USA for the Copa América, he met with American football player Patrick Chung, a member of the Patriots.

Moving on to December 2016, when Messi was in an Argentine gym while on vacations, he trained alongside Juan Nogués, a rugby player from Club Atlético del Rosario. Messi posed with the team's shirt and with Nogués too.

In June of 2017, days before the Superclásico de las Américas game against Brazil in Melbourne, Messi met some Wallabies (Australia's national rugby team). He posed with Will Genia, changing shirts with him, Sam Carter, and he posed with more members of the Wallabies as well.

Going to a different subject, opinions, Tom Brady (regarded as the best player in the NFL's history) said he liked Messi and said he was a great player, but was unsure about the Messi vs Maradona debate as he had not seen Maradona's game. He also said it was a blessing to be compared to Messi.

He also inspired DeAndre Hopkins, player from the Arizona Cardinals, to play with the Nº 10 jersey. And this is what he had to say for Messi: "Messi is obviously considered one of the best players in history. He's small, you know, he's not the tallest. I feel his mentality is to have everything against him."

And finally, to what people care the most, Messi actually playing the sport. He has played only once with a rugby ball as far as evidence goes, and it was in a training with his Barcelona team-mates back in February 2014.

There's also an Adidas ad of him dribbling past an entire rugby team, but that's acting to promote his Nemeziz boots of course.

In a future entry, I will detail how Messi could have been as an American football player. As always, I hope you liked this entry and I'll see you in the next blog.

Messi vs the referees part 7

We've now reached part 7 of this series, with many more errors ready to be seen here, so let's get down to business and continue.

The first error we'll be seeing happened against Sevilla at home in the 2020/21 La Liga season, where Diego Carlos clearly fouled Messi inside the box but didn't get punished for it.

In the same season, against Real Madrid at home, Casemiro clearly fouled him inside the box, but once again no punishment was given for it.

Going back to the 2019/20 La Liga season, playing away against Sevilla, Diego Carlos made a tough tackle on Messi but wasn't given a red card.

In the same season, playing at home against Celta, the referee made up a non-existent foul from Messi and gave him a yellow card. From that free-kick, Celta got the equalizer, but Barcelona fortunately won the game 4-1 afterward.

And last but not least, there's this clear penalty from Wakaso to Messi, when Barcelona faced Alavés at home in the 2017/18 La Liga season.

That is all for this part of the series, so I hope you liked this entry and I'll see you in the next blog.

Argentina equalizes with Chile and maintains a good position in the qualifiers

Yesterday, Argentina equalized 1-1 with Chile for the return of the Conmebol qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup, Argentina's 1st game since Maradona's death. The first goal came from a penalty from Messi, but Sánchez equalized not long after. Messi's stats were: 1 goal, 4 SoT, 1 woodwork (5 shots in total), 6/10 dribbles, 2 key passes, 13/17 duels won, 5 fouls won, 1 tackle, 5 recoveries, 1 long ball, 1 cross, 49/58 passes, and 87 touches, which earned him a 9.1 rating according to Fotmob.

This was his heatmap:

This was his performance on video:

Another thing to note is that he swapped shirts with Gary Medel, and Medel praised him calling him an alien.

And he also swapped shirts with Alexis Sánchez at the end of the game.

Argentina is currently 2nd in the qualifiers, 4 points ahead of 6th placed Colombia (who they'll be facing next in the qualifiers). That's the same amount of points as Paraguay and Uruguay (placed 4th and 5th). And Ecuador, who's 3rd, is 2 points away from Argentina with one game at hand, but they'll be facing Brazil tonight so we'll see about that.

As already stated, Argentina's next opponent will be Colombia, programmed for June 8th at 8 PM (Argentine timezone). So as always, I hope you liked this entry, and I'll see you in the next blog.

Messi's possible new 10-year contract with Barcelona

Yesterday, rumors spread about an agreement between Messi and Barcelona for a 10-year contract with the Argentine. According to Sport, the project involves 2 more seasons at Barcelona, then 2 seasons at Inter Miami to end his career + Barcelona's ambassador, and the remaining seasons would be spent solely as Barça's ambassador. In his 4 remaining seasons as a player, he would earn € 60M per season, a total of € 240M, which is much lower than what he earns nowadays.

According to other sources (like Sport), the negotiations are still open as Messi wants to higher his fixed salary for his last 6 seasons as an ambassador.

He could meet up with Gonzalo Higuaín at Inter Miami, as well as 5 other Argentine players. The club is also partially owned by David Beckham, who's their president as well. It would be an interesting experience to see someone as important as Messi playing in the MLS, similar to what Pelé did in his last years with the New York Cosmos.

According to Laporta, for Messi, it's a matter of the future and the project, not the money. He also said that he's in good talks with his agents. Everything seems to point towards Messi signing a new contract with Barcelona, after making his decision to stay at the club. But only time will tell what happens next. I hope you liked this entry, and as always, I'll see you in the next blog.

Barcelona presents two new signings

Yesterday and today, Barcelona presented both Eric García and Emerson Royal as their new signings. Both are young defenders, so hopefully these signings can reach their potential here.

Continuing with Emerson Royal, Messi has played against him on four occasions, which were all Barcelona vs Real Betis encounters since 2019. Messi won all four of those games, with both players playing 190 minutes together (when both were on the pitch). Messi scored 4 goals and gave 3 assists while Emerson was on the pitch, which means 1.9 goals per 90 and 3.3 G/A per 90 while they both played at the same time.

As a bonus, here are some pics with Messi and Emerson:

The defense has had some problems in the last season, so hopefully this can ease the situation. Umtiti is transferable so he may go out in exchange for these two signings, and if a good enough offer comes, Lenglet may go too.

In other news, Barcelona is still in talks with Depay, and since he'll play today with De Jong in a friendly, he could get a little more convinced to join the club. And according to some sources, Wijnaldum is a 'done deal' so he may be announced at some point as well.

Those are all the signings and rumors so far, so I hope you liked this entry, and as always, I'll see you in the next blog.

Messi in May: Best player of the season and in the world

After May ended, and the club season as well, it's time to collect all of Messi's stats in the last month. He has shown once again why many consider him one of, if not the best player in the world as of today, even when he's almost 34 years old.

He played 4 games in the last month of his club season, and his stats were the following: 4 goals, 1 pre-assist, 4 big chances created, 1 through-ball, 9 key passes, 8 SoT (22 in total), 50 duels won out of 69, 16 fouls won, 43 pressures (17 successful), 213 passes, 374 touches, 2 MoTM according to WhoScored and having an average match rating of 8.79 (according to WhoScored once again).

With his team, he ended up 3rd in La Liga with 79 points, which is disappointing but understandable considering the amount of mistakes that were made in numerous games (losing important points).

These were his highlights of the month on video:

The objective for June will be to focus on the national team, specifically in the upcoming 2022 World Cup qualifiers and the Copa América. That is all for today, so as always I hope you liked this entry and I'll see you in the next blog.