Most of the reports on how Lionel Messi spent his weekend opened up with something like this: “Barcelona’s Lionel Messi broke Telmo Zarra’s all-time La Liga goal-scoring record of 251 goals with a hat trick in the 5-1 win over Sevilla on Saturday.”
Not bad, I’ll admit. But I also feel like this approach risked underselling the best player most of us have ever watched by reducing him to his records, or at the very least risked describing him ineloquently.
You see, records are all well and good (especially when they involve 253 goals in 281 La Liga games and 71 goals in 90 Champions League games), but there’s also plenty of leakage between Messi and his digits. And it’s leakage that I want to talk about today.
Just because one of the greatest players of all time happens to have the greatest collection of goalscoring statistics of all time, doesn’t mean that he can be adequately condensed into those goalscoring statistics. There’s more to Messi than that—there’s leakage.
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For instance, Messi’s third goal against Sevilla on Saturday—that was old school Messi excellence. First he dabbed the ball under control from a Sergio Busquets pass. Then he dabbed it past one defender. Then another. Then another. Then he dabbed a pass into Neymar, who followed his lead and dabbed it back. Then there was a burst of acceleration and Messi had whipped the ball into the bottom corner, just like that.
That’s leakage: Brilliance that can’t be contained within the digits. The authentic Messi way of moving around a football—the dabbing—and the trademark whipped finish into the bottom corner. That’s not in the numbers.
And in fact, despite the initial appearance of being a neat match, there’s more leakage between Messi and his numbers than most players with even superficially comparable goalscoring records. Whereas, say, Cristiano Ronaldo or Raul (the players he’s competing with for stakes in history) are quite well spoken for by their goalscoring records, Messi isn’t.
I’ll explain.
Being in possession of all of those goals tends to suggest a certain type of player, because only a certain type of player should be capable of possessing them. That is: A ruthlessly efficient striker completely absorbed and obsessed by the incremental expansion of his record. Think Ronaldo and his indulgent goal celebrations, or every time he shoots instead of passing. Ronaldo is what the numbers conjure when you see them. That kind of player, who thinks about his numbers all the time. But Messi isn’t that.
Messi, instead, has a slightly odd relationship with his numbers. He doesn’t appear—from the outside—to be chasing them like a ruthless fanatic.
He passes when he might shoot and he uses celebrations to point out the role of teammates in his goals. The records just seem to turn up in his lap. For Messi, this efficient collection of record after record feels like a by-product of his excellence, rather than the sum-total of his ruthlessness, as, on paper, you might come to expect. He’s so excellent at football that he almost doesn’t have to be obsessive and selfish. And you’re just not supposed to be able to do it like that. It’s not what you think of, and it’s outstandingly weird.
But my point would be that that outstanding weirdness is spectacular. And mesmerising. And fun. It’s the difference between watching people play a game and watching randomly generated numbers on a screen. And, further, this is kind of why the leakage—the bit outside the numbers—is as important as it is easily forgotten: This stuff is half of what should almost certainly form the myth of Messi.
The numbers don’t show that Messi is, really, pretty cool. Most goalscorers are pretty desperate people when you think about it—chasing statistics like that—but Messi? He floats above the numbers, capturing them without seeming like he craves them. You know?
Against Apoel Nicosia this week, he can become the highest ever goalscorer in Champions League history, but I won’t remember that achievement for its own sake. I’ll remember the constituent parts of it that really helped make it so great. Like when he dribbled past the whole Real Madrid team or reinvented the concept of the one-two pass against Panathinaikos. Or how he did it all while being the coolest player on almost any pitch. The leakage, if you like.
So if I can leave you with anything today, dear reader, it will be this: Remember the leakage. Remember the leakage.
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter