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Football

21st Feb 2018

It’s hard to argue with Rio Ferdinand’s point about Messi’s genius

James Dawson

The Argentinian finally scored against Chelsea last night.

So, Chelsea played Barcelona last night at Stanford Bridge and although 1-1 isn’t a bad score for the Blues, all things considered, they’ll still be ruing the fact they threw away their lead with a loose pass.

As we said last night, one opportunity was all Messi needed to cancel out Willian’s opener. You can revisit it here:

Following the match Gary Lineker, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard all evaluated Messi’s performance – and as you can imagine they had a lot to say about one of the GOAT.

Ferdinand, in particular, made an interesting point about Messi, saying that one of the reason’s for the 32-year-old’s brilliance is that he plays the game as if he’s seeing everything in slow-motion.

“I just feel that in his own eyes and his own vision, the game just slows down for him,” the former Manchester United defender said. “He plays in slow-mo because it comes to him so easy and so naturally.

“Everyone’s so fast, erratic when it comes into the box but Messi just goes ‘right, the ball’s coming in, the goalkeeper’s going to go that way so I’ll go that way’. Puts it in and makes [Thibaut] Courtois look silly with a great finish.”

Having faced Messi on the pitch when he was playing the game, the now-pundit added that he felt the Barcelona player would be an even better football player outside of match situations.

“I just want to be at the training ground,” Ferdinand said. “I bet there’s stuff at the training ground that you don’t get on the pitch where people go ‘wow’.

“You speak to some of his current and ex-teammates and they say ‘some of the stuff he’s doing there, you can’t even talk about [because] it’s that good.”