Messi is discussed only in his country (Yahoo)

Lionel Messi has a great Challenger for 2010.He must try to realize a great role with the Argentinean team at the World Championship in South Africa, because this will be the single item he has to end reigning in the footballistic planet: to be definitively accepted by the Argentinean followers, as only they dared to discuss him when he won in 2009 the major trophies that a footballist can reach..

FIFA World Player, prize that make official the best player in the World of each season, obtained by Messi the last days, sweeping in the voting the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo of the Real Madrid, does not leave any doubt as to the category of the Argentine, also winner, and by a record distance of the traditional Gold Balloon granted by the magazine France Football to the best European player.

In the first case, the prize consists in the votes of the coaches and captains of every one of the over two hundred teams, members of the FIFA and in the second, it concerns votes of the specialized reporters, so that the coincidence on Messi’s values it total and absolute in the World of football.

However, and though it may seem strange, the young player of Barcelona, the best team of the World, winning the maximum competition of clubs recently in Abu Dhabi, United Arabian Emirates, has not everything pleasant. A good part of his countrymen discuss him and have polemics as to his attitude when he wears the Argentinean vest, believing him not too engaged with the team of Diego Maradona.

According to many Argentinean fans, Messi feels much more the vest of Barcelona than of the Argentinean team and few detain to think that perhaps the tactical systems and technical characteristics of the comrades around him vary too much to obtain same results in one or other team, in spite it concerns the same player.

Messi does not feel at ease in the Argentinean team, though he has a very good relationship outside the field, with players as Juan Sebastián Verón, Javier Mascherano or Sergio Agüero. The fact that the system used by Maradona is of 4-4-2 with the four midfielders very far of the two forwarders makes that Messi puts himself too much forward scarcely accompanied by another attacker, be it Carlos Tevez, Agüero or Gonzalo Higuain, but he does not find with who to discharge the game and ends going back to the mid of field to recover the balls, to collect them there and then to enter to dribble the swarm of rivals until that in the case of passing them all to be able to meet with the goalkeeper. All this makes that it is practically impossible to concrete the game of Barcelona, where he has two forwarders in who to discharge and the ball comes to him served from the midfielders such as Xavi or Iniesta and even from the right lateral Daniel Alves.

Can Messi be so good in Barcelona but changes so much when crossing the Atlantic Ocean to play for Argentina? It does not seem logical but it is without any doubt that the bluewhite team continues without finding the formula to use in their favor the best player of the World and it was very difficult for them to reach the classification for the World Championship

If to this is added that in the past World Championship of clubs Messi defined the contest with a goal in extra time vs his countrymen of Estudiantes and celebrated the triumph (what should be logical to expect due to the importance this match had) his relationship with more Argentinean fans became worse last days.

From the local communications means (that neither they feel sympathy for his figure) there was the intention to minimize the insulting paintings against Messi on the walls in the city of La Plata, the origin place of Estudiantes, what seemed an expression of few, not representative of the society, but a few days later, in Argentine was granted the traditional prize Olimpia de Oro to the best national sportsman of the year, falling it on the tennis player Juan Martin Del Potro, though he had an excellent year, the repercussion of his actions is minimum in comparison with the football player who besides, was designed by the specialists as the best in his activity something that did not happen with his tennis countrymen.

So why the press in Argentina specialized in Sports did not grant Messi the prize as the best Argentinean sportsman of 2009 having been chosen the best of the world of football and at the same time consecrated as champion of Europe and world champion with the Barcelona? It is a question that seems very difficult to answer from the technique and it obeys more the feelings and sympathy or antipathy that generate in the popular imagination.

And so as Del Potro is signed as Champion of enforced sportsman who shows his talent and “feels his colors” (every time he ends a great contest he returns to Argentina and visits the Bombonera of Boca Juniors, his team), Messi is seen as a far talent, emigrating as adolescent to Barcelona and today seems distant of what occurs in Argentina where he has not a club to which he feel unconditional, though he started in Newell’s Old Boys of Rosario.

It does not matter that the reporter, Cristina Cubero, of the newspaper “Mundo Deportivo” of Barcelona sustains permanently that of all the Argentinean players who passed through Catalonia, between the Barcelona and Espanyol, “Messi is far the best Argentine of all, who follows the customs of his country, who is the most identified with his origin”.

It is of no value for Messi. He will have to play everything in the World Championship if he wants not to be discussed in his country, in which the television channels that have the rights to transmit the Champions League, opt to emit the match of Inter instead of Barcelona, playing both at the same hour.

Messi will have to fight against all these prejudices.