Posts Tagged ‘Lionel Messi’
Spurs Harry Kane is worth more than Barcelona’s Messi
The CIES Football Observatory has crunched the data and concluded that Spurs striker Harry Kane is worth more in the transfer market than Barcelona’s Lionel Messi. Total balls.
No disrespect to Kane, but how many football fans will boast “I saw Harry Kane”? To see Messi in the flesh is to witness something extraordinary, a player who lifts the spirits. A friend from Napoli interjected a pub debate on which top player we’d all enjoyed watching live. Names poured out: Thierry Henry, Eric Cantona, Johan Cruyff, Franco Baresi, Ziendine Zidane and Franz Beckenbauer. He raised his hands and if spelling out a neon sign above the door to the star attraction, move them from left to right as he declared: “I saw Maradona.”
Messi is better. He is also, as one sports writer notes, the cure: “Some weeks especially we need to plunge head-first into the joys of sport after fretting about the contents of a Jiffy bag or whether England fans will be targeted by thugs in Russia or if a pundit should be sacked for gobbing at a fan…Messi is the best antidote to any creep of dissatisfaction.”
But away from the thrill of live action, in an office block in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, the boffins at CIES have calculated not only Messi’s monetary value but how he ranks against other players in England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. The challenge is to decide which player represents the best investment for their current club. Kane, who cost Spurs nothing to recruit, is worth £173m (€198.2m); Messi, who joined Barcelona as as child, is worth £172m (€196.8m).
CIES explains its method:
The estimated values are calculated using an exclusive algorithm conceived by the CIES Football Observatory research team. An increasing number of professional clubs and football intermediaries have recourse to the approach developed for transfer negotiations and litigation. The estimations for all big-5 league players are available here.
Here’s the list of talent;
So Kane is worth more than Messi – but only if you reduce football to a sport best watched via screens, accessed through a betting app and broken down to the raw data, reducing every aspect of humanity into quantifiable, anodyne chunks. One day they’ll bring all the greats back to their pomp with a new software package, and show us if Bobby Charlton and Pele were better than Ronaldo and Messi. The fans, meanwhile, should save up for something far more vital: a ticket to see Messi play live.
Posted: 20th, March 2018 | In: News, Sports, Spurs | Comment
Transfer Balls: Chelsea and that £1bn move for Lionel Messi
Transfer Balls: The Daily Express is the apogee of all football drivel. Today the paper links Cheslea with Lionel Messi, the Barcalona megastar. The headline declares:
You never know! Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho talks £200m Lionel Messi bid
Wow!
But hold on. What did Mourinho actually say? Before we get to know, the Express tells readers:
The Argentina international was linked with a £200m switch to Stamford Bridge earlier in the season, with the likes of Manchester United and Manchester City also keen on securing his services.
Chief among news sources linking Messi to Cheslea was the Daily Express, with no fewer than four more stories on that £200m move:
After five £200m stories – that’s a £1bn Transfer – finally, we get to hear what Mourinho said on Italian TV:
“I think it’s difficult [for Messi to leave]. I have a feeling that Messi will always be Barca. I may be wrong, in football you never know what will happen tomorrow, but I do not see a player of this size out of that club.
Such are the facts…
“But, as I say, I may be wrong.”
Transfer Balls: Messi & Luis Suarez Cheslea and Manchester City bound?
THE Premier League has a lot of money, so every time someone half-decent flutters their eyelashes at the transfer market, there’s a good chance that player will be wooed by an English team.
With that, the Premier League could well see two of the world’s most famous players – although, famous for different reasons. Barcelona are having some problems with Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, who could both be dreaming of England and potentially starring in MOTD 2’s ‘2 Good 2 Bad’ section (which is all any player wants).
At the Nou Camp, Barcelona coach Luis Enrique has been under pressure as things aren’t running as smoothly as they have been. There’s a lot of chatter about a rift with Lionel Messi, who has been linked with a move to England for a while now. Reports say that Messi and Enrique fought through training last week, which the Barca coach refers to as “inaccurate and ill intentioned”.
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Lionel Messi: Manchester City Bound?
FC BARCELONA have been the modern equivalent of The Beatles, with just about everyone heaping praise on them, apart from sneering hipsters who don’t like anything successful, so they heap praise on Borussia Dortmund instead.
One of the happiest marriages was that between the Camp Nou outfit and Lionel Messi.
However, it looks like all is not rosy in Barcelona as the the Argentine megastar has suggested that his future lies elsewhere because, in his own words, “a lot changes in football.”
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Posted: 26th, November 2014 | In: Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, manchester united, Sports | Comment (1)
Behold! The Lionel Messi of Stevenage
THE Lionel Messi of Stevenage. Says Stevenage manager Graham Westley after his side drew 0-0 with Tranmere Rovers:
“You might say we’ve got no out and out attacking player, but Luke (Freeman) and Lionel Messi are a similar type of player and you wouldn’t accuse Barcelona of playing without an attacking threat”
Point made…
Is this the worst ever intro to a Lionel Messi story?
MARTIN Lipton wants to talk about Lionel Messi. Lipton is the Mirror’s chief football reporter. He notes:
Astronomically, there is only one month out of 12 called Leo. But 2012 has been the year of another Lio – and the king of football could be crowned as the greatest goal-scorer ever tonight.
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How Barcelona’s Lionel Messi triggered a race war
IS Lionel Messi racist? No. He isn’t. He plays football with black players. He does not differentiate between black and white opponents when skipping past them to score for Barcelona. He passes to anyone and everyone in his team. He shakes hands with black and white players. On the hand, arguing for the prosecution, is Dutch footballer Royston Drenthe, a former Real Madrid player now on loan at Everton who says Messi called him a “negro”:
“I played many times against Messi and we always had problems with one another. You know what bothers me so much? That tone with which he always says, ‘negro, negro’. I understand that ‘negro’ is commonly used in South America. But we can’t stand it.”
You might suppose this were a trivial matter, one between the two players. But in the cauldron of anti-racism, where the champions of zero-tolerance seek out racism, the single allegation is front-page news in the Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling paper.
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Posted: 10th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comments (5)
How Maradona can prevent the next Falklands War
FROM dodgy synth pop to leggings there has been a lot of 80s revivalism going on of late and quite frankly I have had more than enough of it. The first half of the decade did at least have a little colour, but from 1985 through to the arrival of the Stone Roses in 1989 the UK was a grey old place run by cold and uncaring goverment. It was a society ravaged by unemployment, terrible pessimism, AIDS and of worst of all Stock, Aitken and Waterman.
Rant over. However there’s one 80s revival that I absolutely don’t want to see and that’s a Falklands War.
And yet with us drilling for oil in the area it seems that the Argies (our great mates and most natural South American ally) are getting very upset and are calling for the ownership of the island to be placed right back on the political agenda.
Of course we are a long way from having to put together a new task force but this is one issue that really needs to be nipped in the bud.
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Posted: 18th, January 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Champions League Final Photos: Lionel Messi, 39,000 Steps And Pique’s Flower Arranging
LIONEL Messi is the wonder who won the Champions League for Barcelona. He then joined the lads in a game of ring a ring o’ roses around the Wembley centre circle. This was after the team had climbed the fabled 39,000 steps to collect the cup – a cup which Gerard Pique caressed and surveyed as though he was about to stick some flowers in it and get down to the serious business of arranging the ribbons…
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Cheryl Cole, Lionel Messi And Maradonna’s Hookers
LIONEL Messi, the Barcelona and Argentinian footballer, tells Cheryl Cole that his countrymen “know how to treat their women”.
Yeah, “their women”. Says the Sun:
“If she is looking for a new nation to follow at the World Cup, she should look no further than Argentina. We play the prettiest football, have the prettiest players, and Argentinian men also know how to treat their women.”
In other news, the Daily Star alleged:
MARRIED footballer Carlos Tevez romped with a former Playboy model before turning his attentions to a glamour girl, it has been claimed. The Man City ace is said to have enjoyed trysts with sexy Vanessa Carbone behind his wife’s back, following them up with an affair with model Mariana Paesani.
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Posted: 12th, May 2010 | In: Sports | Comment (1)
