Great article, to be honest. It's subtly ironic and as Jamie. said, it can be provocative if you don't get the tone of the piece. The massive giveaway is the fact they mention Michael Owen as the example to compare Lionel Messi to, but there are plenty of other giveaways too.
For all those haters of Messi, you can't deny he has talent, skill and works hard for the team. Of course, he may not be the best defensive player or the most rounded player but he does what he does best - and needs to do. It is unfair to expect him to do more than he can do, really, if people are still criticising him despite his wonderful performances week in, week out for Barcelona...he can't really do any more. 136 goals in 192 league appearances for Barça is phenomenal (I got these figures of Wikipedia, by the way), considering that he is only still 24 years old and arguably just at his peak.
He can take free kicks, penalties and can cross competently, although I'm not saying he's a good crosser. It would be brilliant if we could do more, but no-one's perfect and Messi, despite his faults, is still the best player, at this current time, in the world - although that is just my honest and (hopefully) unbiased opinion. OK, maybe he's not the best player to ever grace the game, but haters are basically trying to find faults - many of them which aren't even there. He's just a phenomenal little player, who doesn't complain, doesn't get into the front pages for the wrong reasons and is basically a model professional.
Despite his wonderful talent, the article is right in underlining some of his faults - he's not the most rounded player ever, as *Paul* has said, but he's good at what he does and that's good enough. He may be a bit poor on his right foot, and maybe isn't the tallest; but who cares when he can do so much more with his left foot with the ball? Every player has faults, just good players have less and I definitely think Messi comes under the good players category.
Is he as good as Diego Maradona, one of the greats of the game? Maybe, maybe not, but you shouldn't judge him until the end of his career in my opinion because that would just be unfair. And plus, maybe he doesn't just want to be another Maradona, and just wants to be his own unique player. I think it's unfair to compare players to other players like this, it's heaping tons of pressure on the lad. But fair play to him, he's not affected by all this media hype and carries on being a professional and plays to the best of his ability.
