CELEBRITY OF 2012: LIONEL MESSI

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It is definitely no other person than Lionel Messi. Some say he is a pheomenom  but I say he is the god of soccer . Messi set an international record by scoring 91 goal in a calender year for both Barcelona and the Argentina national team. He has now become the only human to do so in the soccer arena, delivering an average of one goal every four days.

But Messi is best appreciated, Guardiola said, in the virtuosity of the moment, not against the backdrop of history and statistics.Soccer's beauty is that it surpasses mathematics and in Barcelona case , conjures a sublime human geometry of triangular passing and movement. So this record of 86 goals is an artificial construct, a figure that celebrates Mesi but also reduces his achievement to mere  quantity. It is inadequate to say that he has scored 75 times with his left foot in 2012, 8 times with his right foot, 3 times with his head. Or that when he has scored in a Spanish league match since August, it has never been a single goal but always two or more. Messi at 25 must be watched to be fully appreciated, to be wholly valued for his vision and anticipation and enthusiasm and ruthlessness and humility. For the way he chips a shot over a goalkepper as if is foot is were a sand wedge. For the way he dribbles in tight spaces, the ball bound to him like an electron bound to an atom. The goals must be seen and just as important, they must be heard . For it is the excitable voices of the announcers that best convey Messi's triumph over the parsimony of soccer. Only one response is appropriate, "Gooooooaal", a prolonged , shrieking exhalation that takes the breath away.

Messi has scored lots of spectacular goals, but absent is the diving that often turns European soccer into a deceitful ballet. He has complemented his scoring with numerous assists and prefers to play from beginning to end without substitution .

 WOW!! What an incredible human!!