Messi’s Three Touches: A Step-By-Step Guide To Saving Your Country In Style
For two matches, Leo Messi’s 2018 World Cup narrative looked doomed. Messi himself seemed to believe the hype that he could resurrect the spirit of Diego Maradona and single-handedly lead Argentina to the Jules Rimet trophy. But his play was insipid, and his body language signalled immense stress and self-consciousness. It seemed that Messi had crippled himself, making uncharacteristic little mistakes and labouring through the two matches.
Then it took only three sublime ball touches for the opening goal of the third match against Nigeria to reset this World Cup narrative. Messi’s 14th minute goal is already being defined as ‘the three-touch goal‘.
First, it’s worth carefully watching (and rewatching!) the whole sequence again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWgJ4KKn1vM
The sequence begins with Éver Banega (himself a revelation for Argentina in the match) launching the kind of pass from midfield you’d expect from an NFL quarterback down the seam. Messi even ran a wide receiver-like route on the play. Because of Banega’s aerial pass, the play’s speed, and the prohibition against using hands in soccer, Messi’s margin for error in controlling the pass and creating a scoring chance was nonexistent. Perhaps only a couple players on Earth could even create a scoring chance off the play. Moreover, the defender’s positioning is excellent, shadowing Messi closely. Oh, and Nigeria’s 19 year old phenom keeper, Francis Uzoho, had time to pick a good spot for saving the shot.
Statistically, once he was in scoring position, @11tegen11’s xG model gave Messi about a 12.5% of scoring on the shot — which brings us to the three magical touches.
Touch 1: the Thigh
This touch is my favourite. From blundering around a soccer pitch, I know the convex surface of a thigh is unforgiving. It’s not made to receive a ball, then place it in the path of a foot streaking through a full run. Of course, the ball bounces off Messi’s equally convex thigh. Perhaps it’s the experience from thousands of ball juggles, but the ball softly bounces up, then drops straight down. Meanwhile, Messi turns his hips and swivels his whole body toward the dropping ball. Micro-seconds. Surely, no time to even think about it. Later, I thought: Messi’s left thigh trumps my entire body.
Touch 2: the Left Foot
This touch is deep magical heart of the whole thing. This touch is the breath-talker, the eye-popper, the unfathomable. This touch is the “lift down” movement in Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” poem. Sure, Maradona had the hand of God, but Messi has the left foot of God (apologies to Arjen Robben). Switching metaphors, Messi’s left foot is a cell phone dead spot, killing the ball kinetically. It’s the point of stillness of round three of a World Cup group stage match that Argentina HAD to win. This touch’s softness, when you remember the play’s full speed, is what we will all probably be telling our grandkids about.
Messi’s touch is out of the world. pic.twitter.com/0UoE8Cm8pr
— Austin Pendergist (@apthirteen) June 26, 2018
Did I mention that the once-falling ball is now following an L-shaped trajectory, and is rolling along on the ground, along the L’s long leg (our L is sideways), waiting for the goal shot?
Touch 3: the Right Foot
Incredibly, the scoring touch, the touch putting in the goal shot, the xG moment shot, is the most understated touch in the whole sequence. Sure, the scoring touch has the dramatic contact of foot meets ball required for scoring goals. Sure, there’s the usual kinetic power that scoring goals involves. But did you see how, even here at this most dramatic moment, Messi’s touch is still soft? He pulls this trick off by rotating his right foot. Now, the inside foot will make contact with the ball. This foot-shifting is crucial, because now the ball’s path is aerial again; Messi gives it flight, robbing the keeper Uzoho of his carefully chosen blocking angle and position.
Soon, the ball is just clearing the skyline of Uzoho’s right shoulder, arm, and hand, like a flight out of Chicago’s Midway Airport, clearing the long blocks of row houses just beyond the runway.
However, the ball’s flight is short this time. Finally, and for the first time (?) of this sequence, Messi is looking toward the goal, following his shot’s path up and over Uzoho, and into the net.
Argentina is back in the World Cup again.
Originally published at www.theshortpass.com on June 30, 2018.
