Let’s be clear, Jérôme Boateng is no slouch as a defender, he’s starting pick for the magnificent Bayern Munich team because he’s good at football, period. But I couldn’t get the thought of what Lionel Messi did to him out of my mind last night. Did he just trip over? Was it something Messi did? So this morning I found this Youtube that has a decent quality replay from a couple of angles and took these screenshots.
1) Messi gets ball, engages defender.
2) Cuts inside
3) Takes second touch to the inside…
4) …and then suddenly…
5)…he takes a half step with the right foot, pulls all his body weight over (check the hips) and turns Boateng inside out.
6) Boateng is off-balance but needs to get a foot to the ball, his only choice is the left foot, but as one thousandth of a second ago Messi was going across him and the penalty box, he was anticipating with the right.
7) So he tries to lift the left leg, the ball’s already gone, and…
8)…goodbye.
From there, Messi then makes a chipped finish over the best goalkeeper in the world look like a training exercise. Off-chart skills. Screenshots from this decent two minute highlight Youtube :