While watching Messi at this world cup, I've found myself questioning if the games are scripted or if some players on international teams are legitimately retarded
Here we have Messi with the ball and making a pass
In the next frame, we have the player with the ball marked by the red elipse, about to pass the ball back to messi with the blue elipse
He's the best football player of all time but teams don't decide that one man should always pick him up and mark him when argentina are going forward, particularly when he was waiting around the edge of the box for a return pass?
He receives the ball with no defending player anywhere near him when he's stood right at the edge of the box with all of the time in the world to take a couple of touches and score. Haven't they considered... not leaving the greatest player of all time in acres of space on the edge of the box when he's waiting for the return pass?
The next one was much worse
The ball is highlighted with orange
Argentina is attacking and Messi is about to move forward
The closest Austrian player is almost in tocuhing distance of him and can easily get past messi and closer to the goal while being touch tight if he tried
Fast forward and the ball is on the edge of the box, it's just being played out wide to the furthest left player in the frame
Messi was just jogging forward here, still far away from the ball showing he was just drifting rather than sprinting in a bid to get forward
For some reason the closest Austrian player to Messi decided to jog back to defend at a slower pace that Messi was jogging forward, leaving Messi with greater space away from him as the closest defender
A the ball is played back across the box to the oncoming messi, the defending player that was closest to him remains way behind him in no position to defend or make a tackle. You can see from the body of the defender in the still image that he wasn't even attempting to run back, thus leaving Messi in acres of space at the edge of the box because no other player was paying attention to him. Is the defender who let messi jog past him lazy, retarded or intentionally allowing messi to score?
Positional shit like this to prevent the other teams players from getting opportuities to score looks extremely basic to me.
I remember when I played for my first organized soccer team when I was 12 years old I was put in central midfield despite always playing as a striker prior to that and playing as a striker in training.
I ended up taking on the defensive role in central midfield because I just took on the burden of making the most obvious defensive positioning reads to stop the other team from gettng chances because my philosophy was if I'm capable of doing it and other players aren't willing or able to do it then I'll just take on the burden to help us win.
I was new to the position and new to organized soccer because prior to that I was used to end to end school yard games with the same number of strikers as defenders but I just did what instinctively made sense when it came to defending and posisitioning and it was pretty easy to stop the oppositon from creating chances.
My friend who got substituted a couple of times towards the end of games while I was still on he pitch said one of the players fathers who coached a different age group watched the games and was constantly raving about how good of a player I was, saying I was the best player on the team even though I never did anything flashy and never took speculative low percentage shots, he could apparently see I had talent that no other adults watching recognized.
Is being able to make defensive reads legitimately rare and some international level players are retarded in this regard or what's going in?
