Lionel Messi trudges off disconsolately after
Barcelona were held to a 0-0 draw by Chelsea.
It is a bit of a myth about the Dutch and total
football. A coach plays total football when he has total
footballers. Guus Hiddink, manager of Chelsea, has
athletes. Great athletes, undoubtedly.
Some of the greatest in modern football, in fact, but not the
sort of team that could come to the Nou Camp and, as Hiddink
promised, fight fire with fire.
So Hiddink did not fight fire with fire. He fought fire
with five hulking great individuals strung across midfield. He
fought fire by removing Frank Lampard midway through the second
half and introducing another defensive player, Juliano
Belletti.
He fought fire with desperate, heroic defence. Not so much total
football as a total blanket thrown over the most attack-minded team
in Europe.
Chelsea even banished the magnificent Lionel Messi to the
periphery, his brilliance showing only in tiny flashes, a run here,
a dink there.
Jose Bosingwa stifled the threat of Lionel Messi in
the Nou Camp
The widely predicated destruction of Jose Bosingwa,
deputising as left-back for the suspended Ashley Cole, did not take
place. Chelsea took out Messi’s supply line and left him to starve
on the flank. He was not taken off, but he could have
been.
Genius is a fleeting gift. In a footballer those peak
years, the period in which a man can claim to be the greatest
player in the world, passes all too quickly.
How long did Ronaldinho have at the top? The years could be
counted on one hand.
He had to make the most of them, and did: the World Cup in 2002,
the Champions League in 2006.
If this is indeed Messi in his prime, if he has, as some claim,
usurped Cristiano Ronaldo’s place at the summit this season, he
needs to make the great games, the biggest games, count. Here one
passed him by.
Messi has never scored against English opposition and that
record remained intact.
