Champions League: Messi shows he doesn't need Guardiola to bring the best out of him

“It’s a blessing to watch him play.” It is, truly. One cannot help but agree with popular pundit Gary Neville on Lionel Messi — especially after what he did against Bayern Munich. It started with a typical run — his body slightly angled to the right as the feet pointed to the other side, the ball bobbing on his left foot. It left Jerome Boateng the unenviable task of decided whether to dive into a tackle or back off. Back off he did, and Messi exploded into a right turn that left Boateng a tangled mess on the pitch, and then chipped the ball casually over the world’s best goalkeeper. [caption id=“attachment_2232292” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Lionel Messi chips the ball over Manuel Neuer. Reuters[/caption] The commentators gave themselves about eight to 10 seconds before saying anything. Along with the rest of the sporting world , they were trying to digest what they had just seen. Messi’s mentor Pep Guardiola, in the opposite dugout last night, turned his back and walked away shaking his head. His pre-match prophecy — that it was ‘impossible’ to stop Messi — had come true as his protege delivered with two goals and an assist in a 16-minute spell that left Bayern in tatters. Guardiola’s exact words were: “When he plays like this, there is no defence that can stop him. It’s impossible. He is used to players defending against him any way they can and he always ends up enjoying success. He is too good.” And Guardiola was instrumental in Messi going from good to too good. It was in his era at Barcelona that Messi developed into a fearsome complete forward from a slaloming winger who had the potential to score wonder goals. At the end of his fourth year at Barcelona, Guardiola had overseen the metamorphosis of Messi — he could now score, pass, cross, dribble, head, muscle players out of his way and more importantly — lead. By playing him centrally, Guardiola brought out the beast in Messi. Before Guardiola took over the reigns, Messi had scored 1, 8, 17 and 16 goals. Under Guardiola: 38, 47, 53 and 73. This was an astonishing transformation. Messi’s goals dipped after Guardiola left (60 and 43 goals under Tito Vilanova and Gerardo Martino respectively) and there was a theory that Messi needed Guardiola to get the best out of him. Murmurs of unrest off the field didn’t help the cause either. Messi recently admitted that he “went through a lot of problems on and off the field”. “It was a challenge to change the image that I had given out last season and to be the player I had been in previous seasons again. That was my objective and that’s how I came out at the start of this season, really up for it.” And there was no better way to prove this than beating his former manager. Guardiola sprung a surprise by adopting a man-marking system to stop Barcelona’s front three. It was brave — maybe stupid — but it was a hand which was forced. The Spaniard ditched his possession based strategy, asking his team to instead use quick passing triangles and counter attacks. But the constant positional transitions of Neymar, Luis Suarez and Messi weaved through Bayern’s defence numerous times before Messi opened the scoring by beating Manuel Neuer at the near post in the 77th minute — fooling the German with eyes at the far post but turning his foot inside at the last moment to dupe him. Three minutes later, he produced more magic.