There is no shortage of Lionel Messi content on the World Wide Web. The 31-year-old soccer superstar ranks high in surveys of top Google searches, one of just a few human beings to earn a spot among such keyword perennials as “Facebook,” “weather” and “free porn.” In a 2015 tally of the most Googled person in each nation on earth, Messi tied Kim Kardashian for the most No. 1s, with a global reach that extended from his native Argentina to Haiti, Turkmenistan, Senegal and 22 other countries.
Messi is also one of the world’s pre-eminent viral video stars. Countless clips document “Messi magic,” a playing style of almost unseemly brilliance. On social media, users share videos of Messi’s slipping passes through improbably tight spaces, corkscrewing shots past sprawling goalkeepers, darting around defenders like a jack rabbit navigating a gantlet of sloths. Type “Messi” into a YouTube search field, and you will find hundreds of highlight compilations with bombastic titles: “Lionel Messi sees things we don’t even consider,” “Lionel Messi: — A God Amongst Men,” “Lionel Messi: Extraterrestrial.”
So it was not exactly surprising when, on March 17, the internet was captivated by a Messi goal. It came in the 85th minute of a 4-1 victory for Messi’s club team, FC Barcelona, over the Seville-based Real Betis. Messi gathered the ball about 24 yards from the Betis goal, slid a pass to his teammate Ivan Rakitić and then flowed forward to receive a return pass. The goal that followed was so easeful, so understated, that it was momentarily hard to process. Messi struck the ball in full stride but with shocking delicacy, lifting a chip shot that arced gracefully across the penalty area. The ball drifted beyond the reach of the goalie, Pau López, scraped the underside of the crossbar and dropped into the goal. Messi had taken his shot from a diagonal position more than 20 yards away, but it was not the stinging kick generally required to score from that spot. The ball’s trajectory was languid and dreamy, like a gull gliding on an ocean breeze.
Messi had already scored twice in the game. But the beauty and impudence of this goal — by some counts, the 656th of Messi’s professional career — was clear to all. Betis supporters stood to applaud their tormentor. Soccer pundits reached for celestial metaphors. On ESPN.com, the journalist Musa Okwonga wrote that “the ball, with the glorious inevitability of our slowly dying sun, rose and fell.” The wildest exultations came from the operatic English TV commentator Ray Hudson, who unleashed a torrent of mixed metaphors. “The staggering genius of Lionel Messi!” he cried, during a live broadcast on the beIN SPORTS network. “This miraculous footballer, this halo of a footballer! … He’s got an algebraic equation to solve in the blink of a baby’s eye, and he does it in a way that is just so poetic!”
Hudson is onto something with this talk of algebra and poetry. Messi’s greatness lies in his mind as much as his body. Watching replays of the goal, you marvel above all at the audacity of Messi’s idea. A chip? From that distance, at that angle, in that frenzied moment of open-field play? It’s nuts — a fool’s fantasy that blossoms, with every slow-motion replay, into wondrous fact. Messi saw something we didn’t even consider.
That viral clip is a testament to Messi’s supernatural talent. It’s also a reminder that online video is changing the way we consume and conceptualize sports. Decades ago, the culture of “highlights” was already transforming America’s pastimes. The decline of slow-paced baseball, the ascendancy of the razzle-dazzle N.B.A., the rule changes that have brought an offensive explosion in the N.F.L. — these developments were fueled in no small part by the rise of ESPN’s SportsCenter and the primacy of video clips. But in the old days, those highlight packages were appointment viewing, available only on nightly broadcasts. Today highlights spread across the web in seconds, mutating into memes and turning star athletes into visual brands. You don’t have to be a purist to wonder how this media ecosystem is affecting our tolerance for the natural rhythms and longueurs of sports, those lengthy stretches of “lowlight” play that are only occasionally punctuated by thrills.
Soccer is a subtle game; in general, goals are hard to come by. It would seem to be the major sport most antithetical to highlight culture. (For all those moments of Messi magic, the essence of his greatness may lie in untelegenic maneuverings off the ball, the cagey movements that put him into positions where he can erupt.) But viral video is altering our view of soccer’s history. Today’s fans compare clips while endlessly debating the “greatest of all time” status of Messi and his chief rival, the Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo. The GOATs of previous eras — like Pelé, Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona — recede into the background: They had the misfortune to play in a time before a footballer’s every exploit was captured on video. If a player’s “receipts” aren’t on YouTube, he’s liable to lose to his toehold in the historiography.
Yet for the 21st-century soccer fan, online video is a godsend — the only conceivable way to keep up with the ultimate global sport. With a mobile phone and a well-curated social media feed, it is now possible to follow great matches on five different continents, nearly every day, in real time.
As for Messi: I know few more pleasurable ways to kill a couple of hours than by squinting at a liquid-crystal screen, bugging out to the likes of “Lionel Messi Humiliating Players Two or More Times in the Same Play.” Messi is the quintessential internet-age soccer star — he scored his first goal for Barcelona in 2005, the year YouTube went online — but his persona is a throwback to an earlier period. He is a trickster and a funnyman, like an old-time silent-movie star. He’s small and scrappy, standing just 5-foot-7, the Charlie Chaplin to suave Ronaldo’s Rudolph Valentino. Many of his greatest moments play out like slapstick farce, leaving pratfalling defenders littered across the pitch.
At their best, sports like soccer are the digital age’s most reliable suppliers of an old-fashioned brand of entertainment, the special-effects-free kind, in which human beings use only their sinews and synapses to deliver thrills and spills, action and comedy. Messi’s chip in the Betis match was a comedic set piece in its own right. On YouTube, you can find video montages of the play’s aftermath: Messi and his teammates celebrating and cracking up, the goalie López mugging like an exasperated vaudeville straight man, play-by-play announcers dissolving in peals of laughter. The goal is a cosmic joke if there ever was one. A small man swings his left leg; a ball loops skyward; common sense and natural laws are suspended. You know the punch line: The ball will fall back to earth, landing — plop — in the back of the net. But no matter how many times you watch it, the gag still kills.
Source : NYtimes
