Lionel Messi: Argentina star had every move tracked vs Poland, the findings are insane

GiveMeSport

·3 December 2022

Lionel Messi: Argentina star had every move tracked vs Poland, the findings are insane

Lionel Messi has been typically brilliant for most of this World Cup.

After an anomaly of a first game against Saudi Arabia – in which the Argentinian icon still scored – Messi has been on an undeniable hot streak.

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He scored a beauty of a goal against Mexico, opening the scoring from range for his country.

Before then assisting Enzo Fernandez, who put the game to bed and secured a vital three points for Argentina.

Against Poland, Messi neither scored nor assisted. But his overall performance was quite probably his finest of the tournament so far as his nation secured top spot in their group and set up a round of 16 tie with Australia.

What evidence do we have to back up our proposal that Messi was at his tantalizing best vs Poland? It really all comes down to the eye.

Well, the eye, and with the help of the BeYourBest_Pro Twitter account.

BeYourBestPro help footballers improve through developing both their ‘scanning’ and ‘decision making’ ability.

As part of an analysis piece on their Twitter page, the business sought to demonstrate Messi’s genius when it comes to scanning – which is clearly a huge part of what makes him such a special footballer.

They created an in-depth nine-part Twitter thread detailing their findings. We’ve summarised it below.

What did they discover from tracking Messi vs Poland?

Messi completed a total of 680 scans against Poland. Although, that’s just in the time the TV cameras had him in shot, in reality, that number would have been even higher.

That gave him a ‘scan frequency’ of 0.38, meaning that he would complete 0.38 scans within the 10 seconds before he received the ball from a teammate.

When you compare that number to the average Premier League forward, it proves that Messi scans 35.7% more often than the mean of attackers in England’s top-flight.

Imagine how much more information he can soak up in that time. How much more awareness of his surroundings and the game he’ll have, which he can then benefit from.

BeYourBestPro also indicate that, the higher up the pitch a player is, the harder it is to complete scans because of the constant pressure on them, further proving Messi’s class.

The final two points, which we have embedded below for you to analyse, focus on Messi’s ‘critical scans’ and ‘scan timing’ which happens to be near flawless.

It’s a fascinating study and one that you can keep an eye on for yourselves as Messi continues to compete in this World Cup.