Lionel Messi: Viral video shows why PSG star should be studied in schools | OneFootball

Lionel Messi is more than just a goalscorer.

While there’s no escaping the fact that his debut season at Paris Saint-Germain was ultimately a disappointment, we’ve got to look beyond the statistic that he only scored six goals in Ligue 1.

It’s undoubtedly a devastating decline for a player used to scoring 20 or 30 goals in each league campaign, but you don’t need to be a football expert to know that Messi isn’t simply an out-and-out goalscorer.

Messi’s world-class playmaking

Rather, Messi has long since moulded his game into that of a deep-lying playmaker, drifting into the upper-most points and penetrations of the midfield to make things happen between the lines.

Inevitably, that still leads to the Barcelona legend bursting forward and creating goals for himself, but it also allows him to pull the strings and play his teammates into positions where they can score for themselves.

It’s for this very reason that Messi holds the unique distinction of regularly being touted amongst the world’s best goalscorers and playmakers at the very same time, which, frankly, is an astonishing achievement.

And it should therefore come as little surprise that Messi still finished second in the Ligue 1 assist standings despite struggling to score goals as proficiently as he created them.

In reality, it’s largely just an extension of the foundations that he laid down at Camp Nou: elevating himself amongst the world’s best passers and most intelligent players when he wasn’t bagging goals for himself.

“We need to study Messi in schools”

And Messi has honed that skill to such a great extent that one Twitter user’s recent declaration that: “We need to study Messi in schools,” isn’t an entirely stupid one when it comes to the beautiful game.

One football fan – going by the username @Blue_Nada10 – made that very quip when posting a superb montage of Messi showing the very vision and foresight that makes him such a magical playmaker.

Although the final few clips border more into Messi’s general footballing acumen in beating rival players, the bulk of the compilation focuses on his extraordinary reading of the game around him.

So, as we wave goodbye to a season in which Messi’s best bits surrounded his ability to create goals as opposed to scoring them, be sure to see why schools should study him down below:

Messi’s footballing IQ is off the charts.

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The genius of Messi

From exploiting the offside trap to using the referee to beat a player, Messi knows every trick in the book to unlock a defence whether that’s for his own gain or creating an opportunity for his teammate.

It really does seem unfathomable for average joes like us that Messi can be scanning the state of play so often that he’s already painted a picture in his head of how he can carve out a chance before he’s even been given the ball.

So, as tongue-in-cheek as the caption might be, there are certainly things to learn from Messi when it comes to problem-solving, forward-thinking, teamwork, organisation and so much more.

The man’s a genius.