Unlike players who did not achieve success with their national team like Neymar, Messi has a winner’s mentality.
Messi’s mentality marked notable differences with Neymar
Lionel Messi is the best player in the world and for many the greatest of all time. That is what led him to be at the top of world sport for almost 2 decades. It is not for nothing that at the age of 36 he has just won his eighth Ballon d’Or. After the gala organized by France Football at the Chatelet Theater in Paris, the captain of the Argentine National Team returned to the United States and showed off his new award at the Inter Miami, where all the club’s youth players were able to enjoy the figure of the first team along with the personal trophy.
After reaching 8 awards, it will be very difficult for another player to achieve it in the history of football. The thing is that no one until now has been dominating world football for as long as he has. Messi competed in the Ballon d’Or with Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé, mainly. The Rosario forward won the 2022 Qatar World Cup as the figure of the Argentine National Team.
On the other hand, there was the Frenchman who was the top scorer in that same competition, but who did not win any of the most important titles played in the season. And finally there was the Norwegian who did not even play in the World Cup but who won absolutely everything important at the club level with Manchester City. Now, Mariano Andújar gave an interview where he told an anecdote that marks the very high competitive level of Leo Messi. Before the semifinal against the Netherlands in Brazil 2014, the number 10 was practicing penalties and took the former Napoli goalkeeper to sharpen his aim.
Messi’s mentality
Mariano Andújar revealed what the practice was like where Messi trained penalties. “Leo told me: ‘I’m always going to kick you high to the left and hard.’ He will have kicked about 40 penalties,” the goalkeeper began describing in AFA Estudio. Although Messi practiced kicking to the left, in the definition he executed it to the right, which surprised Andújar. “In the field where we were, Cidade do Galo “There were some mountains in the distance and I’m sure he thought someone was watching him,” deduced the goalkeeper. Messi’s meticulous planning speaks to his level of competition, something that made him stand above players like Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo.