Football Legends explain why Messi is the Greatest Player Of All Time 🐐

Who's the best player in the world? Lionel Messi. Who's the best player of all time? Lionel Messi. I think Messi is the best player in the world. I think he deserves it, as long as he plays. So the Ballon d'Or is not something I'm definitely thinking of. I would tell everybody, as long as you are not Lionel Messi, you have to defend. Lionel is the only one, wait until we have the ball, give it to you and I'll do what you want. Everybody else has to defend it. For me, I grew up with Maradona. Diego Maradona was my favourite player. But I think for me, Lionel Messi is the best. Not just of this era, but of every era. The best player. I love watching him play, I love his personality, his humility. He's a great, great player. First of all, I had the chance to play against great, great players. And I think the best ones were of course Maradona, when he played for Napoli. Ronaldo, when he played for Inter. And I didn't play against Messi because he was injured. Thanks God he was injured. He was lucky. I was lucky. That's what happened most of the game, I'm chasing it. This was possibly one of the most embarrassing nights of my life. And the one at Wembley. This is in Rome, where we got beat in the Champions League final. But the thing about him is that he doesn't even come near you. So me and Vidic stood on the halfway line once at Wembley and looked at each other and just went... And we were losing. I've not even touched anyone. If you're a defender in a game, you want to get near people, or at least get the ball. We didn't have the ball, and I didn't get to put my hands on no one to rough up or anything like that. The problem is, when you did get close to him, he was that small and quick. He was going underneath. Normally you go out and hit someone in the chest, and he was just going underneath it. And I was thinking, this guy, he's a magician. He's the best player I've played against. He was just devastating. And we all kind of felt if we played against that Barcelona team without Messi, we probably would have won. One word though. Messi or Ronaldo. One word. Messi. Ronaldo is more scoring. I think Ronaldo is like Ronaldo from Brazil. The same style of goal is different. I prefer, in my team, if I have to decide, I decide Messi. Everyone has his opinion, but nobody can doubt that he's there with the greatest all the time. For me, I said many times, I've been the... He's the best. For me, I think... I think... I said it a lot of times, but I think Messi is the best player in the world. He's too good. Against that, you have to try to limit him in another way. Obviously, you have to be close. Obviously, you have to try not to receive the ball as little as possible. You have to try to help, you have to try to close the inner spaces. But even in this, you have the ability to go out because talent can't be defended. The talent of this magnitude can't be defended. I tell you, when many years ago Barcelona came to Los Angeles. Ronaldinho was a friend of mine. I was there talking to Ronaldinho. Ronaldinho told me, Kobi, look, I'm going to introduce you. The best player of all time. You? You are the best. He told me, no, this here is going to be the best. I went to Messi. He was only 17 years old. A little boy. He can score with his left foot, his wrong foot. He can score with his right foot. He can score from distance. He's probably the best poacher now in world football. He can score with penalties. And if you stick it in the box and hang it up there, he'll go and score with a header. And he might even score with a free kick. It takes me to think that he is the greatest football player of all time. He's managed to have this debate all by himself. No one's not a huge fan of Ronaldo or Messi. Ronaldo is not the greatest player of all time. Who is then? I'm going to say his mate here. And the reason I'd say that, you talk about the difference of type of goals. He can score different goals. It doesn't matter how a ball goes in the net. It doesn't matter if one was a header or someone was a free. It doesn't matter. Messi's got a better goal record than Ronaldo. Messi is also a playmaker. Messi can run a game. Ronaldo can't do that. Again, not a criticism. But there's no way in the world he's the greatest player of all time. You talk about who you want coming off the bench. Messi scored double the amount of goals coming from the bench than Ronaldo's ever scored. So that's just a ridiculous thing that he just said in terms of who would I want coming from the bench because he can score different types of goals. It doesn't matter. Even if Messi just scores the more with his left foot, he's just got more chance of scoring from the bench. And the stats prove that Messi coming from the bench scores more goals than Ronaldo. So, I mean, two absolutely, as I said, wonderful players. What Ronaldo does and all the attributes you've just mentioned in terms of heading, striking, free kicks and all that, I totally agree. In terms of a complete player and doing things maybe Messi couldn't in terms of the weak foot or in the air. But Messi as a player can take you to a place where you can't actually believe what you're seeing. What Ronaldo does, he does things that other players can do. You see someone score a great header, you've seen that before. Running, free kicks, all those things. Messi can do things that we've never seen before and can also, like I said, actually the assists and running again from that position. And yes, it's close and there's always that big debate. But in terms of the goals scored, that is not right. Congratulations. Honestly, I mean it. I think it was really well deserved. In a tough game and probably the best final after 80 minutes I ever saw in my life and I saw it for you. It was absolutely special. And they deserved it. And when you saw the team celebrating and especially the country celebrating, then probably hit the right country in difficult times. I'm really happy for them. Waited for a long time. A couple of times in the final, lost it. Unlucky in moments. And now they did it and the greatest footballer of my lifetime watching properly. Messi, the way he played football in this age which should give us all a hint how long footballers can perform on a top level. We shouldn't close the books too early. And it was a joy to watch him. But that's it. The best player in the world for you now? I will go with Leo. I will go with Leo although I respect Ronaldo a lot. I respect the amount of work he put into the game. The amount of dedication he has. But Leo is just a freak. What's the difference between the two? Because everyone always debates about them. You've played with Messi so what's the difference? I would say although Leo works a lot but it's nice actually for the kids. You see one guy that it's kind of a gift. What he does is unheard of. I don't know if you will see that ever again. And you have a guy that does it with work. Everything that he ever did. You played with him. Luisa told me that he used to be in the gym for hours. He's the hardest working footballer I've worked with. That's my point. So you have that example. I'm not saying that Leo is not working. I'm saying that you see it more as a natural thing for him. It's more natural. Here, Ronaldo had to work really hard to reach the top. You have a guy like Leo it seems natural. I would say that's the difference because after that, their mentality and the way they play is the same for me. They just want to beat the man at any time. In training, whatever. I don't know if you have seen Ronaldo doing what I'm about to tell you about Messi. And I've played with a lot of good players. You know the usual okay, I do a foul on you. The bosses sometimes don't call the fouls in training. And you'll usually turn and you go like, that's not a foul. You turn and it's not a foul. And you're like, how come it's not a foul? No, it's not a foul. Play on. I've never seen that before. You go like, what? It's not a foul? We're playing like a 7v7. It's not that short. Like, kind of half a line to the goal line. He will run. From that discussion, he will run. Go to the goalkeeper and say, give me the ball. Like in school. Give me the ball. Meanwhile, this is Barcelona's training. So if he has to go all the way, he has to pass eventually or Busquets or Puyol or Rafa Marquez, whoever is playing. This is 1-0. I don't know a lot of people that can do that. In my career, I didn't see like that. Like that. Like, give me the ball. That is like school football. That's what you would have done at school. That's what I would have done at school. That's my point. But we're playing in world-class players. Making us look like we're not there. And that's where for me Messi has a little thing above everybody else. Big question is, how do you stop Messi? That's what everyone wants to know. Everyone's wanted to know it for years and still haven't really managed it. I was in a team that tried it a couple of times and didn't come off. Other than GBH, I don't know at the moment. But he's, listen, he's one of, if not the best player in the world. Ever. He'd be in the conversation talking about the best players to ever play football. He's someone, I think, there's no individual that can deal with him. It's a team effort. You've got to have two and three players around to stop him. Stop him getting the ball. Put people around him. Stop the ball coming into him. And then when he gets the ball, then you've got to have people that are on him. They mention greatest players in the world. You just have to tell me what it was like saving a penalty against Messi. When we play him, you notice, like, what a player he is. There's not many situations where you come off the pitch and you go, we talk like children. We're not in awe of him, but you've just got to be honest. Because you just see the guy wandering round, totally oblivious to the game sometimes. And then all of a sudden, bang, just and he's creating something or he's scoring. Last year he put one past me. He came across the box and he dubbed it with the outside of his foot, kind of, here. But he knew exactly what was going on. And to save his penalty is a good feeling. A very good feeling. Messi or Maradona, Gary? I never thought I'd say that there was a player better than Maradona. Obviously it was my time. It's just totally immoral. But I honestly think, for a number of reasons, that Messi is surpassed him. He can do anything that Maradona did and does it more frequently. The best is Messi. And after that, Messi is number 9, number 10, number 11, number 7, number 6, number 5, number 4. But Sergio is the rest. He's absolutely one of them. It's almost as though he stands above the field and watches it down, like we are from up here. Yet he's playing at the same time. It's remarkable. I just feel that he, in his own eyes and his own vision, the game just slows down for him. He plays in slow-mo because it comes to him so easy and so naturally. Everyone's fast, erratic when he comes into the box, but Messi just goes, the ball's come here, the goalkeeper's going to go that way, so I'll go that way. He puts it in and makes Courtois look silly, really. It was a great finish. Sir Alex, if the owners of Man United gave you a blank check over the summer and allowed you to bring in any one, just one, of Barcelona's team from tonight, who would you sign? That's one of the most stupid questions I've ever heard in my life. Robert Mascherano. He tests my patience. Haaland could go and score a thousand goals, Mbappe can do what he can do, but I don't think we'll see a player like Messi who can do the things that he can do. So when he does things tonight at 35 and lights up the Champions League, we've all just got to sit back and enjoy it because I've said it multiple times, I just, I can't work out how he does certain things. He's like an incredible, incredible footballer. He looks at the game differently than the rest of us. He sees things that we don't see. I wouldn't even consider one if it's possible and even attempting it. Yesterday that didn't happen. Liverpool was very, very positive. To have three big chances at the Cup now in the semi-final is also a lot. And normally out of three you score one and then the story can be a different one. But that God of football made it completely different and of course they have a good team, of course they have phenomenal players, but that player is absolutely incredible.