On Tuesday night in the cold, wet, industrial Rhineland of Germany, Messi found a new field and new opponents to conquer. He created two goals for Alexis Sánchez with passes of breathtaking imagination. He scored a goal out of the sheer desire to run beyond any teammate, any opponent.  And he celebrated with all the joy of the boy that he still is, even at the age of 24.  Sorry if that spoils the fun of a German university researcher, Norbert Hagemann, and his collaborators who are busy trying to identify the science and psychology behind the Messi phenomenon.  Sorry if it dampens the illusion that a moderate side like Bayer Leverkusen still has a hope of eliminating Messi’s Barcelona after its 3-1 first leg in the Champions League.  The fans, too, are entitled to their fun. And for anyone, anywhere, who got to see Messi darting like a lizard between the muscular rocks of Leverkusen defenders, this was indeed joy in a largely depressing week for the global game, with famous clubs going into receivership, arrogant players thinking themselves more important than the sport and a long trial starting over allegations of widespread corruption in Turkish soccer. All of those dark moments were put aside by a single word spoken in Leverkusen on Tuesday.  Barcelona’s coach, Pep Guardiola, was asked on television moments after the game whether he ever thinks of resting Messi, who has played 39 of the team’s 42 games already this season. “Why?” responded Guardiola.  The coach paused, then continued, in English: “People buy a ticket to see him play. I know him — he’s a strong man, he’s just happy when he plays, and for me he’s very important when he’s fit.” End of interrogation. Temporary end, at least, of the polemic in Spain about what is wrong with Barça. Why has the best team on earth slipped 10 points behind Real Madrid in La Liga? Is it tiredness, the mental or physical fatigue of a team built around a genius and expected to perform on all continents twice a week against opponents who either mass in defense against them or kick them? Is it the injuries to key players in a small squad — players like the World Cup striker David Villa, who broke a leg, or the mercurial Andrés Iniesta and the extraordinary playmaker Xavi, who are either playing through nagging pain or in sore need of sitting out games? It is all of those things, and the fact that Messi is required to cross the Atlantic every month or so, trying to inject into his Argentina national team the fun that he enjoys so often with his club.  Here, again, the answers can be as simple or as complicated as we wish them to be.  Messi is an Argentinian by birth, but a Catalan, a product of the Barcelona academy and its way of playing, since his adolescence. He moves the way he does for Barça because of the players around him, even on occasions when the youths are thrust into the roles that Villa and Iniesta and Xavi do so exceptionally well when they are not broken.  But when Barcelona lost, 3-1, in Pamplona last Saturday night, the critics had their say. The team, and its star, they mostly decided, have given up in the league and find playing teams like Osasuna just a distraction on the road to the Champions League.  Maybe the professors can analyze that. Maybe a degree of complacency explains why, horror of horrors, Barça succumbed last weekend to its second defeat in 47 league and King’s Cup and Super Cup and World Club Cup fixtures? If there is a man with the answers, it must be Guardiola. He played for years in a Barcelona shirt, and he is on the training grounds every day making judgements about the players’ state of mind and physical health.  When Guardiola was asked the Messi question for the umpteenth time, his answer could scarcely have been less scientific. Messi plays when Messi wants to play.  He sometimes needs great perseverance and patience. In the first half, Leverkusen barely crossed the halfway line, such was its obsession with surrounding the key player with a posse of men. “During the break,” acknowledged the Leverkusen coach, Robin Dutt, “I asked my players whether they wanted to participate, or whether they wanted to be the audience.”  Point taken, the home side stepped forward and did trouble Barça’s vulnerable defense. However, that opened Leverkusen up to the counterattack.  The first two goals involved Messi’s doing what the absent, aching Xavi might have done. He made the passes that released Sánchez behind the German lines. Each move started around the halfway line, each pass invited Sánchez to find the space when three or four Leverkusen defenders rushed to Messi.  With an audacious flick, Messi hooked the ball into the path of Sanchez for the first goal. Messi then set the ball rolling in the center circle before Cesc Fàbregas passed it with laser-like precision for the speedy Chilean to score again.  Messi was entitled to something for himself. Minutes from the end, supposedly tired by his workload, he spread the ball out wide to Dani Alves. Messi kept on running until Alves gave him back the ball so that, just six yards out, the phenomenon stretched forward to volley his goal.  Hagemann’s theory is common-sense. “If the best footballer already knows what is going to happen,” he wrote, “then he will know where to direct the attention. Players like Messi are great at decision-making. They have anticipation abilities that help them solve complex problems in the best possible way.” Players like Messi are one in a generation.
Lionel Messi's stellar play in the Champions League against Leverkusen gave a lift to soccer on a week when it needed it.