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Lionel Messi Is Impossible

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By
In their
Group F
World
Cup
match
late last
month,
Ian Walton / Getty Images
Argentina
and Iran were still deadlocked after 90 minutes. With the game in stoppage time and the score tied at 0-0,
Lionel Messi took the ball near the right corner of the penalty area, held it for a moment, then broke left,
found his seam, took his strike and curled it in from 29 yards. What was going to be a draw was now a
win, and Messi had put Argentina into the Round of 16.
It was the sort of play that inspired the phrase Messi magic. But for those who only watch soccer when
the World Cup rolls around, this was probably only the second (or at most third) goal theyd seen from the
little man they call La Pulga (The Flea). Despite having 407 career goals in club and international play
(including a record 91 in 2012 alone) and a record four Ballon dOr (World Player of the Year) awards,
until this years tournament, Messi hadnt scored in a World Cup match since 2006.
Since scoring an eerily familiar goal in the 2007 Copa Del Rey, Messi has constantly been compared to
Argentine great and his former national team coach Diego Maradona. Despite his young age he turned
27 on June 24 Messi has taken substantial criticism in Argentina and elsewhere for failing to engineer a
World Cup run like that of the man with the Hand of God.
To Argentina devotees, it probably doesnt help that during Messis tenure at FC Barcelona the club team
has won two FIFA Club World Cups to go with six La Liga and three UEFA (All-European) championships.
Perhaps this year will be different. Messi is finally having the kind of World Cup expected of him. He has
scored in every game so far (four goals overall), including one on a beautiful free kick against Nigeria and
the aforementioned game-winner against Iran. As of this writing, FiveThirtyEight gives Messi and his
compatriots a 16 percent chance of winning the tournament second only to host nation Brazil.
Even though national teams are patchwork and only play together for a handful of games each year, how
Messi plays with Argentina relates to what is ultimately a fair criticism of his success: Most of it has come
for FC Barcelona, a free-spending virtual all-star squad, packed with many of the worlds best players.1
As the primary striker for such a juggernaut, it can be hard to detangle Messis goal-scoring prowess from
Barcelonas general offensive dominance. And the 2013-14 season hasnt helped: Battling minor injuries
and facing competition for touches from superstar arrival Neymar, Messis most recent season was
slightly below par by his standards, yet Barca finished second in La Liga. (And in the seven games Messi
missed, they went 6-1.) He still scored 41 goals, but that total was less than the 60 he scored the year
before, and fewer than the 51 that rival Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid scored en route to capturing the
Ballon dOr.
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I think this criticism is fair and I found it intriguing enough to look into the matter myself. So I gathered
and organized data, crunched it, re-crunched it, and gathered more data2 and crunched it some more.
By now Ive studied nearly every aspect of Messis game, down to a touch-by-touch level: his shooting
and scoring production; where he shoots from; how often he sets up his own shots; what kind of kicks he
uses to make those shots; his ability to take on defenders; how accurate his passes are; the kind of
passes he makes; how often he creates scoring chances; how often those chances lead to goals; even
how his defensive playmaking compares to other high-volume shooters.
And thats just the stuff that made it into this article. I arrived at a conclusion that I wasnt really expecting
or prepared for: Lionel Messi is impossible.
Its not possible to shoot more efficiently from outside the penalty area than many players shoot inside it.
Its not possible to lead the world in weak-kick goals and long-range goals. Its not possible to score on
unassisted plays as well as the best players in the world score on assisted ones. Its not possible to lead
the worlds forwards both in taking on defenders and in dishing the ball to others. And its certainly not
possible to do most of these things by insanely wide margins.
But Messi does all of this and more.
Scoring
I think its fair to say that goals mean more in soccer than points do in most sports. And Messi scores a lot
of them. Since the end of the 2010 World Cup, Messi has been responsible for 291 goals and assists in
the 201 of his games in club and national team play tracked by the sports analytics company Opta. How
does that compare with other soccer stars across top leagues around the world? (The Opta data set
includes 16,574 players and 24,904 games in both league and international play since the end of the 2010
World Cup.)
Coming in just behind Messi with 289 goals and assists
since the 2010 World Cup is Cristiano Ronaldo, Messis rival
from Real Madrid. When it comes to scoring, these two
arent just on top of the pile, theyre hang-gliding somewhere
way above it. Messi and Ronaldo have been compared to
each other so often by sports media and fans alike that it
almost feels trite to compare them again, but it cant be
helped. If we want to compare Messi to all players with a
remotely similar volume of production, were left with
Ronaldo.
Now lets leave assists aside for a second (much more on
them later), and concentrate on Messis shooting. Like
Ronaldo, he has an enormous number of goals, but also
morris-feature-messi-1
takes an enormous number of shots. If this were basketball,
we might expect a negative (or at least decelerating) relationship between shot volume and shot efficiency
the more shots a player takes the less efficient he is.3 But it turns out this isnt really the case in soccer:
More efficient shooters tend to take more shots. Despite this, Messi is still a trend-breaker:4
Of the 866 players who qualified for that plot by playing
in 50-plus games and averaging at least one shot attempt
per game Messi is the ninth-most efficient shooter
overall (Ronaldo is 173rd), and hes by far the most
efficient of anyone with a similar shot volume. The
highest-volume shooter who is more efficient is Mario
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Gomez, the former Bayern Munich striker, who takes about

two-thirds as many shots as Messi.
But in soccer, unlike in basketball, shooting efficiency isnt
the the single most important stat. Since the value of a
possession in soccer is much lower, so is the cost of
missing a shot (and missed shots often have good
outcomes as well). That said, quality shot opportunities in
soccer are still a limited resource, so making the most of
them is important.
To generalize a bit, some of the value a shooter provides
comes from taking more and better shots (e.g. taking them
closer to the goal, at a better angle, amid fewer defenders,
morris-feature-messi-2
etc.), and some of it comes from putting in those shots
more often. For example, Messis typical regular (non-set piece) shot comes from 14.9 yards out, while
Ronaldos average shot comes from 20.1 yards out. ESPN/TruMedia has a model for estimating the
chances of a player making each shot he takes based on type and location (this metric is known as
expected goals). The difference between a players actual goals and his expected goals is called goals
above average (or GAA). Because Messi takes shots that are more likely to go in, his average attempt
has an expectation of .182 goals, while the average Ronaldo shot has an expectation of .124 goals so
we would expect Messis shooting to be more efficient based on that alone. However, Messi has also
exceeded that expectation by a greater amount than Ronaldo has. Messi scored .220 goals per shot
attempt for .038 GAA per goal. Ronaldo scored .139 goals per attempt, so he had .015 GAA per goal.
Heres a comparison of the top 20 shot-takers overall (regular shots in all games since the 2010 World
Cup):
In this group, Messi both takes the best shots and does the most with
those attempts.
If we break this down using shot-location data, its clear that Messi is
highly efficient across a wide range of distances.
The percentage of shots Messi makes from outside the penalty area is
absolutely stunning. He scores almost as often per shot from outside the
penalty area (12.1 percent) as most players do inside it (13.1 percent).

morris-feature-messi-table-1

Of 8,335 players in our dataset who have taken at least one shot from
outside the box, only 1,835 have scored from that distance at any point.
There are 47 players with 50 or more attempts from outside the box
without a single goal, and about 500 with at least 20 attempts and no
goals. Messi leads the world with 21 goals from outside the penalty area,
on just 173 shot attempts.

Ronaldo takes more than twice as many shots from this distance, but still has fewer goals overall. Messi,
meanwhile, scores at a remarkable rate. Adjusting for shot quality with the GAA model, Messi is running
12.6 goals above expectation (based on shot-by-shot expectation, not the trend line in the chart).
Ronaldo, with more than twice as many shots, ran just 5.5 goals above expectation, and no one but Messi
is higher than 7.5 goals.
The 21st of those outside-the-penalty-area goals was Messis extra-time winner against Iran, which came
from 29 yards out (33 yards to where it went in). That goal was quintessential Messi: He got the ball on
the right side of the field, held it for a few seconds, broke to the middle and in heavy traffic swerved
it in on off his left foot. Plus he did it all without an assist.
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Unassisted Shooting
Despite dishing a large number of assists (more on that to come), Messi sometimes gets called selfish.
But maybe he isnt selfish enough.
About 44 percent of Messis open (non-set piece) shots are individual plays, taken without an assist.5
This is lower than the 46 percent of unassisted shots for players overall, but Messi scores on these shots
more than 23 percent of the time, compared to all players 5 percent. Additionally, he gains .089 goals
above average on each unassisted shot. Ronaldo gains .023, and the average player is slightly negative
at -.004 GAA.
Lets look at how Messis assisted shooting compares to other players with 100 or more shots both
assisted and unassisted6:
Somehow, Messi has done even better when taking it on his own than
when somebody sets him up. Moreover, on unassisted shots he shoots
nearly 10 percent and .044 GAA better than the next best player (Sergio
Aguero for Manchester City) does, despite taking the fourth-most such
shots of the 28 players in the group.
To be clear, you could probably choose any skills for your axes and
produce a similar graph. Messi can shoot it just about any which way.
Here are some miscellaneous shooting stats hes accrued at Barcelona:
Messi loves his left foot, shooting with it 78 percent of the time, and
scoring 23 percent. But dont sleep on his right foot: When he uses it, he
scores 23 percent of the time. He shoots slightly below average on (a
limited number of) headers (10 percent vs. 13 percent).
morris-feature-messi-4
About 8 percent of his shots are weak kicks (compared to 6 percent
for all players in the data set), but he makes 27 percent of them, and does so more often than wed
expect. He has an average GAA of .026 on those kicks (all players: 5 percent shooting on weak
kicks with -.055 GAA). Only 5 percent of his kicks are strong ones (compared to 8 percent for all
players), but those kicks score 36 percent of the time, and have .251 GAA each! All players have
scored on 11 percent of their strong kick shots and have an average .051 GAA per shot.
About 12 percent of his shots have swerve on them (compared to 10 percent for all players); 31
percent of those swervy kicks score, for a huge .202 GAA (all players: 8 percent, .020 GAA).
On direct free kicks (like the one he scored on against Nigeria), Messi has scored about 8 percent
of the time (compared to all players 5 percent), with .021 GAA per shot (Ronaldo has scored on 7
percent with an identical .021 GAA).7
Messi has scored on 86 percent of his penalty kicks, versus an average of 77 percent for all
players. But put one check-mark in Ronaldos column, as he has scored on 93 percent of his penalty
attempts. Since both are the primary PK-takers for both their club and national teams, this difference
if it held up in the long run would be worth about three-quarters of a goal per year.
To make all those unassisted shots possible, Messi has to take on a lot of defenders one on one. Theres
a stat for that, and in my view its one of the most revealing, reflecting both Messis skill and style, and the
relationship between the two. Of all forwards in our data set whove played 100-plus games, he takes on
defenders the most, and hes the most successful at it.
The only forward who takes on defenders nearly as
aggressively as Messi is Luis Suarez, the Uruguayan
striker for Liverpool who is perhaps too aggressive for his
own good (ahem). Suarez is successful less than 35
percent of the time.
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This may help explain how Messi gets so many better

shots, and why his unassisted shots are so good. It also
points to the main stylistic difference between Messi and
Ronaldo: Ronaldo takes more mid-range shots but misses
a lot of them; Messi tries to beat a lot more defenders,
loses sometimes, and then makes up for it (and then some)
by having better assisting and shooting opportunities as a
result. Thats not to say one approach is better than the
other, but note that it means that the observed shooting
gap between them is at least somewhat exaggerated.
While Messi appears to shoot much more efficiently, thats
partly because he loses the ball more during failed take-on
attempts, while Ronaldo loses it more because of missed
morris-feature-messi-5
shots. Only the second of those is accounted for in
shooting stats. (Ill get more into how we can account for loss of possession in the touch-by-touch analysis
later.)
Passing and Assists
From the above, you might think Messi is a selfish player. Or you might assume that if Messi is so good at
shooting, hed focus on it to the exclusion of other skills. But, in true Wayne Gretzky-eque fashion, Messi
is also one of the top assisters in our data set. Once again, that makes him a crazy outlier: No one else
(aside from, yes, Ronaldo) even comes close to his combination of goals scored versus goals dished.
Not only is Messi the top game-by-game goal-scorer of the
last four years, hes the third-most productive distributor of
assists, despite being the primary scorer on his own team!
Only Mesut Ozil and Franck Ribery8 earned more assists
than Messi, and Ozil did it on Real Madrid9 setting up
Cristiano Ronaldo.
But how does he do it? The biggest obstacle to evaluating
Messis passing ability is accounting for the fact that he
plays for the most pass-happy team in the world. Watching
Barcelona can be a bit like watching a playground game of
keep away. Barcelonas players are infamous for their
tiki-taka style of play, which relies on an enormous amount
of short, high percentage passing. Above all else, they try
morris-feature-messi-6
to maintain possession of the ball until a chance opens up.
This sounds like a great strategy, but theres a reason it isnt employed universally: To make it work, a
team has to be stocked with amazing passers, and it has to have strikers capable of creating chances
against set defenses.10
Messi is both of those things. And whats more, his passing profile is nothing like the other Barcelona
forwards, who typically send 72 percent of their passes back or square. Messi is far more likely to try to
advance the ball toward the goal, and far more likely to succeed:

Messi makes more passes than the other forwards, with a higher percentage of those passes trying to
advance the ball toward the goal, and a higher percentage of those passes finding their targets (typical
Messi!). His 3,800-plus completed forward passes are nearly twice as many as any forward in our data set
(Francesco Totti for FC Roma has 2,200, followed by Wayne Rooney, the English striker, with 1,800 and
Ronaldo with 1,500).
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One measure of the quality of a group of passes is how many are completed successfully, but it also
matters what happens when those passes get where theyre going. It doesnt help if a player passes 60
yards to someone swarmed with defenders. So a useful metric (made possible by play-by-play data) is the
percentage of a players passes that lead to successful plays on the other end meaning the receiving
player manages to get off a shot, or passes the ball to someone else, and so on.
As it turns out, not only does Messi pass the ball forward aggressively, he does so accurately, and the
balls he delivers are successful a very high percentage of the time.
For example, lets look at Messis long ball forward passes from the midfield area. Ive created a scatter
comparing each players completion percentage for these passes to the percentage of them that are
successful, and Ive shown the volume of long pass attempts for each player as bubble sizes:
Messi is among the most accurate passers for both metrics,
and no one with as many attempts is more accurate.11 There
are players who complete a higher percentage of these passes
and/or are more successful with them, but theyre typically
being more selective in their attempts. For example, Ronaldos
success rate of 60 percent beats Messis 54 percent (with a
slightly lower completion percentage), but Ronaldo has only 35
successful long ball passes to Messis 81.

morris-feature-messi-7

Given that, its no surprise that Messi excels at the through-ball,

the delicate and gorgeous play that requires perfect
circumstances and perfect timing to be successful. Messi
attempts almost twice as many of these passes as any other
forward, and still manages to beat the trend.
And then theres the bread and butter of aggressive passing:
moving it toward the goal on the opponents side of the field. In
attacking territory, no one attacks as often as Messi does, and
no one has more success doing so.

morris-feature-messi-8

morris-feature-messi-9

These passes
are where most
assists come
from, and indeed,
Messi has the
most assists per
game from these
kinds of passes
of any forward,
by a large
margin. And
again, despite
making twice as
many attempts
as most people,

he beats expectations.
Touch by Touch
By this point, it should be evident that Messi has at least a little bit of skill. But theres still heavy lifting to
do: We have to show that he actually makes his team better.
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First, to ensure that were celebrating the greatness of Messi and not the greatness of Barcelona, we need
to make sense of Messi on Barcelona. The easiest way to do that is to evaluate Barcelona without Messi,
also known as the Spanish national team.
The contrast between Spain in 2010 and Spain in 2014 seems huge: The 2010 team won the World Cup,
and the 2014 team was tied for first in the tournament to be mathematically eliminated. But lost in this
narrative is that the 2010 championship team wasnt all that great, at least on offense. That World Cup
team scored fewer goals per game than this years: only eight goals in seven games in 2010, while this
years group-stage dropouts scored four goals in three. (Thats 1.2 goals per game overall.) For
comparison, in the 2010-11 UEFA Champions League (the highest level of competition for European club
soccer), Barcelona scored 30 goals in 13 games. In 47 UEFA matches since 2010, Barcelona has scored
104 goals, or 1.08 goals per game more than a Spanish team comprised of a similar offensive core and
using the same tiki-taka playing style, minus Lionel Messi.
Perhaps thats an unfair comparison to make but its consistent with the theory that Barcelonas play
keep away until lightning strikes offense really only works when it has Messi as its striker.
Between Messis shots taken and chances created, he is responsible for about 48 percent of Barcelonas
regular (non-penalty, non-set play) shot attempts. Yet he and the players he assists score about 60
percent of Barcas goals.
In fact, the more involved Messi is in a shot attempt, the more likely his team is to score. He has scored
on 22.1 percent of his regular (non-set, non-penalty, non-shootout) shots for Barca himself. The people to
whom hes dished assists and chances have scored on 18.1 percent of their shots. Meanwhile, Barcelona
shots that didnt come from Messis foot12 or Messis passing scored just 12.5 percent of the time.
Even though Barcelona is one of the best teams in the world, theres a huge difference between when
Messi is involved in creating shots and chances and when he isnt. Here are the equivalent differences for
all players since 2010 with more than 100 games played and four or more shots or assist chances per
game:
Of course, these are raw shooting percentages and
dont account for the types of shots each player is
taking or assisting, or the number of attempts. Its
generally harder to stay valuable over a larger number
of shots, and we havent yet factored in that difficulty.
For that, we turn back to the goals above
average model, which compares each shot or chance
outcome with its expectation. From this, we can tell
whether a player has exceeded expectations for all of
his shot attempts and chances created. Then we can
do the same for all shots taken by his team without the
players involvement, and compare the two. For
example, if the player scored .02 goals above
morris-feature-messi-13
expectation per shot attempt, and the rest of his team
scored -.01 goals less than expectation, that players value-added would be +.03 goals per shot (the value
above replacement for that player on that team). Now lets plot that added value against each players13
total offensive participation (the percentage of team shots hes involved with):
Finally, after however many charts, we see a diminishing
return. At least for everyone not named Lionel Messi. He
once again tops the field, impervious to the burden.
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But thats just what happens once the shots are lined up.
If we want to explore a players efficiency, we have to
look into his touches more deeply. For this purpose, I
created a stat called possessions used. Its a little bit
analogous to usage rate in basketball, and incorporates
the number of touches in which a player:
Takes a shot;
Passes the ball to a player who takes a shot;
Turns the ball over;
Tries to pass the ball and fails;
Tries to take on a defender and fails.
In other words, its a stat meant to reflect anything that
ends a teams possession, whether that outcome is
positive or negative. Events that simply prolong the possession (taking on a defender and succeeding, or
passing the ball to another teammate who does not take a shot) arent factored in.
morris-feature-messi-10

Obviously passing the ball is an important skill (which I covered a bit above), but for this metric I just want
to know about the relative likelihood of good outcomes (goals, assists) to bad ones (misses, turnovers,
etc.) when the player does something possession-ending.14 Looking at players who use more than 15
possessions per game, we can plot possessions used against scoring and assists like so:
Cutting out all the passing that doesnt end in a shot, Messi
generates the most points per touch of any player with a
similar usage rate. But there are a couple of other
important things to notice in this graph: Despite not taking
as many shots, Messi uses more possessions per game
than Ronaldo does. This is generally because Messi is
much more likely to take on defenders, and thus is much
more likely to lose possession of the ball or turn it over
entirely. (He is also relatively more likely to set up a
potential assist.)
Importantly, turnovers in soccer arent as big of a deal as
they are in basketball or American football. Shots, even
bad ones, are more of a limited resource in soccer than
morris-feature-messi-11
possessions. Risking a turnover to increase your chances
of scoring a goal even by a small amount can be worth it.
Finally, Messis defense is consistent with that of a high-volume striker.15 That hes practically
munchkin-sized (hes only 1.69 met ahem, excuse me 5 7 tall) seems not to matter.
To look at Messis defensive skill, I combined successful tackles,16 interceptions and blocked shots, then
adjusted for number of opponent possessions (as I did with offense above).
There are a few lines where Messis stats are
considerably worse than his peers (meaning Ronaldos):
He doesnt get a lot of clearances although this is
partly style, as Messi is more willing to pass out of
defensive territory (or even take on defenders). And he
doesnt go for (or succeed at) a lot of aerials (50-50 balls

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in the air). While I havent studied this aspect of his game

in depth, soccer experts in the FiveThirtyEight office
theorize that it has something to do with his stature.
Conclusion
How should Argentina fans feel about all this, given the
disappointment theyve experienced in World Cups past
and the hopes theyve pinned on Messi this year? So far
in the 2014 tournament, Messi has been erasing
whatever gap there was between his Barcelona stats and
his Argentina stats, with style. And that gap was never
really as big as it appeared.
morris-feature-messi-12

Since the 2010 World Cup, Messi has scored 19 goals

and six assists for Argentina in 22 games (.9 goals per game and .3 assists per game, compared to 1.1
and .4 for Barca). For shooting/assisting efficiency, he has scored .199 GAA per game for Argentina
versus .262 for Barca. He also has better defensive stats for Argentina, so even if there are persistent
differences, its quite possible it has to do with style and Messis role on each team rather than the quality
of his play.
And 22 games is a tiny sample. Even so, these stats are perfectly consistent with the argument that Messi
is the best footballer on earth: That .199 GAA is better than the .175 GAA per game that Ronaldo has
earned at Real Madrid since 2010. This is what that .199 GAA looks like:
In other words, if Barca-Messi and Argentina-Messi were
two different people, even based solely on the stats
recorded since 2010, theres a good chance theyd be the
two best players in the world.
One of them is playing on Tuesday.
CORRECTION (July 1, 12:32 p.m.): The axes in an earlier
version of the chart on through-balls above misstated what
they measured. The chart shows attempted through-balls
and through-ball assists, not attempted and successful
assists.
CORRECTION (July 1, 1:06 p.m.): This article originally
misstated that Cristiano Ronaldo had 289 goals since the
2010 World Cup. He had 230 goals, and 59 assists in that time, for 289 combined goals and assists.
morris-feature-messi-14

CORRECTION (July 7, 7:29 a.m.): An earlier version of this article also incorrectly said that Ronaldo
had 41 successful long ball passes when in fact he had 35.
Filed under , , , , , , ,
Benjamin Morris
Benjamin Morris researches and writes about sports for FiveThirtyEight.
273
All Benjamin Morris
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