Messi: Diver or Victim?

Much has been made of the recent brutality in El Clasico this past weekend. On the receiving end of this was, unsurprisingly, Leo Messi. You could easily make a case that Messi is the best player in the world, but even easier, you could make a case that he is by no means the strongest. At 5'6" and wire-thin, it's somewhat odd that thug tactics aren't used more often against him. Here are the fouls:


Now, I'd say many of those were hard fouls, and maybe a couple were a tad dirty, but to be fair, I just don't think any of this is deliberately malicious. This was just hard football. Messi did act up quite a bit, but to be fair, you try running at full speed and getting a cleat to the calf. And his resiliency was shown by his late goal and his refusal to be taken out of the game. Overall, you'd have to say that was a painful but effective performance for Messi. He got a goal, had the defense completely focused on him and had his archrivals rack up 6 yellow cards in the process. And did I mention Barca won?

While I think Messi gave a decent performance, what is perplexing is the public outrage that followed the match. These weren't Wayne Rooney Tackles:



What happened was a team sent its big guys to bully a diminutive finesse player (have these journalists watched an Arsenal game this season?) and used up all their yellow cards, and the official's goodwill, in the process. This is like saying an intentional foul in basketball is poor sportsmanship. You have a foul to give up, it could be advantageous to take that foul now, and so you commit a foul. Obviously, no one wants to see a repeat of the Eduardo injury (or the countless others like it) but those can happen on any number of tackles, clean and dirty, not to mention with no one around at all. I couldn't find a video of it, but McBride's injury with Fulham two years ago springs to mind, where after a goal he lands awkwardly and tore his ACL. My only point is, soccer is a contact sport with fouls. In a situation where players have a certain amount of leeway before they're red carded, players will, and should, use all of that leeway if they so choose. I think it's more damning that Barca didn't have their own hard men stand up for Messi, but to the same degree, I'm not sure who they would be. I found Cruyff's analysis interesting, with him stating:
"They [Madrid] kicked him about all throughout the game but he was partly asking for it. You are always going to be fouled when you play in the centre of the field. Madrid knew this and they were ready and they kept kicking him knowing they won’t be punished. If he [Messi] had played closer to the penalty area, then he would have drawn a direct freekick when he was fouled, or even a penalty if he was inside the box. If you know that you are going to get beaten up, then at least make sure the team benefit from it."

I would say there is some merit to Cruyff's thoughts, but I find them to be exceedingly harsh. Messi is an engine for the Barcelona offense, and it's quite difficult to really power the offense from the penalty box. To a certain degree, he couldn't do much if he wanted to stay an active part of the game, and to resign himself to penalty-hunting in the box would have been the biggest victory for Los Blancos. That strategy would only encourage all other teams who aren't in Barcelona's class (which at the moment could be almost any other team on the planet) to just rack up foul after foul on Messi knowing that they can completely neutralize him. The only thing I would have changed from Barcelona's response is I would have had Puyol absolutely upend Raul, say a nice few words, and let Madrid know that Barcelona may be more talented, but they are no pansies.