It really is Lionel’s world now: Messi has remade football in his own image | Barney Ronay

From U9s in parks to Pep Guardiola’s champions, no one person has had such a vast impact on a major sport’s footprint as Barcelona’s superstar

There was some consolation this week for anyone feeling a little maxed-out by the relentless individual brilliance of Lionel Messi. We have at least found something he isn’t good at on a football pitch. It turns out Messi isn’t very good at punching Fabinho in the head.

Frankly, he’s terrible at it. The TV replays showed Messi doing something along these lines at the Camp Nou just before that mind-bending free-kick goal. Fabinho looked stunned at the time, but perhaps he was just shocked by the nature of the blow, a slappy, wristy thing executed with laughably poor technique, no follow through, no turn of the hips to engage the larger muscles, the kind of punch a cornered Jacob Rees-Mogg might throw fighting his way through an angry mob of undersized gingerbread men.

Related: Barcelona president relishes treating Lionel Messi’s genius as normal

This is a football version of the Great Man Theory, that history is changed by individuals, not wider structural forces

Related: Klopp took a risk with his tactics at Barcelona – and Messi made him pay | Jonathan Wilson