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LIONEL Messi, six-time Ballon d’Or winner, four-time Champions League champion and ten-time LaLiga winner.
The Argentine is announced by many as the best player of all time.
Having graced the Camp Nou for over 15 years, many great players have purred to hit the pitch along with the iconic Barca No10.
Neymar referred to that as playing with his “idol”, while Xavi said: “It is clear that Messi is at a level above all others. Those who do not see that are blind.”
But while those two were fantastic in their own right for Barcelona, not everyone who has had the pleasure of playing with Messi can say the same.
Barça bosses are even beginning to be criticized for “wasting” part of Messi’s peak with poor decision-making.
And international honors also elude him, with some of his Argentine teammates not hitting the mark …
We take a look at an XI of those who should feel more fortunate to have played with Leo.
Willy Caballero
The bright-headed Argentine is well known to English football fans, having warmed up benches at Chelsea and before Manchester City reached these shores in 2014.
His performances in the alleged League Cup earned him a place on his national team’s World Cup team in 2018.
Chief Jorge Sampaoli made the bold call to start it in the first two group games in the absence of warm-up partner Prem Sergio Romero.
However, the decision failed spectacularly against Croatia, when Caballero fiercely lashed out a backward pass directly to Ante Rebic, who overcame him to set potential finalists on their way to a 3-0 victory.
Douglas
Douglas was one of the many strange signings of Barcelona to make this list.
The Brazilian arrived at the Camp Nou as a 24-year-old stranger from Sao Paulo in 2014 and was never convinced by a Barça shirt.
He seemed nervous and nervous in his strange appearances, as if he couldn’t believe he was there.
Douglas quickly fell behind even in the future, Brighton Martin Montoya’s right back in the hierarchical order, and was sent to pack in numerous loan periods before the end of his nearly criminally long five-year contract in 2019.
Now play [now and then] for Besiktas in Turkey.
Santiago Vergini
The awkward defender is probably best remembered in England for scoring one of the most spectacular goals of all time for Sunderland against Southampton in a remarkable 8-0 loss to the Black Cats.
If that’s the only memory from British fans of Vergini’s spell in the Premier League, it’s appropriate.
Despite this aberration, that same month he lined up alongside Messi in a 7-0 clash over Hong Kong for his country, a match in which the 5-foot-6-inch striker packed twice.
Now 31, Vergini turns out for San Lorenzo in his native Argentina.
Dmytro Chygrynskiy
Dmytryo Chygrynskiy came to Barcelona for £ 20 million in the summer of 2009, a lot of money for a defender in those days.
He had impressed Shakhtar in his run to win the Uefa Cup last season, convincing Pep Guardiola to splash the furry Ukrainian.
But he struggled to learn Spanish and was unable to evict Carles Puyol or Gerard Piqué in the back for the European champions.
Chygrynskiy was sent back to Shakhtar after just 851 minutes of action for Barcelona, although he was rumored to be against Guardiola’s wishes, as President Sandro Rosell sanctioned the deal not being so impressed with the signing.
Marc Muniesa
Marc Muniesa received a medal from the Champions League winners in 2009 without playing a single minute in that season’s competition, by virtue of simply sitting on the bench for the final.
If, warming up that day on the touch line of the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Muniesa imagined that this type of occasion would be a habitual element of his career, he would be half right … there would be a lot of time sitting on the bench.
After just four appearances for Blaugrana, he was sent to pack Stoke of all places, where the most appearances he managed in a Premier League season was a paltry 19.
Now he plays for Al-Arabi in the Saudi League “Stars”.
Alex Song
Once considered a fairly solid Premier League player at Arsenal, Alex Song walked the well-traveled path from the Emirates to Camp Nou in 2012.
Unfortunately for him, it was more like Alexander Hleb than Thierry Henry.
The Cameroonian failed to impress as Sergio Busquets’ stand-in, and is probably best remembered for mistakenly thinking that Captain Puyol wanted to select him to lift a trophy, rather than recent liver tumor survivor Eric Abidal standing by his side.
Now 32, he has had spells at West Ham, Rubin Kazan and FC Sion.
Enzo Perez
Enzo Pérez is a scruffy midfielder with a lot of tenacity, but not much more.
Javier Mascherano often had to fully charge midfield on that Argentine side, largely because alongside him, Pérez somehow won 26 games.
After a steamy stint in Valencia after joining Benfica in 2014, the 34-year-old has represented River Plate in his home country for the past three years.
Sandro Ramirez
It’s hard to believe that Sandro Ramírez is still on the books at Everton, following his disastrous transfer in the summer of 2017.
It is even more difficult to believe that he made 32 appearances in an attack that also featured Messi, Neymar and Luis Suárez.
The Spanish collected seven goals for the team from whose academy he graduated, although six more than he scored for the Toffees.
Now 24, Sandro has scored five goals in the past three years.
Kevin-Prince Boateng
When you think of “Boateng” and “Messi,” your mind is likely to draw on the humiliation of Kevin-Prince’s brother Jerome’s Argentine against Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
But there was a strange spell when Leo was playing alongside Tottenham’s old failure in 2019, when Barcelona signed it on loan from Sassuolo.
The Ghanaian international looked like a fish out of the water when Ernesto Valverde threw him in front.
Since then he has gone to Besiktas and Fiorentina.
Ricky Alvarez
It seemed like a coup when Sunderland managed to sign Ricky Alvarez on loan from Inter Milan on the day of the summer 2014 deadline.
After all, it was an Argentine international who had just spent the summer at the World Cup alongside Lionel Messi.
However, it was a disaster because Álvarez was not fit and trash.
The Black Cats became embroiled in a legal mess after trying to get out of a permanent deal, and the horror transfer was rumored to have finally cost Sunderland around £ 20 million in total.
Franco Di Santo
You are Lionel Messi, you are the captain of your national team, a regular winner of the Ballon d’Or, it is March 2013 and you have traveled the high altitude of Bolivia to play in a World Cup tie.
It’s 1-1, the conditions are overwhelming, the season is not going well, so imagine how you feel when your coach is preparing a Wigan Athletic striker to come and save the day.
Well that’s exactly what happened except the save the day bit.
After gathering a whopping five Premier League goals that season for Roberto Martínez’s team, Di Santo found himself playing with Messi for Argentina.
The score remained 1-1, and luckily for Messi he only had to play once with Di Santo again, although perhaps the former Wigan and Blackburn player could have scored one of those Gonzalo Higuain opportunities in the Copa América finals and The World Cup. .
I guess we’ll never know.
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