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Date: May 2, 2009 Venue: Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, Madrid. La Liga game.
Guardiola made a decision. He moved Messi off the right wing and placed him at the edge of the forward formation – but without the traditional attacking role.
Samuel Eto’o went to the right, Thierry Henry went to the left, and Messi was told to drop, receive, decide. It was 6-2 at full time. The False Nine are reborn.
It was nothing new. Gustav Szebs’s Hungary demolished England in their own backyard in 1953, in a 6–3 victory for England, he repeatedly dropped Nandor Hidegkut to midfield, dragging the center backs and creating space for Ferenc Puskas and Sander Kosciusz.
Johan Cruyff, who was originally under Riens Michels, played a pivotal role for the Netherlands in his overall footballing philosophy.
At first, Messi became an unsolvable problem. When he dropped between the lines, Madrid’s central defenders had to decide: follow him and leave him a hole, or stay and give him more space.
Neither option worked. Messi crossed the gap unchallenged. With Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Yaya Toure at the back and Henry and Eto’o playing wide in defence, every decision the opposition made was wrong.
Guardiola repeated the attempt weeks later in the Champions League final against Manchester United. Messi scored with a header 20 minutes before the end of the game.
Between 2011 and 2013, Messi scored 96 goals in 69 La Liga games.
In the year The first came when he was 22. The most recent came when he was 36.
“I wasn’t paying too much attention to tactics,” Messi told journalist Juan Pablo Varski in 2024.
“But I learned a lot with Guardiola. I started to understand spaces, keeping the ball, how the game really works.”
