article_snippet: Messi’s only 27 but Messi has not yet achieved what many of the other greats of the game achieved, either for club or country.
article_snippet: A graphic circulated on social media recently that showed all the records Messi had broken.
article_snippet: Pele, for instance, scored 1,000 goals in Messi career.
article_snippet: But the test of Messi greatness was that Messi won the World Cup three times with Brazil.
article_snippet: It might have been four if Messi had not been hacked out of the 1966 tournament.
article_snippet: Messi has never been able to lift Argentina to a World Cup victory as Diego Maradona, another rival for the ‘best ever’, did in 1986.
article_snippet: At last year’s tournament in Brazil, where Argentina made the final, Messi produced some wonderful moments but Messi was not even Messi team’s best player.
article_snippet: Messi reached the World Cup final with Argentina but was unable to grab the game by the scruff of the neck .
article_snippet: Messi’s zealous champions point out, with some justification, that international football is not as prestigious or as important as international football was a few decades ago.
article_snippet: Messi has played for Barcelona, Messi almost universally regarded as the outstanding side of the last decade and yet, remind me, how many Champions League titles has Messi won?
article_snippet: Champions League is now seen as the ultimate test of a player’s greatness and Messi has only won Champions League twice.
article_snippet: Just remember that in the same way English football did actually exist before the Premier League, great players populated our game long before Messi walked this earth.