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Lionel Messi: The evolution of the greatest footballer of all time The way his first coach tells the story, the kid wasn’t even supposed to be on the pitch. It was his older brother’s game. They were a player short. Salvador Aparicio looked over at the stands and saw a small boy playing by himself, in private communion with the ball. When he asked his mother if he could borrow him, she said he didn’t know how to play football. The first time the game came his way, sure enough, the kid stood stock still and watched the ball roll by. Moms make the best scouts. But the second time — Aparicio remembered this many years later — the ball hit his left leg and something happened. Picture lightning shooting up a tiny spinal column, if you want. Unplumbed regions of the brain glittering like fireworks in the dark. Choirs of angels cranking a heavenly spotlight to shine on this one particular patch of dirt in a working-class neighbourhood in Rosario, Argentina. Whatever makes it make sense to you: the gift was just there. “He controlled the ball and took off diagonally across the middle of the pitch, dribbling,” said Aparicio. “He dribbled past anyone in his path.” There’s a video of the coach telling this story as an old man, fluttering his hand like a fish whipping through water. Then he stops talking and pulls a face that can only be described as a kind of shrug, as though even at the end of his life he was still struggling to accept the cosmic logic of what came next. “I was screaming, ‘Shoot! Shoot!’” Aparicio said. “But he couldn’t do it. He was too small.” The greatest player ever to kick a ball wasn’t ready to do the thing he was put on this Earth to do. The gift was there even before his left foot was. The Dribbling Winger It’s not just that he blows through four or five opponents straight from kick-off. It’s the quick, choppy steps, the light kiss of the ball with the outside of his left boot to send a defender sprawling in the dirt before skipping around him. He’s running at the speed of the ball, letting it roll under his body so that every little half-stride is a threat to slice sideways or burst forward. The style is unmistakable. Even back then, he refused to go down. Most dribblers will stop and start, lean, lunge, twist, turn and, sooner or later, get knocked off balance. The better the dribbler, the more risks they take in tight spaces; the greater the risk, the harder defenders punish them for it. Messi just kept running. He stayed low to the ground, using those quick little steps for control and windmilling his forearms for balance. By age 12, he was dragging would-be tacklers behind him like an NFL running back. You know who else dribbled like that? Diego Armando Maradona, the manic Argentine god of football mischief, the most beloved player ever to wear his country’s blue and white. Off the pitch, the shy kid from Rosario couldn’t have been more different from the brash Buenos Aires idol, but on it their similarities were uncanny: two short, sturdy, left-footed dribblers with shaggy hair and the same driving style, the delicate close control, slaloming through thickets of violence to create impossible goals. In the 1986 World Cup quarter-finals against England, the year before Messi was born, Maradona scored a goal that’s widely considered the best ever. He picked up the ball in Argentina’s own half, just outside the centre circle, and finished some 70 yards and five humiliated opponents later when he rounded the goalkeeper and tapped the ball into the open net. Any football fan can close their eyes and run the tape: the spin move, the long dash, the weaving in and out, the shot a split-second before his legs were swept out from under him. A fever dream of a goal. Nobody had seen anything like it. And then, improbably, everyone did. In the spring of 2007, Messi — still a teenager but already a star, enjoying a breakout season with Barcelona — pulled off a goal against Getafe that felt like a shot-for-shot remake of the Maradona original. He eviscerated two defenders in his own half. Took off at a dead sprint without ever losing control of the ball. Cut inside, swerved outside, rounded the ’keeper, the whole shebang. Imagine picking up a paintbrush one weekend and accidentally recreating the ceiling of the sistin chaper. Aparicio, the youth coach who once borrowed a boy from the stands and witnessed his first miraculous dribble, watched him come of age on TV. “The other day I saw him score this goal — they say it was like Maradona,” he told an interviewer. “I think he is better.” He looked away for a moment and his voice started to quaver: “When I watch him play like that, I cry. You understand?”. The False Nine Some players are born to score goals. Others set them up. Most play further back, passing and moving to help get their team upfield. Every once in a while you’ll see a prodigy who can do it all, dreaming up attacking moves they are good enough to construct and finish themselves. Check the back of that player’s shirt and chances are they’ll be wearing the No 10. Back when football squad numbers were first assigned by position, the No 10 belonged to the inside left forward — the natural slot for a right-footed playmaker. Formations evolved over decades, but the No 10’s role stayed more or less the same: he worked behind the striker, between the opponent’s lines, creating and scoring in the most crowded part of the pitch. Due to the sheer difficulty of the job, the shirt itself came to be a sort of honour. Pele wore it by accident, after Brazil forgot to assign kits at the 1958 World Cup, but he helped seal the No 10’s association with greatness. Maradona, with Argentina, refused to wear anything else. Messi didn’t get the No 10 when he joined Barcelona. That belonged to the reigning best player on the planet, Ronaldinho, a Brazilian playmaker who lined up as a winger but led the attack with so much verve and imagination that it would have felt wrong to see the shirt on anyone else. The teenage Messi’s job was to be a dribbling, goalscoring gremlin on the opposite wing, the electric guitar punctuating Ronaldinho’s lead vocals. His first professional goal came from an ingenious Ronaldinho scoop over the back line that Messi brought down in the box, then lobbed over the goalkeeper’s head to complete a double rainbow. In 2008, the summer Messi turned 21, Ronaldinho left Barcelona and a new coach named Pep Guardiola gave the No 10 shirt to his young right winger. It was a turning point in Messi’s career. Otherworldly highlights wouldn’t be enough anymore — he needed to be the star around whom the whole system would spin. At first, Messi interpreted the playmaker role as the wing-like Ronaldinho did, cutting inside behind the centre-forward Samuel Eto’o to undo defences. He had a stellar first season under Guardiola, scoring and assisting more goals than all but two players in Europe’s top five leagues — and one of those two was Eto’o, enjoying a career year thanks to Messi’s largesse. Messi and Eto’o were told to start in their regular positions, but eight minutes into the game they would switch places: the centre-forward out wide to the right, the playmaker into the middle. The idea was to scramble Real Madrid’s central defenders, who couldn’t just sit deep to protect the goal but would now have to decide when to follow Messi into midfield. This unusual attacking role — neither a traditional No 9 in the box nor a No 10 behind a striker — was known as a “false nine”. The gambit worked better than anyone could have hoped. Messi assisted Barcelona’s first goal in that Clasico by luring a centre-back out of the back line and shovelling a pass to Thierry Henry in the space behind him. He scored two more himself and generally terrorised the Madrid defence up the middle en route to a 6-2 win. Guardiola was so pleased that he tried the position swap again a few weeks later in the Champions League final against Manchester United, and Messi — the shortest player on the pitch — secured the trophy with a striker’s header in the box. His false-nine era had begun. As he gradually became a full-time centre-forward over the next few years, Messi went supernova. We’re talking absolutely bonkers. In the first eight decades of La Liga to that point, its record for goals scored in a season was 38, shared by Telmo Zarra in 1950 and Hugo Sanchez in 1990. From 2009 to 2013, Messi averaged — averaged! — more than 40 league goals per season, peaking at 50 in 2011-12, while at the same time assisting the second-most goals in the top five European leagues. He won the Ballon d’Or, the award for the best player in the world, four years running. After taking home every trophy they competed for in 2008-09, Barcelona won La Liga three out of the next four seasons, topping things off with another Champions League in 2011. Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary Manchester United manager unlucky enough to go up against Barca in both those Champions League finals, called them the best side he’d ever faced. The secret to all this success was that Messi was holding down two jobs at once. Barcelona’s “tiki-taka” possession game was led by a telepathic midfield trio — Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets — who had been practising the same pass-and-move principles since childhood in the club’s academy. When Messi dropped off the front line, he made a natural fourth midfielder at the tip of a diamond, just as intuitive as the other three at pinging short passes around in tight spaces. Together, these four outnumbered and outclassed opposing midfields, passing their way straight up the heart of the pitch and swarming to recover lost balls so quickly that it felt like the other team were just there to watch. The reason most teams don’t use their centre-forward as a spare midfielder, of course, is that they need them to be in the box, scoring goals. Messi’s genius was that he could do both. He played like a midfielder in the build-up, accounting for eight per cent of Barcelona’s pass attempts in open play, but somehow always found a way to finish moves around the penalty spot, scoring up to 50 per cent of the team’s open-play goals at his false-nine peak. He scored every way you can imagine, plus a few you probably couldn’t, but two finishes in particular became signatures during Messi’s false-nine years. One was the running chip, which usually happened when he dropped off and centre-backs pushed up behind him, leaving naked grass in front of goal. One way or another — sometimes on the dribble, sometimes running in behind for a through-ball — Messi would break free and run right up to the goalkeeper, waiting for him to get low to try to smother the ball before flipping it insouciantly over his head and running off with two fingers pointed to the sky.

We are living through a high period for the super sports car. Never before has there been such a talented list of offerings, each with their own unique talents. The list of 10 cars below features everything from hardcore hooligans to more delicate alternatives. There’s a car for all tastes in this segment, but the ones below are our picks of the bunch. 1. Aston Martin Vantage Aston Martin has taken a giant leap into true blue driver’s car territory with the new Vantage. Never before has Gaydon departed so clearly from its traditional preference for fairly laid-back, long-legged, old-school front-engined GT sports cars than it has here. So much about the new Vantage – from its first-order performance level to its tight, tenacious body control, to its impressively advanced driveline specification and its on-track composure, handling precision and staying power – tells you loud and clear that it’s ready to transform Aston into a firm that can be taken seriously by real petrolheads who’ve stuck to their Porsches and upper-level BMW M cars. Never have you been able to drive a series-production Aston as hard as this, or really contemplate using one like you might a track-ready 911. Partly perhaps as a result of all that newfound grip and purpose, the car doesn’t quite overcome the limitations of its size and weight and involve like the greatest driver’s cars when driven on the road – but it certainly enriches everyday use as a super sports car should, and as only an Aston Martin could. Save money with new Vantage deals on What Car? 2. McLaren 570S The 570S occupies a purer and more exciting territory than its sports car rivals, but it’s also more forgiving and more comfortable than them as well. Its performance level is exceptional, without compromise to driveability. Its handling is equally outstanding: a special mix of track-ready purpose, with on-road compliance, precision and stability – and enriched by wonderful control feedback. It is more exotic than the Porsche 911, more delicate than an Audi R8 V10 Plus and more practical than a BMW i8. There’s little doubt that McLaren’s mid-range model is actually the car for the company to make its reputation. Save money with new 570S deals on What Car? 3. Aston Martin DB11 V8 The DB11 V8 isn’t the most refined in its class, with tyre roar and a curiously loud rustle of air passing over the base of A-pillar. Interior fit isn’t good enough, either, even if the abundance of leather is supremely soft to the touch. The Mercedes-AMG S63 Coupé surpasses the Aston on both counts, though you’ll forfeit driver involvement if you choose the big Merc. If you’re sitting in a DB11 V8, the AMG-sourced engine up front sets the tone for what this car can, dynamically speaking, do so well. It’s so deeply intuitive to steer. This is a hugely desirable product – one that ranks ahead of its V12 sibling. Save money with new DB11 deals on What Car? 4. Honda NSX Honda has managed to deploy world-first powertrain technology with a superb lightness of touch. It has used unconventional means to perfect, rather than reinvent, the conventional junior supercar. And it has produced a very rare breed of mid-engined exotic as a result: one that doesn’t shout about its potential or impose itself on your senses, but is instead a very mature and complete driver’s car. It could be better equipped, nicer to travel in and a touch more luridly exciting at times, but for its fusion talents, it deserves respect. Only the McLaren 570S offers a more compelling driving experience, but it does so with a far simpler powertrain. Save money with new NSX deals on What Car? 5. Jaguar F-Type SVR The F-Type SVR is the most capable of its ilk. Despite having not far off 600bhp, it’s far more usable in the UK than the F-Type R, particularly in slippery conditions. But its starting price edges it into a realm of extremely competitive alternatives, many of which are sharper, faster and generally better resolved. Where the SVR wins is in its thuggish nature. A Porsche 911 Turbo and Audi R8 are sharper to drive, while the McLaren 540C feels far lighter on its toes. But if its muscle car-like character you want, then the F-Type SVR is as good as they come. Save money with new F-Type deals on What Car? 6. Audi R8 V10 The Audi R8’s technical relation to the company’s motorsport efforts is clear. The car is a visceral, singular tribute to power and performance, noise and revs, grip and traction. It’s hugely exciting to drive, although not quite as rounded, communicative or usable enough as the very best super sports cars. The latest R8 has lost some of the the old car’s character for a more digital form. So while we are impressed overall with the second generation Audi R8, especially with its looks, performance and sound, it still falls short of more rounded rivals like the BMW i8, Porsche 911 Turbo S and McLaren 570S. Save money with new R8 deals on What Car? 7. Mercedes-AMG GT With the body structure of a supercar, an engine from a muscle saloon, suspension tuned for maximum attack on the track and yet the practicality and sophistication of an elegant coupé, or roadster, the GT is an even more bewildering addition to the sports car world than the Mercedes-Benz SLS was. Of course, there would be times when you’d grow tired of its high-adrenalin temperament and lack of civility, sure, but the highs would outweigh those occasions. But the car is so capable – as capable as cars twice its price – it is extremely lovable, even if not quite as delicately beautiful to drive as a 911 Turbo. Save money with new GT deals on What Car? 8. Nissan GT-R Nismo It may have been around for more than a decade now, but the Nissan GT-R remains one of the quickest, most capable super sports cars money can buy. The hardcore Nismo version builds on this. There’s a more aggressive aero package that includes a sizeable rear wing, an increase in torsional rigidity, as well as tweaked springs, dampers and anti-roll bars for even greater levels of agility. Nissan says these modifications make the GT-R Nismo even more playful on the limit, which can only be a good thing. Its steering is impressively incisive and accurate, while the fact that it seems happier to send its power rearwards in order to bring its tail end into play serves to confirm Nissan’s modifications have worked as intended. Of course, it’s still devilishly quick in a straight line too. Its 3.8-litre V6, whose twin turbos come courtesy of Nissan’s GT-R GT3 race car, produces some 592bhp and 481lb ft. Nissan don’t quote an official 0-60mph time, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say it might well dip below the 3.0sec mark. It might be showing its age, but the GT-R Nismo remains as brutally effective as ever. Save money with new GT-R deals on What Car? 9. Ferrari Portofino As the replacement for the California T, the handsomely-styled and glamorously titled Ferrari Portofino now represents the entry-level, ‘affordable’ offering in Maranello’s model line-up - if there is such a thing. Sharper, faster and more focussed than the California T, the Portofino stands out as an exceptionally pointed sports car. Its steering is lightning quick, its gearchanges delivered with the sort of forceful, confident conviction you’d expect from the likes of a supercar. Its refreshed twin-turbocharged V8, meanwhile, now develops some 592bhp and 561lb ft, so the sprint from 0-60mph is now dispatched in an eye-widening 3.5sec. And with a folding metal roof that can be retracted in 14sec, there’s unlimited scope to bask in its rich, authentically Ferrari soundtrack. As a sports car then, there’s much to like about the Portofino. But there’s a hitch; this is also intended to be a comfortable, fast and incredibly livable grand tourer. And given just how sharp and overtly dynamic Ferrari has now made it, this conflicted personality is tricky to overlook. Save money with new Portofino deals on What Car? 10. Maserati GranTurismo MC While it lacks the dynamic sparkle or engagement of others, the Granturismo MC makes up ground with drama thanks to its high revving V8 and gorgeous, Italian looks. The car’s steering feels old-fashioned, with the hydraulic assistance passing on the sort of low-intensity feedback that electric systems filter out as unwanted noise. Plus, the car’s chassis wants to understeer. Some will simply see sufficient appeal in a Pininfarina-designed four-seater with a Ferrari-built engine to justify the price. It is really starting to feel its age and the segment contains many more rational offerings, but emotionally speaking, this Maserati remains a compelling choice. Save money on new GranTurismo MC deals on What Car? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________