Barcelona star Lionel Messi’s Doctor Donato Villani has mentioned that the superstar footballer ‘goes nuts’ when injured so it may be bittersweet for Messi to see that Barcelona may be able to cope without his services. Barcelona came from one goal down to beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 in their UEFA Champions League group match thanks to goals from Sergi Roberto and Luis Suarez. Lionel Messi was injured during a La Liga clash with Las Palmas and is ruled out of action for seven to eight weeks, interestingly enough should Messi recover on the eight week mark then it will mean that he’ll available for El Clasico.
During Barcelona’s victory over Bayer Leverkusen, they initially felt the heat in the absence of their talismanic forward and it wasn’t helped that they were jeered by their own fans. Neymar made it clear that he was bothered by the attitude of the fans stating: “We needed support today when things weren’t going our way. You can the whistling very clearly from the pitch. The credit this team has, it deserves more. This team deserves a higher faith, it deserves credit, unshakeable support.” Had Messi been on the field then it could have been a completely different affair as he is capable of producing individual moments of brilliance that can also win matches.
Suarez, who scored the winning goal dedicated his goal to the injured striker before admitting that Barcelona didn’t play well, but did enough.
The brilliant displays of Football produced by Barcelona that most fans are used to wasn’t present during the match but, what the crowd saw was a team that is still capable of producing the required result when their best player isn’t on the field.
Messi will surely be doing everything in his power to make sure that he is back in time for Barcelona’s big clash with Real Madrid on November 22.
He was caught by a fan using crutches to watch Barcelona’s recent match but the good news is that he won’t require surgery, just a lot of rest. The forward has received support from plenty of fans and posted on his official Facebook page thanking fans for getting behind him.
Oddly enough, it’s been suggested that Barcelona play better without Messi, average 2.7 points per game in comparison to their 2.3 with him as well as conceding less goals. Should Messi come back and hit the incredible heights that he’s known for then the comparison won’t mean much and one of the deadliest striking trio in world football will be free to run rampant.
