Anatomy of a Genius

Domagoj Kostanjsak

Description

Anatomy of a Genius is a tactical breakdown of Lionel Messi's playing career at FC Barcelona. Despite spending his whole career with the club, the Argentine genius had to adapt and improve his game to become the foundation of Barca's modern success. This book explores his journey - from emerging as a talented prodigy to becoming the best player on the planet - through an enthralling narrative, in-depth tactics and key statistics. A great deal has been written already about the famous boy from Rosario, as his story has been told time and again by journalists and renowned authors. Anatomy of a Genius digs deeper to uncover things we don't already know, delving into stats and tactics to reveal the how and why behind one of the world's greatest athletes and his phenomenal career.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801503402
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Domagoj Kostanj ak, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801501811
eBook ISBN 9781801503402
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Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction: The Many Faces of Leo
1. La Masia s Finest
2. The Making of Lionel Messi
Trial by Fire
The Mazy Winger
The drawing board
Rijkaard s Bar a
3. Rebirth Reinvention
A New Hope
The False 9
The drawing board
Pep s Bar a
4. Total Player
The Birth of MSN
The Playmaker
The drawing board
Lucho s Bar a
5. The Alpha Omega
A Club in Crisis
The Metronome
The drawing board
Shattered Identities
Epilogue: The Curtain Call
Appendix: Pitch Grid
Photos
To my loving family for their unfaltering support and to eljka, my muse and my rock. Without you, this book would have been impossible.
And to FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi, the source of many sleepless nights and moments of joy.
Thank you.
Foreword
DO YOU really need to read another book about Lionel Messi?
Well, yes: this one.
Messi s story isn t exactly a secret. You probably already know the details of his boyhood in Rosario, followed by his emotional teenage move to Barcelona. Then his early breakthrough into senior football with a large debt of thanks to the selfless guidance of Ronaldinho, followed by a full flowering into superstardom under the inspired management of Pep Guardiola.
After that came Messi s hugely successful reinvention alongside Luis Su rez and Neymar, before he attempted to almost single-handedly stave off Bar a s long and sad decline until his departure to Paris Saint-Germain that left fans - and, it appears, Messi himself - stunned and speechless.
Simultaneously, the tale of Messi s international career with Argentina has been one of ups and downs. Great early successes in the 2005 World Youth Championship and the 2008 Olympics were followed by more than a decade of frustrating and often bitter disappointments, before his long-awaited first senior international trophy finally arrived with the 2021 Copa Am rica.
Away from his achievements on the pitch, the details of Messi s personal life are also well known - his marriage to childhood sweetheart Antonella and fatherhood of three boys, which played a big part in eventually allowing him to leave behind his shy and introverted teenage self and mature into a confident and composed adult.
So if you already know these details of Messi s story, as most football fans do, why should you bother to read this book? Very simply, because it s different from any I ve seen before.
In the pages that follow, Domagoj Kostanj ak guides us through the story of Messi s career with the specific approach of explaining how he did it. And therein lies the difference: whereas other studies on the Argentine genius generally tend to describe his greatness, this book analyses it.
In particular, I find it fascinating to delve more deeply into how Messi has evolved his playing style over the years - from an inverted winger under Frank Rijkaard to a false 9 under Pep Guardiola, before reverting to a different kind of winger in the MSN (Messi, Su rez, Neymar) forward line and finally ending up as a deeper-lying playmaker as the team around him imploded. Domagoj does a terrific job in both chronicling those various stages of Messi s career and, with the help of easily understood and well-explained tactical diagrams, analysing precisely how he functioned within the wider context of Bar a s overall team structures at the time.
Reading this book will bring back many memories of Messi s genius. It certainly did for me. I ve been blessed by the fortune of living in Barcelona since 2012, visiting the Camp Nou on a regular basis. In the first game I ever attended in a working capacity, Messi scored twice in the opening 16 minutes as his team thrashed Real Sociedad 5-1. That was a suitably brilliant prelude for countless afternoons and evenings spent perched high in the press box at Bar a s gradually crumbling but still awe-inspiring home, revelling in the unmatched majesty of Messi at his long-lasting peak.
Messi s capacity to produce a sudden piece of magic that takes your breath away - no matter how many times you ve seen him do similar things - is unmatched by the thousands of other athletes I ve ever seen. Many thrilling memories immediately come to my mind, and none more so than an electrifying evening in May 2015, when he dismantled the mighty Bayern Munich - coached by his former mentor Guardiola - with two brilliant goals in the space of four minutes, including a dazzling dribble to leave Jerome Boateng flat on his backside before floating a glorious right-footed chip over a stunned Manuel Neuer.
When he scored that second goal, and on many more occasions, all I could do was shake my head and wonder how on earth he did it. And in this book, Domagoj gives us some of the answers (not all of them, of course - genius can never be fully accounted for, or it wouldn t be genius).
How did he play alongside Ronaldinho in those early days? How exactly did Guardiola s revolutionary false 9 system actually work? Why, other than their undeniable individual brilliance, were the MSN trio able to enjoy so much success? How did Messi attempt to - often successfully - paper over the cracks of his team s decline during the last few years of his Camp Nou career? If you want to know the answers to those questions and many more, read on.
Football analysis can be a divisive topic. Many traditionalists lament the introduction of occasionally oblique terms such as expected goals per 90, medium blocks and counter-pressing, arguing that football is a simple, free-flowing game and that analytics too often descends into unnecessarily complicated and pretentious jargon. Many other fans, conversely, find immense value in the exercise of trying to explain how the intricate movements of 22 players and one ball all fit together, providing a greater understanding of why goals actually happen.
With Domagoj, we have the best of both worlds. He has the rare and valuable ability to analyse players and teams without getting himself (and his readers) lost in a forest of information, picking out the key points and keeping his insights clear, concise and easy to understand. He s one of the best football analysts you ll find, and in this book he s tackling the greatest player of our times. A perfect combination, which I m sure will leave you enthralled, entertained and informed.
Andy West
Preface
I VE ALWAYS wanted to write a book, and yet never thought I would actually do it. As much as writing has always been a passion of mine, ever since my early childhood, the actual process seemed much too daunting to ever attempt. After all, What would I even write about? I thought to myself. And to be completely honest, it wasn t until about a year and a half ago that I found the answer to that question. The dawn of 2022 marks the start of my fourth year in sports writing, or tactical analysis to be more precise. And this is where my true story begins as well. Up until somewhere in 2018, I was just a casual football fan, watching matches and stressing over a team I had picked to support approximately 20 years ago. But back when I first started, I had no idea why my team was successful or rubbish at times, nor did I pay much attention to it either.
In came Total Football Analysis and Chris Darwen in the summer of 2018. Little did I know that joining their LaLiga and Barcelona teams would impact the direction of my upcoming career. It was around that time that I started focusing on the small print of football matches, analysing what made teams tick as well as what made them fall apart. Back then, analysis, scouting and data were all largely unknown terms for me, but over the years I ve honed my trade, and can proudly say that since the moment Chris first answered my email in 2018, I ve grown a lot and been blessed with jobs at different companies and even professional clubs.
But while Total Football Analysis was definitely my first attempt at tactical analysis, my first encounter with professional sports writing or reporting came some years before that, back in Croatia. For a while I spent my days writing news and opinion articles for a site called SportArena, led by my project manager and first boss, Ivan e elj. It was he who first introduced me to this vast world of football and moulded me both as a writer and as a person behind the huge chunks of text. I ll never forget him yelling at me (kindly, of course): Real sports journalists have a Twitter account, go open one! So I did. Through Twitter and a growing audience, my reach and influence rose and, as much as you can call it that, so did my success. His early guidance is something I cherish to this day. All of that, of course, culminated with this book on none other than Lionel Messi.
But why Messi and why Barcelona? Interestingly, it s the case of a very familiar trope with young boys where their fathers influence a great portion of their hobbies and early interests. Around 20 years ago