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This has no bearing at all on Messi's greatness, because that must be judged relatively to all other soccer players, but as a tangent, I can never get into soccer because to me it seems to be fundamentally broken. Penalty kicks have way too much influence on game results. A penalty kick has an ~80% chance of going in, in games that end about 2-2 on average, and about one in four games have at least one penalty kick.
It would be like if the NBA had a type of foul such that at least one of this type was awarded about once in four games, and the resulting free throw was worth 50 points if the player shooting the free throw made it.
It just makes soccer really hard to watch for me, I keep getting into soccer games and enjoying them but then when there's a penalty kick it just sucks all the excitement out of it and makes me feel like "why did I just spend all that time watching this?".
My American problem with European football leagues is that the national level season is so boring to me. What's the point of a league where only four teams have won a championship this century?
La Liga trophies literally count, to me, in a comparative ranking like this somewhere between Brady's AFC east division wins and Lebron's Eastern conference wins. It's just not really a competitive league outside of Barca and Real.
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I feel a lot of sports would not get any traction if they were debuting for the first time ever now in this media and attention environment.
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National tournaments have more penalties than usual club football. The worldcup is wnotionally important, but tactically, it is pretty bad football.
In most club competitions, there are very clear guidelines on what qualifies for penalities. In those cases, penalties are only given when a goal is near guaranteed.
National level refereeing is too erratic.
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I've always suspected that the fictional sport of Quidditch is based on JK Rowling just not liking football and inventing the stupidest sport imaginable to express that dislike.
From her annotated version of Philsopher's Stone:
"[Quidditch] was invented in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with my then boyfriend. I had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate and signify its particular character and knew I needed a sport.
It infuriates men...which is quite satisfying given my state of mind when I invented it."
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