With all do respect, I feel that legends have the most biased, inconsistent, useless opinions ever.

That was my opinion on the unpopular opinion thread.

These guys know football more than all of us combined, but it really bothers me how they switch up their opinions like that. Make it hard for me to take them seriously. I'm in no way disagreeing with what Diego said because I do not know Messi personally, and I won't jump on the wagon because Maradona said it.

I stopped taking these goofballs seriously the first 657 times they contradicted themselves.

I don't think Maradona is contradicting himself. It's painfully obvious that Messi lacks the leadership and drive of Maradona. He's bloody talented, but doesn't have the persona of a leader. He's much too passive (which was extremely obvious throughout the 2014 WC where Mascherano was the evident leader in the dressing room). Maradona never said Messi was the leading type of player, so I don't think he's contradicting himself at all.

BTW this is also why I think Messi will never be greater than Maradona. Maradona could take average teams and make them champions. Messi has been groomed to play a certain style and excel in it. He's bloody talented, but he will never be better than Maradona in my eyes. Messi cannot take an average team or a below-par team and make them brilliant.

Lol. The amount of times Maradona praised, then talked sh!t about someone is too damn high. Same should be said about Pele. I've never heard Maradona talk about Messi's leadership skills, but I've read about him talk about Messi's personality a few times. It's not cool to say something else now.

Eh, times change. Circumstances are different. People are different. The game itself is different.

There was a time where to be a successful striker you literally needed to be an egotistical maniac. Most of the best ones today still are (Ronaldo, Ibra, etc) but Messi has proved that that isn't a required quality anymore. I doubt that kind of player could have been successful in the 70's and 80's, but this is 2016. Clearly, it works for him, so why diss Messi for it?

Lol, there's no such thing as no personality.

I agree with Maradona. You can't force someone to wear the armband. Maradona, Passarella, Ayala. These were captains. They had strong character and lead the teams to victory. Whether or not Messi is deserving of captaincy takes nothing away from how amazing of a player he is. IMO Mascherano "el jefecito", the heart of the team, deserves to be captain. And he was for a time before Sabella made Messi captain based on nothing other than Messi's popularity as a player in international limelight.

lol just because he's not an arrogant drug-addict donkey, he "lacks personality". Okay then. Messi doesn't lead with words and he doesn't need to - he does it with world class performances. Messi has won Barcelona 20+ titles, he's by far the best player ever, better than Cristiano Ronaldo, better than Maradona and better than Pele. These old players from the 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s don't understand that the game used to be so much different to today's game, especially Pele. This guy masturbates to his goal-tally of 1000+ goals but doesn't take the fact, that there were literally no tactics in comparison to today and that they played with 7 attackers and 3 defenders, into consideration (also, an essential part of that tally was scored in friendlies..) . Obviously I'm over-exaggerating but you understand what I'm trying to say.

Messi is a quiet person, it's not his custom to go and influence the ref or speak louder than his teammates, but how he influences the game and his importance in any team he plays in makes him a pitch leader, when things goes bad you give the ball to Messi, when the team fails to win something you blame messi.
Since 2014, carried Argrntina to WC final then won the treble with a huge display scoring and assisting when it mattered vs Bayern or City, then carrying his team again until the final vs Chili then winning the double...

If this is not enough for some then who else got this winning title consistency ?

Played 30 min of 2nd half lately, scored 3 and created one, the importance of Messi is noticed when he is not playing.
Anyway better than Diego I don't know, but the best of his era without any doubt, no one look even closer,

Well messi with beard against panama looked like a leader.

@chelsea8 Made me laugh. :D +1