Develop Hockey Skills Like Lionel Messi – Part 1
I usually reserve this kind of post for the late-season or the early off-season, mainly because that’s roughly the time of year when we want to seek ways to develop hockey skills like the world’s best rolemodels. All of a sudden, though, a newsletter hits my email inbox proclaiming a guy named Lionel Messi as some sort of a sports god. Well, is he? You have to know I dug right into that…
Okay, like any sports fan does today, I scrambled for two resource areas — beginning with Wikipedia (I later searched YouTube to see for myself)… “Lionel Andrés “Leo” Messi; born 24 June 1987 is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward for Spanish club Barcelona and the Argentina national team. Often considered the best player in the world and regarded by many as the greatest of all time, Messi has a record-tying five Ballon d’Or awards, four of which he won consecutively, and a record-tying four European Golden Shoes. He has won 29 trophies with Barcelona, including eight La Liga titles, four UEFA Champions League titles, and five Copas del Rey. Both a prolific goalscorer and a creative playmaker, Messi holds the records for most official goals scored in La Liga (362), a La Liga season (50), a club football season in Europe (73), a calendar year (91), as well as those for most assists made in La Liga (141) and the Copa América (11). He has scored over 600 senior career goals for club and country.
Born and raised in central Argentina, Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency as a child. At age 13, he relocated to Spain to join Barcelona, who agreed to pay for his medical treatment. After a fast progression through Barcelona’s youth academy, Messi made his competitive debut aged 17 in October 2004. Despite being injury-prone during his early career, he established himself as an integral player for the club within the next three years, finishing 2007 as a finalist for both the Ballon d’Or and FIFA World Player of the Year award, a feat he repeated the following year. His first uninterrupted campaign came in the 2008–09 season, during which he helped Barcelona achieve the first treble in Spanish football. At 22 years old, Messi won the Ballon d’Or and FIFA World Player of the Year award by record voting margins.”
Hmmmmm… I’ve never been a big soccer fan, but I sure do appreciate great athletes. Which means that I’ve followed the exploits of soccer greats like Pele, Madonna and Ronaldo over the years, and I’ve even studied them to see if what they did could help me develop hockey skills better in my players. That said, I found it pretty interesting to hear the comments included in the following YouTube video…
Before giving some members their first glimpses of the great Messi in action, I’d like to comment a bit…
Although I don’t think it’s important what I think, my reactions to watching Messi for a few hours brings me to believe that he is: 1) as quick as a cat, 2) better conditioned than any transition sport athlete I’ve ever seen, and 3) uncanny in the way he uses slight body fakes to draw opponents right out of their shoes. The part about him being quick will be evidenced as soon as you see him go on the attack. The fact that he quite often fell, scrambled to his feet to take off again at a break-neck pace eventually convinced me that he is almost super-human in his conditioning. And, I almost had to laugh at opponents as they fell all over themselves at what must have been a very subtle head, eye or shoulder dekes…
Okay, not unlike the great hockey players we’ve all watched, Messi is able to control the ball as fast or as quickly as his feet and body move. And, as I noticed a number of times, he attracts so much attention from his style of play that he can easily dish a pass off to a wide open teammate (which makes me think of at least Gretzky and Orr in our sport).
Now, I’m not going to add any more to this, except to suggest that members sit back to watch a few clips of Messi doing his thing. Coaches, parents and older players might even take some notes, also with an eye toward better developing hockey skills. Know that there are a kzillion more videos to be found on YouTube.com, just by plugging in his name.
Oh, and by the way… I saw quite a few videos online using phrases like “destroyed by Messi” in their titles…
Well, as soon as the ink started drying on this article, I knew I had to rename it “Part 1”, and promise to do a “Develop Hockey Skills Like Lionel Messi – Part 2” just for my members. So, take that link; I’d love you to tell me what you think.
