The new Diego Messi scores Maradona's goal
Sid Lowe in Madrid
Friday April 20, 2007
Guardian
To those who doubted Leo Messi's claim on the title of Argentina's New Diego Maradona, he provided a watertight case at Camp Nou - with a near carbon copy of the greatest goal in World Cup history.
The similarity between Messi's strike against Getafe to Maradona's run through the England defence in the quarter-final of the 1986 World Cup was uncanny. Catalan television played them side by side on a split screen and they were virtually indistinguishable.
Maradona raced in from the right, ran half the length of the pitch, beat five men and finished beyond a diving sixth. Messi did the same, only for Beardsley, Reid, Butcher, Fenwick, Shilton and Stevens, read Paredes, Nacho, Alexis, Belenguer, García and Redondo.
The Barcelona striker, still only 19, was the talk of world football yesterday, Spain's best-selling newspaper breaking its three-star marking scheme to give him four, while every daily in the country plastered him across the front page.
It seemed a hybrid had been born: Diego Messi or Leo Maradona. "Messi," the headlines all declared, "scores Maradona's goal." One reporter screamed: "I feel like crying. Holy Christ! Long Live Football! Long Live Leo!" And that was in a pro-Real Madrid paper.
"So, you can copy a work of art, after all," wrote AS's Alfredo Relaño, comparing Messi to Elmyr D'Hory, who forged famous paintings but always put the signature upside down. "This was a replica, with the same path, the same acceleration with every touch, the same pauses and feints, always escaping on the same side. The only difference was Messi finishing with his right foot - that was the upside-down signature."
Messi's face was on the back of the Catalan daily Sport, with a note saying: "If you want to disguise yourself as God, simply cut this out and put it on."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
