Team Protocol Is Ruining Young Footballers – Lionel Scaloni

Argentina manager, Lionel Scaloni has come out to use Lionel Messi as an example to prove his claim that modern football tactics are damaging the game. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, the reason there are not enough dribblers in the game anymore is because coaches teach footballers to pass the ball as quickly as possible from a very young age.

Scaloni added that telling a 8 year old kid to focus on making diagonal passes will ruin the child’s creativity on the pitch, unlike young Messi who was always allowed to express himself.

His words, “Of course, there are no dribblers. There are no dribblers because as soon as they receive the ball you say ‘Pass it!’. Imagine if Messi when he was eight years old had been told all the time ‘Pass it!’ by his coaches, we wouldn’t have him today. It’s impressive. Because football has become such a big thing, everyone reads, studies, and thinks that with that they can manage. You tell a child of 7 or 8 years old to make the diagonal, to cover…. He’s seven years old! Let him play ball, let him make mistakes, and when he’s 14 or 15 we’ll start correcting him. It’s a message for the future. This is a sport and the beauty of football should not be lost.

The clear example is with the kids. When they are 12 or 13 years old they have to play ball and have fun, and not be so much on top of them correcting them, because you take away their essence and so we will see less and less players with that carefree attitude that we used to see before.”

WOW.

Lionel Andrés Messi, also known as Leo Messi, is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward for and captains both Major League Soccer club Inter Miami and the Argentina national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Messi has won a record seven Ballon d’Or awards and a record six European Golden Shoes, and in 2020 he was named to the Ballon d’Or Dream Team.

Until leaving the club in 2021, he had spent his entire professional career with Barcelona, where he won a club-record 35 trophies, including ten La Liga titles, seven Copa del Rey titles and the UEFA Champions League four times.

With his country, he won the 2021 Copa América and the 2022 FIFA World Cup. A prolific goalscorer and creative playmaker, Messi holds the records for most goals in La Liga (474), most hat-tricks in La Liga (36) and the UEFA Champions League (eight), and most assists in La Liga (192) and the Copa América (17).

He also has the most international goals by a South American male (103). Messi has scored over 800 senior career goals for club and country, and has the most goals by a player for a single club (672).