Lionel Messi’s controversial rating by L’Equipe

Paris Saint-Germain’s performances in the UEFA Champions League, after years of their Qatari owners spending a lot of money on expensive transfers of world-class players, have had a lot of scrutinies every season, but this time something very peculiar happened after their 1-0 defeat in their stadium against Bayern Munich in the first leg of the round of 16 of the competition. The famous French journal, L’Equipe, had some really controversial ratings regarding their star player, Lionel Messi.

It is no secret that PSG struggled mightily against Bayern Munich during most of the match, with most of their best players not delivering when it mattered, which has been a running criticism about the Paris side in the UEFA Champions League. However, L’Equipe was particularly harsh on Messi, who got a 3 out of 10 rating for his performance against the Bavarian side.

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As you can imagine, this has resulted in many discussions and debates about Messi’s game against Bayern Munich. Some people argue that the rating was way too harsh and others argue that it was befitting of his performance in a key Champions League match, demanding him to step up for a club that has struggled a lot in the competition years.

It is also worth pointing out that Messi wasn’t the only PSG player to be singled out that way. Neymar, another star player of the Parisian side, also received a 3 out of 10 in his rating, and it makes a bit of sense when you consider that the Brazilian was also very lacklustre in his entire performance during the match.

Without getting into these debates, it must be highlighted that several players in the game besides Messi and Neymar also got 3s as the lowest ratings. For example, on the side of Paris Saint Germain, if we leave the Argentinian and Brazilian aside, we also get to see that Marco Verratti, Achraf Hakimi, and Warren Zaire-Emery got that rating, which goes to show that a lot of PSG players struggled during this game.

Naturally, these ratings are nothing worth writing home about because it is something that a lot of journals and platforms do on a regular basis–not even Messi is exempt from a poor rating from time to time. Having said that, this being Lionel Messi, it is only natural that there is going to be a lot more controversy as he is one of the best players of all time, with a lot of arguments to be considered the best that ever played the game, but this doesn’t mean that L’Equipe should be discredited or overly criticized because of what is merely an opinion on the Argentinian’s performance.

Regardless, Messi probably hasn’t given much thought to this, and managed to get back on track the next game by scoring a wonderful free-kick against Lille in the final minutes of the match to give his team the victory (L’Equipe rated him with a 5). And the PSG faithful are probably going to look forward to him delivering the same kind of impact in the second leg against Bayern Munich.