Lionel Messi is widely recognised as one of the best footballers of all time and is arguably the greatest player on the planet right now. His mere presence on a pitch can almost decide a game by itself – whether it’s due to some magic from the man himself or by the opposition focusing too much on him and ignoring his stellar teammates like Suarez and Neymar for Barcelona or Higuain and di Maria for Argentina.
Any club would love to have a man of Messi’s talents on their books but none more than a team chasing a league title. After all, we’ve seen plenty of times that individual brilliance can almost single-handedly win a league – look at Manchester United and Eric Cantona in 1995/96 for instance.
With this season’s Premier League title race just beginning to heat up there can be no doubt that both Chelsea and Tottenham would love to have Messi. There have, though, been closer races in the Premier League’s past – so here are my top five teams that really could’ve used Messi during their own push for the Premier League title.
#1 Manchester United, 1994/95
1994/95 was a controversial season in the Premier League for a multitude of reasons, but none more than the fate of Eric Cantona, who was abused by a fan following a red card at Crystal Palace in January. Cantona decided to leap into the crowd with a kung-fu kick aimed at the fan, which earned him a ban that lasted for the rest of the season.
Despite their signing of Newcastle’s goal machine Andy Cole, United just didn’t have enough firepower in their tank without Cantona to catch Kenny Dalglish’s Blackburn Rovers, who led the table for most of the season, largely thanks to the goals scored by top striker Alan Shearer and the newly signed Chris Sutton, whose £5m signing broke the transfer record at the time.
If they’d had a player like Messi, though? There can be no doubt that the title would’ve gone to Alex Ferguson’s United. They only finished one point behind Blackburn anyway – even without King Eric – and would’ve won the title had they managed to defeat West Ham on the final day of the season, thanks to Blackburn’s loss at Liverpool. But they just couldn’t score a winner against the Hammers, despite the best efforts of Cole and a very young Paul Scholes.
Put Messi in a time machine and I think he’d shoot down the Hammers and send the title to Manchester.
#2 Newcastle United, 1995/96
The season prior had seen Manchester United fail to chase down eventual league winners Blackburn Rovers, but 1995/96 was a different story. Despite Newcastle United leading by a monstrous 12 points in January, the Red Devils were able to overhaul the deficit to win the league, mainly due to the individual genius of Eric Cantona, who scored goal after goal in 1-0 wins for United.
While Newcastle had some tremendous talent in their squad – Les Ferdinand, David Ginola, Peter Beardsley, Phillipe Albert – they just didn’t have an individual as good as Cantona. When manager Kevin Keegan did attempt to buy one, in the form of mercurial Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla, it didn’t really work out as he disrupted the balance of the squad and only contributed three goals.
Going into the last day of the season, Newcastle trailed United and needed to beat Tottenham – and hope that Middlesborough could defeat United – to win the title. It was always unlikely and of course United won out in the end.
But with Messi on board – an individual as important as Cantona was for United – could things have been different? We certainly think so. A Messi-inspired Newcastle would never have let that lead slip, even with Kevin Keegan’s gung-ho tactics on hand, and the Premier League title could’ve gone to Tyneside for the first time.
#3 Manchester United, 2011/12
2011/12 was the closest Premier League title race of all time as it’s the only season that it came down to goal difference – Manchester City won out after a last-minute Sergio Aguero winner on the final day against QPR allowed them to pull level with local rivals United, but because they’d scored 93 goals to United’s 89 – including six against United themselves in a shock 1-6 away win – the title went to Eastlands.
Interestingly enough, United’s top scorer Wayne Rooney actually outscored City’s top scorer Aguero by 27 goals to 23, but the difference seemed to be the rest of the squads – City had another two players in double figures in Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli, while United’s other forwards Javier Hernandez and Dimitar Berbatov only managed 17 between them.
If it’s goals you’re after, then there would be no better player to plug into that hole than Messi, who has never scored less than 20 league goals in a season since 2007/08. In 2011/12, for instance, he managed to hit a crazy 50 goals in 37 league games. The only man to ever match that for United was Cristiano Ronaldo, and the year he did so was in 2007/08 at United, who, of course, won the league.
Put Messi and his goals into the 2011/12 Manchester United side and would City have ever come close to beating them to take the Premier League? I don’t think so.
#4 Liverpool, 2013/14
For a long time in the 2013/14 season, it looked like the Premier League title would be heading to Anfield for the first time ever. One mistake from captain Steven Gerrard – he slipped against Chelsea, allowing Demba Ba to score the goal that lead to a loss with just three games to go – changed all of that.
After the Chelsea game, Liverpool fell apart, going 3-0 up against Crystal Palace in their next game before somehow surrendering another lead to draw 3-3. The lost points allowed Manchester City to sneak past the Reds and claim the title despite Liverpool clearly being the best side in the league for most of the season.
With Messi in their team, though? There’s no doubt that Liverpool would’ve claimed that elusive Premier League title. For starters, while Liverpool weren’t short on goals – Luis Suarez scored 31, Daniel Sturridge 21 – they did seem to struggle more against the bigger teams. Of their six losses that season, four of them came against fellow top four sides – one to Arsenal, one to Man City and two to Chelsea. And while Liverpool’s big players couldn’t quite get the job done against those sides, Messi has never struggled on big occasions.
Put Messi into that Liverpool team – alongside his future Barcelona teammate Suarez to boot – and you’ve got a side worthy of winning the Premier League.
#5: Tottenham Hotspur, 2015/16
The awful cliché goes something like this: Tottenham in 2015/16 are the only team in Premier League history to finish third in a two-horse race. It should never have been like that, and with a Messi in their side, it probably wouldn’t have been.
While Leicester eventually won the league by ten points, if it wasn’t for the collapse of Spurs in the last four games, the title may have been headed to North London. But by the time Spurs played West Brom, their players were tired and rusty after a long and hard season. A disappointing 1-1 draw left them needing to beat Chelsea in their next game in order to still have a chance of catching Leicester.
Spurs went 2-0 up but simply broke under the pressure, eventually drawing 2-2 which handed the title to the Foxes. Their last two games were a disaster – losing to Southampton and relegated Newcastle – meaning they finished third.
What Spurs really needed – once Harry Kane’s goals had dried up a little and Dele Alli’s form had slowed down – was an individual like Lionel Messi. Had they been able to call upon such a player, they probably never would’ve drawn with West Brom, let alone surrendered a lead to Chelsea. The pressure may have become too much for Leicester to handle instead, and rather than a fairytale ending for them, it could’ve been a first Premier League win for Spurs instead.
