Messi: The man who broke the Kop's tactical system

Messi brilliantly destroyed The Kop's defense system. Photo Reuters

Coincidentally, in the semi-finals of this year's Champions League, Liverpool and Barcelona, ​​teams representing the attacking school of football, competed to determine who deserved to enter the final match.

Before the match, Jugen Klopp made some bold statements to motivate his players before the big match. The German strategist shared, “Camp Nou is just a normal stadium, not a football temple at all.” This is considered a somewhat excessive declaration of war by the captain of The Kop.

The German strategist's bold declaration of war is also reasonable when Liverpool is owning a very impressive streak of form, they have an even squad in all 3 lines. In particular, the appearance of Van Dijk, the center-back who is considered the best in the world at the moment, is a solid support for The Kop to confidently stop Messi, the most important player in Barcelona's playing style. He has also prepared all support plans for the Dutch center-back in blocking the Argentine star.

In the lineup, Jurgen Klopp also arranged the good-competitive defender Dave Gomez to replace Alexander-Arnold to lock down Alba, Messi's familiar partner. In the attack, the German strategist also made changes when he sent Wijnaldum to replace Firmino and used midfielder James Milner to increase the ability to control the ball in the midfield.

With a high pressing formation, Liverpool forced Barca to deploy high balls from their own half, neutralized almost all of Sergio Busquets' role, paralyzed Ivan Rakitic... They did every theoretical plan up to now to block and control Barca, even forcing the home team to play the way they wanted.

Messi's sublimation helped Barcelona defeat Liverpool. Photo Reuters

However, all of Jurgen Klopp's plans were completely ruined when Barcelona possessed a genius Messi. The Argentine superstar surpassed Liverpool's almost perfect system to make all the difference at Camp Nou.

Messi often carried the ball into the central area to break the zonal defense, creating space for other attackers like Alba, Suarez... to play. The opening goal in the 29th minute of the match was the result of Messi's smart movement to attract the opponent's defender, creating conditions for Alba to make a sharp assist for Suarez to score against his former team.

Not stopping there, the Argentine star also showed his genius qualities when he made the best goalkeeper in the Premier League have to pick the ball out of the net twice in the span of just 6 minutes.

If the goal to make the score 2-0 was somewhat lucky when Messi was there at the right time to tap the ball into the empty net after Suarez's shot hit the crossbar and bounced off. Then the third goal was the convergence of the most quintessential qualities of a star. Messi was the one who dribbled the ball causing Fabinho to commit a foul in front of the 16m50 box and he himself finished in a way that could not be more perfect. It was a beautiful curve that surpassed all limits of the wall and the hands of goalkeeper Alison.

Overall, Liverpool had a good match, The Kop was the team that controlled the ball more (51%), shot more (13 times), shot on target more (8 times), and even had more corner kicks (5 compared to 3).

However, those numbers also became meaningless against a genius Messi, the Argentine star who extinguished all of Liverpool's efforts and also made the best defender in the Premier League once again taste bitterness at Camp Nou. It was also a bitter response to Jurgen Klopp when the German strategist made bold statements before the ball rolled.

Liverpool still have 90 minutes to make amends at home in the second leg. However, with Messi's brilliance, that task will become impossible for Jurgen Klopp's team. With this victory, Barcelona has almost secured a ticket to the Champions League final this season.