Barca coach Ronald Koeman unpacks about the time together with superstar Lionel Messi and reveals some interesting details.
Ronald Koeman, currently the heavily criticized FC Barcelona coach, spoke about his time with Lionel Messi – and revealed some special features during the training sessions of today’s PSG player.
“I knew how good he was, but it’s still nice to see it up close every day,” Koeman said Football International. “Anything you want to teach a football player, how to recognize situations, how to take the ball under pressure, how fast it is, how to complete it – everything is a 10 with Messi. Not normal, not normal!”
The Barca coach also spoke about the six-time Ballon d’Or’s behavior during training: “When we did a final drill, there were sometimes players who started hitting light balls and fooling around a bit. But with Messi everything was: Boom, boom, boom, boom. Never frills, everything functional. And he always wanted to win everything. “
Koeman raves about Messi’s game intelligence
Koeman also describes Messi’s great ambition in another anecdote about the joint units: “We always play a rondo before training. If the ball goes around 20 times, then the players in the middle have to do an extra round. If that happens three times in a row, the players form two lines and the two who were in the middle then run through and get hit on the head and all. “
Koeman then asked Messi if this had happened to him before. “Yes, once, he said. All these years. With him, the older players never lost an exercise against the younger ones. It happened once and Messi was very angry about it for a week. Really, a bully.”
For the 58-year-old, Messi is on par with a legendary compatriot Koemans: “I’ve never met anyone but Johan Cruyff with his football intelligence. Alfred [Schreuder, Koemans Assistent, Anm. d. Red.] sometimes explained the exercises in English and Messi doesn’t speak that well. But after a few seconds he knew. “
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
