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By Owen McGuire (@owen_31)
The T.V is on in the background, it’s on mute and I’m not really paying attention to it but I leave it on anyway. It’s a comfort, a way to temporarily entertain my eyes in between whatever task I’m undertaking. However, today it let me down, today it enraged me.

As my eyes flicked over to the left, away from the laptop, I was encountered by two startling facts. The first was that I was watching ESPN press pass on mute. This is a talk show and scores low on aesthetic levels as it is very much engineered in a way that the sound is the real core of it. The second shock for me was their topic of debate – Is Messi in Maradona’s class?

“Maradona’s class” – In his Napoli days, that tended to be Class A and in copious quantities…
I looked at it a few times before I properly read it. I was busy looking at the presenters at the start. I like to examine their faces, see how strong their smiles are and decide who I’d save if the world was ending. My grandfather once told me, “if a man can steadily present a convincing laugh in reply to a barrage of Shaka Hislop’s banter, he is the sort of man you’d be happy to go to war with.” As a result it is a distraction that occurred more out of a sense of habit and respect. When I shouted, “STEVE NICOL,” the dog looked at me in a way that said, “Why are you shouting?” and “Dear god I hope he doesn’t do his top ten utility players to have played for Nott’s County list again.”

This focused me and I looked towards the information bar on the bottom of the screen. When I saw the topic, it hit me. I began to feel flashes of anger bursting all over my body as I considered how patronising in nature this question was. Let me clarify this by saying this is in no way a remark about the quality of the programme, the anger more stems from the fact that – as a society – there is still a tendency to undermine the undoubted greatest player of a generation.

Due to legal reasons, we’re pretty sure we’re unable to provide a caption for this photo…
In fairness, there may be some who would stop me in my tracks and begin to bring up Cristiano Ronaldo. I accept his play is stunning. His instincts and abilities are every bit as sharp as his precision-cut bone-structure and abs. But for me, Messi is the best. For me, he is everything I want to watch. His statistics, like Ronaldo’s, are staggering and make most other players seem second-rate, such is the level of their abilities.

A few years ago it was a three-way battle to be the greatest. Messi and Ronaldo stand next to…em, that guy. You know the one…he was at Milan, almost went to Man City…hang on, tip of our tongue…nope, it’s gone.
Ronaldo is the sort of player who will beat people at most things 9.9 times out of 10. He will be stronger than the opponent, quicker, finish better and have better ability with two feet. If he gets you one on one you are done, he is a better athlete and that is how it goes. But still Messi is better… and for one reason only, his magic. He does things that no one else can. His control is perfect. He has that natural ability that allows him to, at times, beat a whole team and create the sort of moments that penetrate our imaginations and bury themselves into a zone marked fondness.

One such memory for me involved Tony Stevenson, who now plays for Albion Rovers, scoring a penalty against Clyde to secure Hamilton’s promotion to the SPL. Stevenson played as either the right-back or the holding midfielder in that promotion winning side. He was alongside prodigies such as James McCarthy and James McArthur, yet I would be drawn to Tony. He was slow and a bit overweight, but he had a right foot that could ice a birthday cake. It was magical. He was our Mr Set-piece and at times he was probably in the team in an odd Gridiron-esque specialised-skillset sort of way, in the sense that his general game was a bit under-par. But, because he did the extraordinary with a dead ball, he entertained me.

Tony Stevenson celebrates earning a bigger photo in this article than Maradona, Messi, or Ronaldo.

This is my point exactly, Messi entertains. He is the focal point of the greatest team of this current generation. I am twenty-one years old and Messi has been the outstanding player of my generation. For me, when other people question whether he is in the same class as Maradona, the jinking magician of their youth, it is ridiculous.

We are never going to be able to stack them up equally. There is no sure-fire way to judge two players from different eras. Essentially it becomes the happiness one generation felt watching a certain player perform and how good they thought he looked in relation to the rest of the players of his time-period against that of a different generation’s.

Martin DeMichelis. Manfully hiding the pain he must feel at stifling Messi’s chances of bagging a World Cup.
Probably the biggest stumbling block for many in Messi’s road to be considered great en masse is the fact that he is judged not to have taken a World Cup by storm and Maradona was seen to lead a team to the trophy. For this, statistics don’t lie and people are always able to say El Diego managed to carry a team to a title. I, for one, concede that a squad which boasts Martin Demichellis as a first choice centre-back is probably a load too heavy for Messi. If Maradona was often criticised for his drug-use and wild antics, it could very well be said that Xavi and Iniesta are Messi’s addiction.

Well on the way to having the mantlepiece of a dedicated charity shop-goer.
However, look at it this way. The best band when you were growing up are probably still your favourite band… and nothing tastes quite like your Mum’s Sunday dinner and all of that sh*te. We value the past, and for Messi not to be considered a contemporary of Pele and Maradona would be f*cking outrageous. I just banged the keyboard there and the dog sighed, such is my passion for this subject. To deny Messi his rightful place at the top table of footballing history would be to deny our generation, our Premier League-watching, highlight-rewinding, Soccer AM for breakfast and football manager for w*nking, iPhone-digesting generation the right to look back on the player that will define our era forever and say to future generations in a patronising manner, “I saw the best ever, his name was Lionel Messi.”

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Owen, originally from the cultural hotbed of South Lanarkshire, moved
to Edinburgh in 2008 where he begin dabbling in student stand up
before begin to perform regularly in 2010. Since then he has been
spreading his brand of pessimism all over Britain, mainly edinburgh
although he once did a gig in Berwick, and is preparing for a joint
venture at this years Fringe.

A fan of both Hamilton Accies and Manchester United, Owen has a love
for holding midfielders and players with average ability scoring
screamers (See Youssef Safri against Newcastle)

“Fresh, inventive and caustic” – Paul Sneddon.

“Owen McGuire’s opening pitch to the audience immediately warmed them
to him and kept up the jovial momentum of his riffs of teaching drama
in Larkhall.” – The Scotsman.

Owen McGuire on Messi, Maradona, and the battle for Greatness

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