Lionel Messi did not merely inhabit one era of football. He travelled through several of them. He emerged before social media could manufacture teenage superstars, before algorithms identified talent across continents and before GPS data, analytics and hyper-specialised academies began measuring almost every movement of an elite footballer. More than two decades later, Messi leaves the international stage with the sport almost unrecognisable from the one he entered.
\n\nFormer FIFA international referee and ex-PGMOL chief Keith Hackett believes another extraordinary talent can certainly emerge, but recreating Messi is another proposition altogether. In an exclusive conversation with Sports Now, Hackett explains why instinct, repetition, imagination and something as simple as a child spending countless hours with a football created a genius modern technology may struggle to manufacture.
\n\nBefore asking whether football could ever find another Messi, there is a more fundamental question: what exactly is it trying to replace? Pelé helped carry football across borders and Maradona became an almost mythical expression of its romance. For Hackett, Messi's cultural inheritance is different. A generation of children scattered across the world who saw themselves in him every time they found something resembling a football and created their own game.
\n\n"I think, culturally…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/sports
