It’s hard to find a common point between supporters and players of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, the yin and yang of the footballing community. But in a recent video for Adidas, Lionel Messi and Zinedine Zidane opened up about each other, their playing style, the declining influence of No. 10, and many other things.
Messi didn’t shy away from praising the Frenchman, saying “I admire you a lot, we were not lucky enough to play together.” The rise of Messi at FC Barcelona had coincided with the dusk of Zidane’s career at Real Madrid. The duo shared the pitch only once, in the El Clasico of 2006.
“For me, he is one of the greatest in history, I always admired him, I followed him a lot at Madrid, I suffered him because he was from Madrid. He was always a player. different, elegant, tall, magic, he had everything. I remember the goal against Leverkusen, the goals in the World Cup, the 360-degree turns” said Messi.
Zidane too didn’t hold himself back from showering praises on the Argentine. “It is just one word: ‘magic’. I mean, Leo and I are not together every day. So today is a very important day for me because I can tell him how much I admire him.”
“And I think it is magic, pure magic. Magic in the sense that before receiving the ball, he already knew what needed to be done. And especially for me, as someone who understands football. Watching you [Messi] on the field, I almost knew what you were going to do, you know? It was like a connection. When I see him doing what he does, I say: ‘that’s it’,” added Zidane.
Zidane also told a story about how he decided to choose No.5 in Madrid. The French midfielder said when he arrived in Madrid, the boss Florentino Perez asked him to choose a number between 1 to 10, and since the No.5 was vacant at that point, he decided to choose it. “(Manolo) Sanchis had number 5 for Madrid, he left, and when I got there, the president told me ‘wouldn’t you like to have a number from 1 to 10?’ and we picked the number 5 because he didn’t want the 25, 30, 35, this is not football, it is American football, so in the end, I got number 5,” said Zidane.
