Why does van Bommel think Messi would be average in Serie A?

Former AC Milan midfielder Mark van Bommel was never afraid to speak his mind as a player and he’s come out with a blinder of a statement, suggesting Lionel Messi would be a sub-standard player if he played in Italy.

This is arguably, the best player who has ever graced football and while there can be no doubt Serie A is a very different league to La Liga, Messi is a very effective and consistent goalscorer.

“Three quarters [of the changing room] thought he would score definitely less [than 30 goals a season in Serie A]. And that's me included, yes. Serie A is just a very different approach to football. You can still neutralise sides like in no other league,” van Bommel told Algemeen Dagblad.

So why does he, and others, think this?

Well Serie A football is heavily based around defensive tactics and containing play. The Milan v Barcelona match this week showed that Milan are very effective when they contain influential players.

It’s very clever because rather than trying to mark one person out of a game, which is more common in England, Milan effectively took out the area of the pitch where Barcelona are the most effective.

Serie A sides also tend to play very narrow against sides that like to dominate possession and pass the ball around. This means all 11 players in behind the play across a central area.

The effect this has is that it forces key attacking players, like Messi, to go wider because they are desperate for the ball. Once they’re out wide, they’re easier to man mark or zonal mark in a certain area of space.

The fitness of Serie A teams is also superb which means they can keep containing tactics up for an entire 90 minutes, wearing the opposition down and looking to score goals on the counter attack.

It would be hard for any striker to bag 30 goals a season in Serie A because tactically, teams will always try and find a new and innovative way to keep a key player in the opposition quiet.

Those players like Messi are used to conventional methods of man marking and normal tactics to stop them so that degree of thinking outside the box is very important.

Do you agree or disagree with van Bommel?

image: © jeroen bennink

Lewis Doe

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Lewis Doe is a freelance writer and editor who seeks to bring you the biggest, smallest and most interesting stories from the football world. Lewis has previously written for some of the biggest football news and opinion sites in the world including FootballFanCast and Goal.com International. Lewis is also experienced writing in the betting industry and aims to deliver his stories with up to date factual and statistical information. He hopes to sum up stories for the site and provide an angle on the issue moving forward.