Messi magic set to unsteady Aguero and Atletico.


FC Barcelona's top scorer in the La Liga, Lionel Messi will come face to face with the joint top scorer in the Spanish Primera, Aguero of Atletico Madrid on Sunday when their teams clash in the Liga at Camp Nou. Both Messi and Aguero have 5 goals each. The two strikers are also close friends and are both looking forward to their meeting this weekend, a meeting they have spoken at length on the telephone. Messi says of Aguero:

Aguero is a fantastic player who does excellent things with the ball. We are both playing well and have real confidence, something that is very important for any player. I hope that we both continue in the same way, although I hope that he will not be able to anything good this weekend. He is very powerful, can score goals and doing things that look impossible, he can do anything and it will be difficult to stop him. But we can stop him with teamwork as we have to try and prevent him from having the ball much. People often compare him to me, but I don’t think that’s right. I have my own way of playing which is quite different from his own style.

On the tam Atletico madrid itself, Messi thinks highly of the Madrid squad:

Atletico Madrid are a great team who like to play attacking football and, in that sense, are similar to us. It is important not to let them score too many goals and to score goals ourselves.

Messi also underplays the injury crisis in FC Barcelona:

It’s just a question of bad runs, it’s pure science and there is no need to start blaming anybody. All teams got through these things and now it is us, but I see no need to start making changes to our warm-up methods because we have always done the same thing and there haven’t always been as many injuries.

The Barça forward spoke about his nomination for the Ballon d'Or:

I appreciate this, but it doesn’t pre-occupy my mind. I am calm about it and am only thinking about playing and helping my team.

FC Barcelona play Atletico Madrid in the La Liga weekend clash at Camp Nou. The kick off time is 17:00 hours ( GMT +1 ).