7 reasons why Diego Maradona is the most controversial football legend

#3 Telling Pele that Messi lacks personality

There are often moments when one begins to feel like the Argentine legend suffers from split personality disorder. Sometimes, he praises Messi as though the Barcelona number 10 is the greatest of all time and at other times, he criticizes him when there is no need to.

At an event where he was talking to Pele, Maradona was asked by the Brazil legend as to whether he knows Messi personally. A normal answer would be ‘yes’, but Maradona doesn’t like normal.

“He's a really good person, but he has no personality," Maradona replied to Pele, before adding: "He lacks [the] character to be a leader."

Pele was seemingly having fun at the controversial nature of their discussion and took the opportunity to bury the dagger deeper.

Pele responded: "Ah, I get it, he's not like we were back in the days. In the 70s we [Brazil] had really good players like Rivellino, Gerson, Tostao.

"Not like Argentina now, which depends only on Messi. He [Maradona] is saying that Messi is a good player, there's no doubt about it, but he has no personality."