Top 5 active players who successfully changed their playing position

#2 Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi celebrating his goal at Santiago Bernabeu

The diminutive Argentine has been head and shoulder above everybody else over the past years, excluding Cristiano Ronaldo. But what do you do when you’re a Lionel Messi whose powers are waning but still intends to continue to colonise world football? You reinvent yourself to become the best-attacking midfielder on Earth.

And that’s precisely what Lionel Messi has done. To accommodate Luis Suarez, Messi reverted to his initial right wing forward position. However, as Messi seems to be losing his explosion and attacking aggression, the Catalan top echelon and Argentina FA felt it necessary to prolong his time at the summit of the game by encouraging the Barcelona man to become an orchestrator instead of continuing as an attacking provocateur.

Consequently, as with everything Messi, he took to that task with great aplomb. From that position, Messi scored 54 goals for club and country just in 2017. In fact, the game which perfectly demonstrated his role reversion was the recently concluded El Clasico, where he played as a midfielder to ensure Barcelona win the battle ensuing in the middle of the park.

Messi was seen pressing from the front; a tactic which yielded great dividends because it meant the Madrid defence and midfield had little time on the ball and were therefore forced to go long to Cristiano Ronaldo and Benzema. Furthermore, when the game opened up in the second half, Messi created a league-high nine chances for his teammates; although they only had three goals to show for it.

Above all, Barcelona and neutral fans would hope for a long continuance of such splendid midfield performances from the immaculate Lionel Messi.