Watch: What happens when you play Lionel Messi as goalkeeper on FIFA 17

What’s the story?

A few years back, Catalan captain Carles Puyol had tweeted a picture of club teammate Lionel Messi making a full-stretch save while playing as a goalkeeper in Barcelona training. With the Argentine striker capable of playing between the sticks, Dreamteam FC found that FIFA based YouTube channel, Hitman 89 decided to actually put the diminutive striker between the sticks in an actual FUT game on FIFA 17 to interesting results.

In case you didn’t know…

Lionel Messi was famously pictured by Carles Puyol making a full-stretch save while playing as a goalkeeper in Barcelona’s training sessions. Puyol had then tweeted the picture with the caption, “I have seen everything now. Even as a goalkeeper he does well this little phenomenon”

With the FIFA series allowing for flexibility in team picking and line-up selection, it is possible for any outfield player to be made goalkeeper and vice-versa. Hitman89 decided to take advantage of this and played Messi in goal for a FIFA game.

The heart of matter

The Argentine striker is not particularly tall but has high agility attributes which probably allow him to make some surprisingly acrobatic full stretch saves. Messi’s height inevitably comes into the equation when he asked to deal with crosses and he is expectedly unsuccessful at doing so.

As the game goes on, the striker’s shortcomings in goal become glaringly obvious as he lets in shot after shot for the match to finish at a humiliating score of 6-2 for Hitman89.

What’s next?

On the above video’s evidence, Messi is terribly unsuitable for being played in goal on FIFA 17 and his talents are obviously put to much better use further upfront. Former teammate Zlatan Ibrahimovic, however, managed to pull off some impressive saves although that was on an earlier version of FIFA.

Author’s Take

Lionel Messi is probably the best attacking footballer on the planet right now and one of the best to have ever played the game. On FIFA too, he enjoys a rating of 93 which is second only to Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

Playing such a player as goalkeeper would be a criminal waste of talent when there are specialists to do the job for you in that position.