now. He's also Argentina's all-time leading goal-scorer, but while Barcelona have successfully

crafted side that maximise the Argentina forward's abilities, his national side seem overly reliant

on him and, when Messi misfires, so do they.

Jorge Sampaoli's predecessor in the Argentina dug-out, Tata Martino, managed Barcelona before

taking the reins. While his Barcelona tenure was considered a failure, as the Catalans

ceded La Liga on the final day of the season and only won the Spanish Super Cup, the boss

worked well with Messi and it stood him in good stead when moving to manage the Albiceleste,

using Messi effectively on the right hand side of a three man front line. Jorge Sampaoli

has so far failed to replicate this consistently.

At Barcelona this season, Messi has once again excelled. Ernesto Valverde has played a 4-4-2

based on controlling possession and pressing. Young French winger Ousmane Dembele has started

on the right, while Messi has played as a right-sided centre forward who drops off into

space to collect passes from Sergio Busquets, Ivan Rakatic, and Andres Iniesta, who tucks

inside.

In this 4-4-2, Dembele can and does push up and in, joining Luis Suarez up front, while

Messi swaps and drops off in space centrally or on the right-hand side. This forces defences

to react to the chopping and changing, rather than working against a positionally static

set-up, which can make the defence lack cohesion as they do not know who to pick up and where

to go. This ideally sets Messi up one v one against the opposition full back, or running

into space if the full back mistakenly tracks Demebele cutting inside.

When Messi drop off centrally, as Iniesta pushes up and in with Jordi Alba overlapping,

he does not need to drop too deep. Rakitic also pushes up, while Busquets' superb range

of passing means that Messi can be found just off the defence, between the lines, rather

than having to come all the way back to his own midfield line to collect the ball and

then drive forwards.

For Argentina, Messi has been playing as a 10 in a 4-2-3-1 off Sergio Aguero, with Maximiliano

Meza to his right and Angel di Maria to his left. It's worth noting that Meza had to

step in to the role at very short notice; Manuel Lanzini of West Ham had been playing

in that position and had worked on his interactions with Messi, but was forced to withdraw on

the eve of the tournament due to injury, which hampered Meza's ability to fit neatly into

the space vacated by the West Ham player.

Meza is supposed to cut inside, but often when he does he then stays static so that

even if Savio overlaps from right back, he is close to Messi and not moving off him or

creating issues for defenders. In addition, Meza and Messi do not yet have an understanding

of when one should cut in and the other go wide, such as Messi and Dembele do at club

level.

But to lay the blame for Messi stuttering at Meza's door is unfair. It's noticeable

how deep Messi often had to drop against Iceland to receive the ball, playing almost more as

an eight than as a ten, as Javier Mascherano and Lucas Biglia offered almost nothing in

terms of progressive passing or movement. This, in turn, isolated Meza so that he was

forced to drop off himself, or push inside to offer a vertical passing option to Messi,

which meant Savio had a huge distance to move up to create an overlap and stop Argentina

clustering far too much in the central column of the pitch.

Argentina have a few options to make changes and get more from their talisman. A shift

to three at the back would allow a more natural progression on the overlap for Messi to play

with, while also ensuring that at least one midfielder could push up and link the 10 to

the two deeper players.

Alternatively, Savio could move to play as a more orthodox wide man, with Gabriel Mercado

playing right back, which would again give Argentina more width; though this would not

solve the issue of Messi having to drop off to collect the ball, unless a more attack-minded

midfielder is played centrally.

Argentina and Messi should improve, and one cannot underplay the efforts of Iceland in

being obdurate and tough to play against. Nonetheless, it's still hard to shake off

the feeling that Jorge Sampaoli does not know how to get the best from his star man or set

up the team around him yet, and Argentina, for all their quality, could pay the price.