The two football stars, Neymar, 32, and Messi, 37, have played together 206 times, both at Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain. ..Continue Reading
Throughout their time at Barcelona, Messi, an eight-time Ballon d’Or winner, was always the standout player, even with the presence of talents like Andres Iniesta, Luis Suarez, and Neymar himself, forming part of the 2015 Champions League-winning team.
Despite Messi being widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time, Neymar revealed that the Argentinian asked for his guidance to master a particular skill.
“I helped Messi take penalties!” Neymar told Podpah. “We were in training, he asked me… ‘How do you take penalties like that?’
“I was like, ‘Are you crazy? You’re Messi if I can do it, you can too’. Then I taught him, and he trained.”
Messi has successfully converted 111 penalties in his career, though he has missed 31 times, with his most recent miss occurring during the 2022 World Cup against Poland.
However, he redeemed himself by scoring a penalty in the final against France and another during the shoot-out, helping Argentina secure their third World Cup title.
The 37-year-old has previously expressed that scoring from the penalty spot is “more difficult than it seems.”
“I would like to be more effective from the penalty spot,” Messi told Radio Catalunya back in 2018.
“’But it’s difficult to work on penalties. It’s not the same taking them in training as it is in a game. You can have an idea in your head or something you have worked on, but it’s more difficult than it seems.
“The goalkeeper has a lot to do with it, too. If they guess right, they save it. But it’s obvious that I’d like to get better at taking penalties.”
Neymar revealed his secret to scoring penalties was to stay focused on the goalkeeper.
“In the [2022] World Cup he won, for example, he scored several penalty goals like that,” Neymar added. “The only one he didn’t take while looking at the goalkeeper, he missed.”
