Former Barcelona assistant coach Ángel Cappa admits he's been hammered since talking about Lionel Messi. Last week, Cappa declared Messi had "lost his passion for football".
"All I said was that it was a natural process for the team and the player after playing so much football and winning so much. That it's a self-defence mechanism adopted by the organism; that you can't expect Messi or anyone, for that matter, to perform to the best of their ability throughout their whole life, because that's impossible. Barça isn't what it was a few years ago either," he told Marca.
"I think Leo has been right at the very top for 10 years now and it would be unfair to expect his performances not to dip. My view is that the Messi we are seeing today, just like the Barcelona team, was picking and choosing his moments. So in a single match they would have spells of brilliance and others that were less so.
"The Messi I was talking about wasn't displaying that movement, that frenzied desire to get on the ball wherever it was, that passion? After breaking 58,000 records and coming back from injury, that's totally to be expected! But instead of being open to the possibility of engaging in a footballing debate, people targeted me and starting questioning my CV.
"I've received so much abuse in Argentina that my lawyer is going to press charges against some people who have overstepped the mark."
