Lionel Messi

Sharpen your proverbial knives, unabashedly flaunt your club allegiances and, if you’re Javier Mascherano, pray that Roy Hodgson has spent the year canvassing for your cause. It’s the 2015 FIFA Ballon d’Or shortlist!

They are their national team's’ biggest stars and Barcelona’s strongest weapons. But during the first two rounds of South American World Cup Qualifiers, none of them was able to play for their respective national teams. That raised the question: who in the Barcelona attack trident is the most important player for his national team, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, or Neymar? Here we will look at three details: team’s performance with the player, the team’s performance without the player, and player performance.

We all know Lionel Messi is pretty good. Better than pretty good, even. But when one of the best players in the world is in an interview talking about how he was scared that Messi would embarrass him on front of his family, well, that's a different type of good altogether. 

Luis Suarez is just doing everything for Lionel Messi these days.

Messi, unable to play due to a knee injury, had Suarez shuttle him to and from the Barcelona training facility for rehab sessions. Suarez, being a good friend, happily obliged.

Now, Luis Suarez has given his good buddy Messi a present: some pajamas that Messi appears to be thrilled about.

It’s easy to predict that, without Lionel Messi, even for just a couple months, the 2015-2016 Barcelona season may be in jeopardy of falling short of expectation, nevermind silverware.

Can Gareth Bale become the best player in the world? He has the potential, but just what kind of player will he be when and/or if he ascends to that status? What kind of person will he be?

We thought he was in the clear. We really did. The Lionel Messi tax evasion case moved forward Thursday with the news that a request from the prosecutors on the case to drop the charges against Messi had been denied by the judge trying the case, the BBC reported.

No amount of wishing can make this video real.

We know this because the amount of wishing we're using to wish this video was real would kill a lesser soccer website. Kill it stone dead.

While Lionel Messi will certainly be disappointed with the knee injury suffered against Las Palmas late last month, there is at least some silver lining in his personal life. Spanish prosecutors have dropped charges of tax fraud against the Argentine phenom. His father – Jorge Messi – however, was not as fortunate. For Messi charges dropped; for his father the hammer might drop.