“Messi scored a lot of goals against me. Too many!” Oblak told reporters. “But he’s a great player, a fantastic player, the best player.”
Jan Oblak has praised Lionel Messi
The pair has experienced several heated, controversial battles over the years, but there is high respect between Jan Oblak and Leo Messi. The Slovenian goalkeeper has heaped on the Argentine after breaking Pele’s record for the most goals scored for a single club. “Messi scored a lot of goals against me. Too many!” Oblak told reporters. “But he’s a great player, a fantastic player, the best player. There are many times that he scores a goal, and you have the feeling that you can’t figure out how he scored so easily. You’re not even close. Sometimes it feels like he just passed the ball into the goal; it’s not even a shot.” The Atletico Madrid goalkeeper has conceded ten of the 644 goals Messi has scored for Barcelona, but that’s not to mean that Oblak has not got the best from the Argentine on occasions.
Just a few weeks ago, in the LaLiga meeting between Atlético and Barcelona, Jan Oblak kept his third clean sheet against Leo Messi, although he remained modest about his feat. “He is still the best player in the world, the keeper said. “Messi refuses to be beaten and has scored in the last four minutes of meetings on three separate occasions. It’s weird. Sometimes you think you control Barcelona, you control him, but after a second he changes the game, he scores a goal and Barcelona wins,” he said. “Sometimes, you don’t see him. Maybe you think it’s not dangerous and then he scores. That happened to us last season. You must be 100 per cent focused.”