Football news - The Warm-Up: Lionel Messi has no limits. None.

Lionel Messi is so good at association football that team-mates and colleagues who presumably see him do utterly outrageous things in training on a daily basis are still completely and utterly amazed when he does utterly outrageous things on a football field. Take for example his hat-trick goal in Barcelona’s 4-1 win against Betis.

The 31-year-old somehow, now bear with the Warm-Up, managed to whip a chip in off the crossbar. There was too much pace on that effort to be your bog-standard chip; it was a strike that defied physics. To be clear, it should be impossible to whip a chip as a chip in general is chipped – it is in the name, see. Anyway, Ivan Rakitic, Luis Suarez and some other mere mortals couldn’t quite believe what they had seen.

Ludicrously, that effort might not have been the strike of the game. Nope. That might have been the free-kick he leathered top corner earlier on. Grief. Now, the Messi fanpeeps will not have it but there was a time when Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini was pretty average at free-kicks. Now, though, woof. Look at this:

For a bit of perspective, since purchasing PSG in 2011, Qatar Sports Investments have dropped the bones of one billion of the European Central Bank’s finest euros on an attempt to win the Champions League. In that period, PSG have failed to win the Champions League and have failed to score more goals direct from free-kicks as a club than Lionel Messi (Messi 25-21 PSG). Or in other words Lionel Messi has scored more free-kicks since 2011 that a club backed by the wealth of a nation.

And therein lies the under-appreciated brilliance of Messi – he is, without doubt, the greatest footballer to grace a football pitch bestowed with otherworldly talent. BUT he has furnished that talent with an insatiable work ethic. The world’s greatest footballer has the work ethic of a jobbing footballer trying to scrape a living. What. A. Human.

Here is his second goal by the way – also top drawer and lovely movement, kiddo.

It is unfair that Lionel Messi is so good at football and it is even more unfair that he works his feet to the bone improving himself. And thus, he has no limits.

Anyway, just a reminder that this guy finished fifth in the Ballon d’Or voting, which is just further proof that human beings should never be trusted with the responsibility of voting on anything.

You may or may not have seen the money spent graphic thing doing the rounds this weekend. It is mesmerising. Anyway, the one thing that jumped out at the Warm-Up was Internazionale.

Goodness gracious. That is some serious undercover spending right there – granted, Serie A was THE league in the 90s and early noughties but, still, Inter dropped £300 million between 1991 to 2000 to win the UEFA Cup twice. Pretty shocking return that.

That sort of lavish, relatively unfulfilled spending would surely have warded other teams off that sort of behaviour one might suspect. Nah, not Leeds, they raised £300 million over a decade with an outlay of over £100 million over a fortnight* in the heady summer of 2000. Their reward? Erm, Peter Reid and relegation to the Championship at the end of the 2004 season. Peter Ridsdale had a great fish tank though, so, perspective, yea.

*These numbers may have been massaged for dramatic effect

Nope, they have not won a trophy. That will never come. Waheeeey!

Finally, after what seemed an age but in reality was about 20 months Tottenham look set to move into their new stadium. The club will open their new home with a glamour tie against Crystal Palace (oh!) on April 3rd before hosting a Champions League quarter-final against European heavyweights Manchester City (oh!) on April 9th.

Now, in all seriousness, Spurs have managed to build a brand new 60,000-odd seater stadium on the site of their old stadium in under two years. Pretty impressive stuff even if it had been slated to be delivered in 12 months. If The Warm-Up knows anything about life it is to under promise and over deliver not the other way round.

This is great news for Spurs fans but terrible news for www.constructionnews.co.uk, whose traffic is about to drop off a cliff, as with the greatest respect, there will probably be less interest in workers being inebriated building, say, a Sainsbury’s, than when Construction News broke the story that some of the workers at the Tottenham ground were reportedly indulging in some extra-curricular activities while building the new stadium.

Anyway, hopefully they flogged some over-priced ad space to some unsuspecting marketing executive somewhere.

As Lewis Hamilton once famously said, zero cares given.

The above attempt at a pun is marginally worse than the below but it was a close call.

Terrible chat after an absolute shoeing that.

Major hat-tip to the scoop, major, major polar opposite of a hat-tip to the ideas being proposed by soccer bigwigs who want to reshape the European landscape.

Time or Roy Keane waits for absolutely no man.

The first day of the international break, so, yea, erm, well, not much football. So, Nick Miller will probably be trawling though Construction News to find the latest scandal to befall Tottenham’s new stadium.