Andrés Iniesta hails Leo Messi's 'spectacular consistency'

The FC Barcelona midfielder reflects on a wonderful 2015 and on yet another milestone in his Argentinian colleague’s glittering career

First team captain Andrés Iniesta was the guest on the ‘El Marcador’ show on Barça TV following Wednesday’s 4-0 defeat of Betis. Naturally, he was full of praise for his colleague Leo Messi, who had just made his 500th appearance in a Barcelona shirt. “He is spectacularly consistent in every game and in every training session” said the midfielder about the Argentinian. “And there’s no doubt that that makes him so much better. It’s amazing how naturally he goes about doing things. That makes him different from the rest. And he’s still young, so he can get even better”.

Leo Messi is being heavily tipped to collect the Ballon d’Or trophy for the fifth time in January, and Iniesta understands why he is the favourite. “Because of everything he has done on the field, he has a very good chance of winning it again” he told the Barça TV cameras, before going on to discuss a number of other matters. Here is a selection of stand-out quotes from the interview.

A year to remember

“2015 has been a great year for all of us. It was a wonderful feeling to end the year as we did. But we are well aware that in three days’ time we’ll be starting another year with a very special match”

“It feels so good because it really isn’t easy to win as many titles as we did. But we worked hard to do it. I hope next year can be just as good, or even better than the year we are leaving behind”

“It is hard to single out any one of the five titles. I’ll take all of them. The Club World Cup was the icing on the cake. I feel incredibly proud to have won it as captain”

Team-mates

“Each of us [the Barça midfielders] have our own characteristics. It is important for us to know how to get the best out of each of our qualities. When you’re feeling good, things tend to go well for you. This year I have felt really good, there have been some great sensations. And it’s very nice to have trophies to go with that”

“They may well be the best attacking threesome of all time. I don’t usually make statements about things like that but there’s no question that they’re three very outstanding players. We have to enjoy every day that we have them”

“The 180 goals are a secondary issue in terms of importance. But those stats will be with us forever, and they will be very hard to beat. We have to make it difficult for anyone to come along and surpass what we have achieved”

from News at FCB http://ift.tt/1R1eSL6