Christian Vieri calls Lionel Messi the 'Harry Potter' of football
Legendary Italian striker Christian Vieri called Barcelona talisman Lionel Messi the 'Harry Potter' of football and said that he would dispose of his television once the Argentinian footballer retires.
Speaking to CBS sport, Vieri claimed that Messi was a 'magician' and that he ran the show in Barcelona's Champions League group stage win against Juventus.
Ronald Koeman's side eased to a 2-0 win at the Allianz stadium in Turin, with Lionel Messi setting up Ousmane Dembele for Barcelona's first and then converting a penalty to grab their second of the night.
Vieri, who won a Scudetto with Juventus in 1996-97, was all praise for Barcelona's number 10. He said:
"An amazing Barcelona, there was no game. They could've scored six, seven goals easy. They played fantastic."
"Messi is a magician, he's the Harry Potter of soccer and when he stops playing, I'm throwing my TVs away. I'm not going to work no more on TV, I'm going to watch Netflix, that's it, because when he stops there's nothing else to watch."
Barcelona and Lionel Messi bounce back from disappointing El Clasico showing
Barcelona's 2-0 win over Juventus was the perfect response to their underwhelming performance against arch-rivals Real Madrid over the weekend.
Koeman's men were out-played by the La Liga champions and lost 3-1 as Lionel Messi looked tired and disinterested.
The Dutch coach spoke after the game and lambasted VAR for awarding Real Madrid a very soft penalty following Clement Lenglet's tug on Sergio Ramos' jersey. Koeman had said:
"I don't understand VAR, I think it is only used to make decisions against Barca.
"You always get shirt tugs like that in the area and I think Ramos makes a foul on Lenglet first. There's a tug of the shirt, but not enough to make him fall behind as he did. For me it's not a penalty.
"We have had five matches and [VAR] has only been used to go against Barca. It's never gone our way."
However, Koeman would have enjoyed the reversal of this trend on Wednesday, when three of Alvaro Morata's goals for Juventus were ruled out by VAR.