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Football

20th Sep 2015

VIDEO: Lionel Messi continues his mission to get the penalty-taking responsibility taken off him

Still hasn't landed

Darragh Murphy

Lionel Messi – best in the world at pretty much everything but ludicrously inconsistent at spot kicks.

Messi found the top corner with a tremendous penalty that gave the goalkeeper no chance when he gave Barcelona a 3-0 lead over Levante on Sunday night.

So we all expected the net to bulge again when the little magician stepped up to take another penalty just fifteen minutes later.

The ball landed closer to the back of the Bernabeu net as he absolutely blazed it over which pushed his penalty stats to six converted from his past 12 which is pretty atrocious at this elite level.

https://twitter.com/revistadelaliga/status/645690320664047616

To be fair, Messi made amends when he got the fourth goal for Barca in the final minute with this slick finish but the above statistics would suggest that Luis Enrique would be best served giving the spot-kick duty to Luis Suarez or Neymar.

Hell, Javier Mascherano is probably going to have a better ratio than Messi.

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