Lionel Messi rates Chelsea youth and so can everyone else

Lionel Messi is making trading cards (apparently) and has named his top 15 youth in the world. Two Chelsea players make the list despite the boo boys.

Lionel Messi is not a scout. There is no indication that he, in any way, shape, or form, can determine talent on a player. Furthermore, naming the top 15 youth players as part of a trading card set is hardly scientific.

That being said, Messi’s opinion, even if it only carries his name, is likely a more informed opinion that a Twitter account that has a profile picture of a player and the user name ends in “szn” or “aholic”. Or most of the scream into a camera stars who claim to have more divine knowledge based on one game of FIFA…er, real life, than the rest of the world.

So when two of those 15 are Mason Mount and Christian Pulisic, it is at least worth taking note of. Especially considering the back and forth over the two earlier in the season and even now.

The season started, at least on the American side of the pond, with cries of “where is Pulisic!”. Those cries quickly evolved (devolved?) into cries of “what does Mount even do?” or simply “Mount is awful”. Callum Hudson-Odoi also got dragged into that debate as some more inclined to shallow thought started crying about English bias.

On the other side of things, there was a group claiming Pulisic had to earn his chance like everyone else. That was true, but the more extreme members of that group had already declared him a flop

Of course, then Pulisic started playing after getting some rest. Not like he played practically a full year of football ahead of that or moved to a new country recently or anything. Anger and debate about Pulisic largely subsided.

Mount has not had such an easy road. It was painfully clear in the first half of the season that Mount was Frank Lampard’s key man tactically. Perhaps because of that and perhaps because it was easy to attach Mount to Lampard, Mount became an avatar for the manager himself. That in turn came out of a similar connection between Maurizio Sarri and Jorginho and anger about a manager quitting the club.

Mount has not been perfect this season by any means. But it is worth remembering that he is 21 and he was at Derby County last year. He has also had several injuries he has played through. Not every 21 year old comes out as a Kylian Mbappe right away and fans had prejudged Mount’s entire trajectory far too early.

The simple fact of the matter is that both Pulisic and Mount (and Hudson-Odoi who is adjacent to this conversation) should be players to build around for the next five or more years. They have shown enough for Messi himself to take notice in the twilight of his career.

Maybe that means something, maybe it does not but if Messi is looking at the generation to replace him, it is at least worth considering the criticism the players faced in the very same season may not have been justified.