I think a lot of people don’t understand this or, as usual, just run with emotions. Passing range and passing ability are two different things. Messi is arguably one of the greatest passers the game has ever seen, but that doesn’t automatically mean he has the same passing range as the likes of Kroos, KDB and Xavi. Passing range is not just about how good you are at passing a football. It’s about the variety of passes you can execute consistently, the distances you can cover with your distribution, the angles you can access and the different areas of the pitch from which you can create those passes. For example, there’s a difference between playing a through ball to release a runner, to switching play from one flank to another with a 40 yard diagonal, to clipping a ball over a defensive line, to playing a driven pass through multiple lines and consistently finding teammates with long range distribution from deep. All of these are passing, but they require different techniques, weight, trajectory and vision. Messi’s passing brilliance is different. His greatest strength as a passer is arguably his ability to see and execute passes that break defensive structures, particularly through balls, disguised passes and combinations in the final third. You can argue that Messi is the better overall playmaker, but that’s a different conversation from comparing their passing range. Being the better passer overall doesn’t automatically mean you possess the same range of distribution as another player. You People need to learn to separate these things instead of turning every football discussion into a competition.