During a brief water break, as players refilled their bottles and wiped the sweat from their brows, Messi ambled over to him. The superstar's face was a mixture of curiosity and admiration.
"Your understanding of space and timing is incredible," Messi said, his voice low and thoughtful. "I've been playing this way for a long time, but you see things that even experienced players miss. How do you process the game so quickly?"
The question was a minefield. How could he explain the unexplainable? How could he articulate the silent symphony of data and analysis that flooded his mind with every touch of the ball?
He couldn't.
Instead, he resorted to the language he knew best: the language of gesture.
He pointed to his head, then made a sweeping gesture with his hands, as if to encompass the entire pitch. He then shrugged, a small, almost apologetic gesture that conveyed both the complexity of his thought process and his inability to put it into words.
