Chennai: Former Brazilian great Ronaldinho feels that Lionel Messi has been the perfect senior to Neymar at Barcelona, exactly the role played by him when the Argentine stalwart joined the first team of the Catalan giants more than a decade ago.
"I think so. When Messi came in, he was a young kid and there was so much potential in him. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with him and we did share a great rapport on the field and off it too.
"I am delighted to see that Messi is doing to Neymar what I did to him when he came to Barcelona. That is what senior players in the team are expected to do," Ronaldinho, who has come here to take part in the Premier Futsal tournament, said here on Sunday.
It is not common for Barcelona to get a standing ovation at Santiago Bernabeu but Ronaldinho experienced that heady feeling in November 2005, after Barcelona blanked Real Madrid 3-0 in an El Clasico. It was only the second time that a Barcelona player had got such an ovation from the Bernabeu crowd, after Diego Maradona in the early 1980's.
"It was awesome. The gesture was amazing. That experience, being an opposition player, was an once-in-a-lifetime moment," Ronaldinho fondly recollected. He scored 70 goals in 145 appearances for Barcelona.
Ronaldinho is hopeful that the young Brazilian team with Neymar as their mainstay will do well at the Rio Olympics.
"It is a balanced squad. Brazil have had and will continue to have a lot of talented players. The only significant difference that I see in the past and now is that the national teams get very little time together and they rarely play together.
"You need to understand the other person's game to be able to complement that and build up a combination. With so much club football, there is very little time for national teams to get together."
Ronaldinho spoke about his famous free-kick from the wide right during 2002 World Cup match against England. "We were very well prepared for that England game. We saw a lot of videos and we had spotted those weaknesses in the English team.
"We had studied them well and I knew (David) Seaman liked to step forward for free-kicks.
"Then what happened was natural. That is something you are expected to do as players at the highest level - exploit weaknesses of the opposition."
Meanwhile, Ronaldinho sizzled by scoring five goals to guide his side Goa 5s to a thumping 7-2 win over Bengaluru 5s in a Premier Futsal match, here on Sunday.
The Brazilian disappointed in the first game, struggling to keep pace, but looked much better right from the start on Sunday, setting up teammate Rafael as he struck the post in the opening minute.
The Barcelona legend scored a brilliant goal in the sixth minute, off a corner from the left. He exquisitely side-stepped the diving goalkeeper and slotted into an empty net to give Goa the lead.
Bengaluru 5s came back right at the end of the first quarter, as Maximiliano scored a brilliant solo goal, slotting from a narrow angle after a quick stepover past the keeper.
The second quarter started with Bangalore team taking the lead through Jonathan Piers, who collected a pass and slammed it home with his left foot. (PTI)
