Lionel Messi Kills With Goals, 'Doesn't Care If You're A Friend,' Teammate Says

Some of Lionel Messi’s teammates are aware of how he draws the line between friendship and professionalism.

Throughout his magnificent career, Messi is known for his incredible work ethic. In the process, he also made good friends with his teammates. But according to his Argentina teammate Willy Caballero, Messi knows no friends during game time.

Messi and Caballero are teammates in international competitions but rivals in club football. Speaking to 90min, the Chelsea goalkeeper bared that his compatriot always goes for the “kill” whenever he touches the ball.

"Facing [Lionel] Messi, I had to suffer," Caballero admitted. "He goes out to assassinate the goalkeepers. The goalkeepers, the defenders - he's going to kill [them]. And killing means scoring as many goals as possible.”

"He doesn't care if you know him, if you're Argentine or if you're a friend,” he continued. “He'll talk to you afterwards, greet you and everything else, but in those 90 minutes he's on a mission to hit you with goals."

Dani Alves is another teammate of Messi's who has witnessed how serious the six-time Ballon d’Or can be every time he plays.

Alves spent eight seasons with Barcelona, and throughout the course of his stay at Camp Nou, the right-back had seen and felt Messi’s intensity up close.

According to Alves, who is playing for Sao Paolo and Brazil national team, Messi once dominated them during a training session “like a killer.”

"I remember during one training session, Messi was doing things with the ball at his feet that defied logic," Alves said in a piece for The Players’ Tribune in 2017. "Of course, that is what he did every day. Only this time, something was different. Now, I need to remind you, this was an extremely intense training session. We were not messing around.”

"Messi was dribbling through the defense and finishing like a killer,” the Brazilian added.

What’s even more shocking was that Alves noticed that while Messi was completely thumping them all over the pitch, the Barcelona captain’s boots were both “completely untied.”

“And then as he's running past me, I look down at his boots, and I'm thinking to myself, 'Is this a joke?',” the former Barca star wondered. “He comes running past again, and I think, 'No, it's impossible.'”

"He comes running past again, and now I'm sure what I'm seeing,” he continued. “His damn boots are untied. Both of them. I mean completely untied.”