Former Premier League and Arsenal player Emi Martinez has compared England international and Aston Villa captain Jack Grealish to Barcelona legend Lionel Messi.
While speaking on talkSPORT the former Gunners goalkeeper claimed that Grealish “is the most talented player I’ve ever seen.”
“He never gives the ball away. When I see Grealish running, it’s always a shot on target or a corner for us. He will drive past two or three players.
👏 “The most talented player I’ve seen.”
😯 “When Jack Grealish is on the ball I just see Messi with a right foot.”
🇦🇷 “In training, Messi uses people as cones & I see the same with Jack.”#AVFC’s Emi Martinez says Jack Grealish reminds him of Lionel Messi! pic.twitter.com/5vn99N4bOs
— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) February 12, 2021
Video courtesy of talkSPORT via Twitter
“I just see Messi with a right foot when he has the ball. You can’t get the ball off him.
“He’s the most talented English player and I’m surprised he hasn’t played more games for England.
“Messi is Messi, he’s the best ever. But in terms of training, when Jack has the ball, people don’t want to tackle him, they respect him, he can finish, he can chop, he can do everything.
“When I train with Messi for the national team, it’s the same. Nobody wants to touch him, he chops people, he treats players like cones.
“I see that with Jack here.”
According to an algorithm created by Football Critic, Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish is the 6th best player on the planet – ranking higher than Mo Salah and Kylian Mbappé.
Football Critic update their table every Monday and here is how they get their results. They take multiple factors into account such as;
- Match ratings – an average of a player’s last 1800 minutes in competitive matches
- Competition weighting – A bonus based on the quality of the competition
- Performance bonus – An additional bonus based on the consistency of the player’s performance over the last 1800 minutes
and based on the results of those factors the feed it into their algorithm and ultimately come up with a ranking system.
Video courtesy of @reece__utd via Twitter
The table consists of the Top 50 around the world but we’re just going to focus on the Top 10.
- Lionel Messi – Barcelona
- Robert Lewandowski – Bayern Munich
- Erling Haaland – Borussia Dortmund
- Neymar Jr. – PSG
- Cristiano Ronaldo – Juventus
- Jack Grealish – Aston Villa
- Mo Salah – Loverpool
- Iago Aspas – Celta
- Kylian Mbappé – PSG
- Joshua Kimmich – Bayern Munich
If you want to see the entire Top 50 click here.