Kyle Walker revisits ‘not Messi’ comments to Joao Felix: “He agreed with me!” – video | OneFootball

Kyle Walker has revisited the moment he told Joao Felix that he is ‘not Messi’ and has explained the message he was trying to get across.

A clip surfaced after the Napoli game last month which showed Walker imploring with Joao Felix to pass the ball just before the second half got underway in the eventual 2-1 defeat.

One of the things that stood out from the Englishman’s plea was that he reminded the Portuguese ‘no one is Messi’ in the current squad, suggesting team work must prevail over individuality.

Speaking on The Kyle Walker Podcast on BBC Sounds, the former Manchester City man revisited the chat he had in the tunnel with Felix at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.

“The comment that I said was that ‘no one is Messi’. What I was saying to Joao is that in City I think that’s where we got most of our joy over the last number of years, is that there was a process and that was with passes,” he said.

“When you’re coming against a good level of opponent like Napoli, I still feel that you need to have a process of passing the ball and wearing them down. You take them to one side, you take them to the other and then all of a sudden the gaps start to appear.

“And that was the conversation to Joao. It wasn’t me saying to Joao ‘you’re not Messi, pass the ball’. I didn’t just say it to Joao, it was literally ‘let’s make sure we have a process’. And he agreed with me!

“He said that we needed to have more passes, it can’t be so much backwards and forwards football, we need to have a bit more control in the game when you’re playing against good teams. I think we showed that against Inter.

“You have certain individuals that can probably turn a game on the head. I think it’s Mbappe, Vinicius Junior, Mo Salah, Dembele… apart from that you look at it and you say it’s a team game. I didn’t know there was a camera there, but I still wouldn’t have changed anything that I did say now.”