So, this thing started kinda randomly. I was just messing around one weekend, thinking about football, you know? And this name popped into my head – Carlos Messi. Not the real Messi, obviously, but like, what if there was some guy named Carlos who thought he played like Messi, or maybe I just decided to compare some random player named Carlos to the legend himself. It was a weird idea, but it stuck.
I decided, okay, let’s do this. Let’s find some stats for a random player, maybe some obscure dude named Carlos from a lower league, and actually compare him head-to-head with Messi’s stats from a similar period. Just for kicks, a personal project. Didn’t expect much, just wanted to see the process through.
First step, finding the data. Man, that was tougher than I thought. Official sites lock everything down unless you pay big bucks. I ended up scraping data from a couple of fan sites and free stat databases. It was messy. Really messy. Different formats, missing info, names spelled wrong sometimes. Spent a whole Saturday just trying to clean it up in a spreadsheet. Felt like I was wrestling with numbers.
Getting Down to It
Once I had something usable, I started the comparison. Nothing super fancy, just basic stuff:
- Goals scored per game
- Assists per game
- Maybe pass completion, if I could find reliable data
- Dribbles attempted vs completed (this was hard data to find for the ‘Carlos’ guy)
I put them side-by-side. It wasn’t even funny. The difference was astronomical, as you’d expect. Messi’s numbers were just on another planet compared to this poor Carlos fella I picked. It felt a bit silly, honestly. Like proving water is wet.
But here’s the thing: the point wasn’t really about Carlos or Messi anymore. It was about the whole process. Going from a dumb idea, hunting down information, fighting with messy data, and actually putting something together, even if the conclusion was obvious.
I learned more about how hard it is to get clean data and how stats don’t tell the whole story than I did about football tactics. It made me appreciate the analysts who do this for a living. It’s tedious work.
So, yeah. The “Carlos Messi” project. Didn’t uncover any hidden gems or revolutionary insights. But it was a hands-on exercise. A reminder that sometimes you just gotta dive in and do the thing, even if it seems pointless, just to see what happens and what you learn along the way. It was my own little practice run, and I guess that’s what counts.
