This was Messi's World Cup: Half the tournament was spent walking

Remember the viral audio of the Argentine fan who gave Sampaoli the tactic to face the World Cup? It was simple: balls into Lionel Messi, but it didn't work as the Argentine spent most of his tournament walking.

His companions searched constantly, in fact, only Javier Mascherano made more passes than his 210, but Messi wasn't able to be the decisive player that he has proved to be in Barcelona.

He was the great hope for the albiceleste in Russia, but his performance was really discreet.

Messi's fourth participation in a World Cup ended with one goal, two assists, six shots on goal, a pass success less than 90 percent in the four games he played and a penalty miss against Iceland.

The No.10 is not a football player who is characterised by great physical displays either.

He rarely runs more than seven kilometres in the 90 minutes, and the World Cup has not been an exception.

Only in the decisive game against Nigeria in the group stage did he exceed 8,500 metres.

However, if we analyse these numbers thoroughly, we see that Messi is only active when his team has possession of the ball, otherwise he remains more static and his defensive contribution is testimonial.

That is also shown in his heat maps where you can barely see his presence behind the halfway line.

Distance travelled

Messi covered 31,618 metres in Russia, and of these, 13,398 or 58 percent of the total distance, was made at a speed between 0 and 7km/h - walking pace.

Twenty-five percent of the total, 8,134 metres saw him reach a speed between 7 and 15km/h.

Above 25 km/h he covered 612 metres with a top speed of 28.37 km/h recorded in one of the 28 sprints he made in the game against France.

Passes received

Another significant fact is the passes that his teammates have given him.

Messi's style of play is well known to everyone.

He likes to receive in the middle of the pitch, rather than to the left, and draws lots of opponents to him in order to open up spaces elsewhere.

However, it's significant in this World Cup that he only received two passes within that area.

One against Iceland and another against Croatia.

Taking into account that 85 percent of their goals come from him being in that area, the data is devastating.

Finishing

He sought a goal 18 times, and had 11 shots in the first game against Iceland alone.

Against Croatia, he had one shot, two against Nigeria and three against France.

Of the 18 total shots, only six were on target.