Rakitic believes Nadal would have won 50 Grand Slams if he was a Tennis player

Lionel Messi’s prowess with the ball at his feat is well known all around the globe. His mesmerising dribbles and the ability to get past multiple defenders in a single move has helped him scale the heights of the footballing world.

But his Barcelona teammate, Ivan Rakitic believes that Messi would have been great at Tennis too.

He went as far as to say that Messi would have won 50 Grand Slam titles if he would have picked up the racquet instead of the football during his childhood.

Rakitic made this statement while he was being quizzed about how he wished his Argentine teammate whilst he left for the World Cup.

“As with all other team-mates that went to World Cup, I wished him all the luck,” Rakitic said.

“Of course, when you have the best player in the world, you are favourites, although he says they are not.

“He’d give some titles with Barcelona for that one with Argentina. If Messi had played tennis, he’d have won 50 Grand Slams!

“But you don’t play football by yourself, it is not an individual sport.” he added.

Now, that is one outlandish statement to make, as you can’t really compare an individual sport and a team sport, leave alone comparing two individual sports.

But if we were in a ‘what if’ world, do you think Messi can replicate his footballing brilliance in Tennis?

In a ‘simulate game’, if there is ever one in the future, do you think players who are adept in one sport can excel in another one as well, just on the basis of their extreme physical conditioning(of course they will undergo some amount of skill training in this simulation as well).

Pretty vague, yes, but a good statement to get a few arguments going.

Rakitic and Messi will face off against each other in Group D of the FIFA World Cup in a few days time.