At Barca, Messi is to Neymar, what I was to Messi: Ronaldinho

“I think so. When Messi came in, he was a young kid and there was so much potential in him. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with him and we did share a great rapport on the field and off it too. 

I am delighted to see that Messi is doing to Neymar what I did to him when he came to Barcelona. That is what senior players in the team are expected to do,” Ronaldinho, who has come here to take part in the Premier Futsal tournament told mediapersons, here today.

It is not common for Barcelona teams to get a standing ovation at Santiago Bernabeu but Ronaldinho experienced that heady feeling in November 2005 after Barcelona blanked Real Madrid 3-0 in an ‘El Clasico’ game. It was only the second time that a Barcelona player had got such an ovation from Bernabeu crowd after Diego Maradona in the early 80’s.

“It was awesome. The gesture was amazing. To experience that being a opposition player, was once in a lifetime moment,” Ronaldonho, who scored 70 goals in 145 appearances for Barcelona, fondly recollected.

Ronaldinho is hopeful that the young Brazilian team with Neymar as their mainstay will do well at the Rio Olympics.

“It is a balanced squad. Brazil has had and will continue to have a lot of talented players. The only significant difference that I see in the past and now, is that the national teams get very little time together and they play so rarely for them to play to the best of their abilities.