I honestly thought that Messi would ' ve been ahead of him at this stage , but when recalling the way he started out at Real Madrid , he used to be much better at taking freekicks . Check out those two freekicksQq 9 Jkby 7 wM in one match against Villarreal , against his soon to be teammate Diego Lopez back in 2011 . Seemed to love taking themZnkVYMg 8 wY against that side and Diego Lopez . The fact that he mostly used to take all of them in the past for Madrid certainly has certainly helped him in that regard . For example Messi wasn ' t the regular free kick taker for Barcelona when he started out . I believe he slowly became an expert at those around 2012 and past that or something , might be wrong though when it comes to the exact year . And definitely seems to be one of the best in the world at them right now . Like he is at pretty much everything else .