Marseille deployed desperate tactics to stop Lionel Messi's free kick, they still needed the crossbar to save them

Marseille showed how much they fear Lionel Messi's free kick taking, by going for some extreme tactics to stop him scoring, and he still rocked the crossbar.

There aren't many players who have scored more goals from set pieces in the history of football than Messi, who has scored 60 for club and country.

Earlier this year his stats had him only behind former Barcelona teammate Ronaldinho, goalkeeping free kick supremo Rogerio Ceni and set piece legend Juninho Pernambucano, all of whom are retired and can't add to their stats.

At 35-years-old, the Argentine legend is clearly still feared by his opposition when he stands over a free kick, as PSG's rivals proved on Sunday.

It was a top of the table clash, with the two sides only separated by three points going into Le Classique, and before the previous week's fixtures the two sides had almost identical records.

Messi lined up alongside Neymar and Kylian Mbappe upfront, with the Frenchman having to deny claims that he'd asked to leave the club in January, following the match.

In the 35th minute, Christophe Galtier's side were awarded a free kick on the edge of the visitor's penalty box, with Messi obviously lining up to take it.

However, Igor Tudor's side were obviously ready for this eventuality, as they had a pre planned ploy to stop the seven time Ballon d'Or winner, sticking all 11 men either in the wall or somewhere else in the box.

As well as a three man wall, there was someone marking the PSG forward on the edge of the area, and two more on the edge of the six yard box as a mini second wall.

There's another two defenders either side of the six yard box and then the goalkeeper is placed in the middle of his goal, with a man on each post.

Marseille were pretty much covered in every possible position in the penalty box to stop Messi from being able to score, but it wasn't actually any of the defence that stopped him.

Despite the lack of space for him to shoot into, the former Barcelona forward still managed to get the ball over the wall and away from all seven defenders and the goalkeeper.

He instead struck the crossbar, with the ball then coming down to Marco Verratti, whose header was blocked by the still assembled masses.

It's not the first time that the opposition have gone to extreme lengths to stop Messi from scoring from a set piece, and even the 'draft extractor' position of lying behind the wall was brought in partially due to the PSG star.

In December 2020 La Liga teams thought they'd figured out how to stop the then Barcelona star from scoring from set pieces, after going 62 attempts without scoring.

Real Sociedad had similar tactics to those of Marseille, sticking seven players behind the wall in a Spanish league game, with Sevilla using a FIFA 20 tactic of having a player sprinting back to head the ball over the bar.

On Sunday night it didn't matter for PSG or Marseille, however, with Neymar going on to score the only goal of the game.