Walcott Has Edge On Messi

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is convinced that Theo Walcott can go on to become a better player than Barcelona's Argentine prodigy Lionel Messi.

While Messi, 21, is widely regarded as one of the very best players on the planet, Walcott, 19, is just coming into his own, and has shot to superstardom courtesy of his hat-trick against Croatia last month.

“He’s different [to Messi at that age] and I think he’s more,” Wenger said at a press conference on Friday.

“If you have to look for a weakness in Messi you would say it is his ability to run without the ball, behind the defender.

“When he takes the ball to his feet he’s like a Ferrari. But Theo is more a guy who has the timing to run off the ball and that is something that is difficult to find.

“We had Marc Overmars who was especially good at that and I’m a great, great lover of movement off the ball.”

Wenger went on to credit Walcott's rapid development to a weight training regime they put him on since he first arrived as a very scrawny 16-year-old.

"He is a man now in the fight," he said. "You feel he has much more power than a year ago, or six months ago.

"We do a bit of strengthening of the upper body but not weights, because I believe in football it's more about coordination.

"Weights make you more rigid and coordination makes you more flexbile and Walcott is a guy who has natural power. He will naturally become a strong upper body player."