T’was not flashy, there were no ostentatious stepovers or unnecessary flicks or twirls. The genius lay, as with so much Lionel Messi does, in a superficial simplicity which belied the fact that no other player on the planet could have done it.

He turned in a way that tied Jerome Boateng’s legs in knots then glanced up at the goal, finding himself at a tight angle with the ball on his weaker foot and the finest goalkeeper in the game racing out to close down what tiny amount of space he had. As though it were the easiest thing in the world, he simply lifted the ball gently over the remaining obstacles and turned away in celebration of his latest masterpiece.

Its beauty was flawless. The desperate lunging of Rafinha, trying to hook it off the line, only added to the ballet and failed to mar the aesthetic with anything so crude as a scuffed connection. All three defensive colleagues lay flat out on the floor as Bayern Munich’s Champions League hopes slipped away.

With all that, though, there remained a sense that this was not even particularly exceptional, and that said more than anything about a truly astonishing footballer who operates at a different level to any other. Cristiano Ronaldo would object to that, of course, but the two of them are different beasts. There are plenty of tricky, athletic, goalscorers out there just like Ronaldo; he just happens to do it that much better than all the others. Messi, by contrast, is unique in possessing a much less quantifiable genius.

Ronaldo is effective because he is fast, powerful, tall, skilful, has great movement and lethal finishing skills. His qualities are numerous but obvious. Indeed, if you entered the desired attributes of the perfect forward into a computer the composite it produced would be someone very like him. With Messi, it is much harder to put your finger on exactly how he is as good as he is. He’s not lightning fast, he’s not big and strong, he doesn’t decorate his play with an endless range of ornate tricks. He just gets the ball and holds onto it until he decides he’s done with it, usually by placing it in the back of the net. We’re never quite sure exactly how he managed it, or why he wasn’t stopped, only that he did it. He seems to play a different sport to everyone else, one which is won by other means and the rules are subject to his whim.

It’s hard to look at Ronaldo and find any flaws in his game, only that he isn’t Messi. He couldn’t have scored that goal against Bayern, no one could. No one except that tiny man with the most delicate form of magic in his feet and a greatness which defies logic. Fortunately, though, football is an art form which, for all its love of statistical models and tactical tweaking, still has enough chaos at its heart for logic to be trumped by sheer inspiration. The boy from Rosario epitomises that chaos, setting it against finely honed athletic perfection, then defying all our expectations of modern sport by somehow conspiring to win.

Talk always follows his finest achievements about where he fits into the all-time pantheon, but we shouldn’t waste much time on such discussions. How can you compare Messi to Pelé when the games they played were so utterly different? Before 1970 football was a much more ponderous affair — watch that year’s World Cup final and notice just how much time Brazil were afforded on the ball even at the very pinnacle of football — but that tempo has risen steadily ever since. Modern players have to be faster, fitter and more alert than in the past, but that is balanced out by today’s stricter rule book being much more favourable to forward play.

The best of all time is a facile discussion and one which is ultimately counterproductive. Pelé’s time has long gone, as has that of Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff, and all the other greats people bring into such a debate. Just a few years from now Messi’s will pass too. Don’t waste it trying to label him or measure him, just absorb the rare pleasure of a player unlike any other, whose indefinable talents are the purest essence of beauty in sport.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hugo Saye is an English journalist who spent nine months in Jamaica shadowing 2012-2013 National Premier League champions Harbour View FC, where he spoke openly with stars of both sport and politics and discovered the importance of football in the Caribbean island, which formed the background of his book, Of Garrisons and Goalscorers.