Why a Laid-Back Attitude Will Help Bayern Munich's Jerome Boateng Keep Improving

Falling down a hole, being knocked out by a heavyweight boxer and comedy sound effects hooting in the background. If you’ve seen one Vine of Lionel Messi tormenting Jerome Boateng, you’ve seen them all.

Whereas some footballers have the good fortune of making their slip-ups in a reserve-team fixture on a cold Tuesday night in front of three men and a dog, others do it on the grandest stages imaginable.

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Somewhat unfathomably, Bayern Munich kept Barcelona out at Camp Nou for 77 minutes of the first leg of their Champions League semi-final clash in early May. That was when Messi took matters into his own hands and fired low into the net from the edge of the area.

Such is the genius of the man, he’s always likely to do something like that during a match, but if Bayern could have kept it at 1-0, they still would have had it all to play for back in Bavaria. Then Messi took over again.

The jinking, darting movement that took the best player in the world past a flailing Boateng before dinking the ball over Manuel Neuer and into the net would be replayed ad nauseam that night, week, month and this year, and Boateng was quite literally the fall guy.

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In the days that followed, the Germany international became a subject of ridicule—with social media seemingly forgetting that Messi has the talents to embarrass pretty much every other footballer on the planet. Well, everyone on social media except Mario Balotelli, with the Liverpool forward sticking up for his former Manchester City colleague on Instagram (relayed by Yahoo).

By the sounds of it, though, Boateng didn’t need Balotelli to hold his hand or remind the world that he is something that Messi is not—a World Cup winner.

As he recently demonstrated through an interview with ESPN FC, the German is philosophical:

"

That doesn't really affect me. I was laughing at myself. When you fall down or slip in a situation and somebody scores a goal, it's normal. These things happen; it happens to me, it happens to other players, I don't care about these things.

For me, he's the best player in the world. That's football. Sometimes you look bad or something happens. I'm a defender, that doesn't kill me or anything.

"

How refreshing is that? No beating himself up, no inner demons caused by the springing sprite that is Messi and no sense that he needs to do anything extra special to make up for being bamboozled by Barcelona brilliance. Boateng is simply going to carry on doing his job.

Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

And so he should, because the 26-year-old has quietly become one of the best central defenders on the continent.

In England, he’s still remembered for his underwhelming season at City following a move from Hamburg, and while eyebrows were raised when Bayern Munich wanted to take him back to his homeland in 2011, it has certainly proved to be a successful union.

Internationally, too, a lot of the attention might fall on the Borussia Dortmund captain and perennial Manchester United target Mats Hummels, but Boateng has picked up more than 50 caps for Germany and looks set to get very close to a century.

He’s a vital cog in Joachim Low’s machine, but last summer’s World Cup success hasn’t gone to his head, as he told that ESPN FC interview:

"

It's always, like, people remind me of [winning the World Cup].

I don't think about it so much, but when you meet people, especially in Germany, it was crazy. You meet somebody on a bus or something and they say, 'Thank you for the World Cup, it was so good to see,' and stuff like this, it's funny.

"

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So not only does he not really think about winning the most prestigious prize in football, he also gets the bus. Is Boateng the most laid-back footballer out there? He might well be.

But it’s working for him, and if we are to believe that defenders get better with age, then we’re likely to see Boateng go from strength to strength in the coming years.

And that messy moment at Camp Nou will just become a memory.