Lionel Messi has one of the most intelligent footballing brains in the beautiful game.

You only need to watch a few seconds of the Barcelona legend strutting his stuff on a football pitch to become acutely aware of just how intricately he sees every motion and movement of the game.

It often feels as though Messi is playing the sport at a reduced speed to the players around him, analysing and adapting to situations in half the time that it takes his opponents.

Messi's footballing intelligence

And there's good reason to think that Messi's footballing intelligence has played a vital role in his ability to produce the extraterrestrial numbers that have earned him six Ballon d'Or trophies.

After all, for what Messi might lack physically when compared to, say, Cristiano Ronaldo, you can rest assured that he makes up for it by way of channelling the sport's most important muscle of all.

And it's an attitude towards the game that manifests itself in a vicious form of efficiency, which can often be displayed in behaviours that actually see the Paris Saint-Germain star come in for criticism.

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Messi walking during games

Of all these traits that feed into Messi's athletic performances, arguably the most jarring is the Argentine's apparent laziness by spending great periods of the game simply walking.

Now, of course, it's nothing shock or revolutionary to reveal that Messi's walking is by no means lazy, but the issue is certainly a blurry one when it comes to the 34-year-old motives for doing so.

The go-to solution is that he is simply saving energy, but rest assured that there is even more method to the madness and a viral Twitter thread from @TrungTPhan has helped to show how.

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Twitter thread on Messi's walking

Attracting more than 2,000 retweets at the time of the writing, the thread - which pinpoints data from El Periodico, via Sport - explains the 'strategic reason' behind Messi's proclivity for walking.

It makes for a fascinating demonstration of Messi's tactical mind and spacial awareness, so be to sure to join the thousands of fans reading the Twitter thread by checking it out down below:

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Guardiola on Messi's walking

But even if you're the most skeptical fan of all time and think that the thread is making something out of nothing, let us kindly direct you to none other than Pep Guardiola's thoughts on the matter.

According to Marca, Guardiola once commentated on footage of Messi for an Amazon documentary by saying: "He's not running, but he's always watching what's happening.

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"He smells where are the weak points in the back four. After five, ten minutes, he has the map in his eyes, in his brain to know exactly where is the space and what is the panorama.

"It's like being in the jungle and I have to survive. And he knows if I move here, here, I will have more space to attack."

I guess football really is a walk in the park for Messi...