"Leo is from another planet. What makes him the best is that other great players have had ups and downs, like Maradona. He wasn’t half of what Leo is at Barça. Messi has had so many good years in his career that he deserves to be considered the best ever."

"Messi does not need his right foot. He only uses the left and he's still the best in the world! Imagine if he also used his right foot ... Then we would have serious problems!"

"It’s something for me that I can tell my kids that I’ve played against Messi when we watch him on television. For me he’s got everything. He is magical to watch. When I finish and look back, and he will still be going strong, I will be able to say to myself I tested myself against the best. And quite clearly, for me, he is the best ever. He’s a great individual player but a great person as well and a credit to football."

"I am not crazy enough to compare myself with Messi because he is the best there ever was and the best there will ever be."

"Messi is the best, for me, Messi is God, he is the best and always will be – for what he has given the team and for how much he has made me enjoy being in the same team as him."

"It's the efficiency that made the difference. Messi is fantastic, the best player ever."

"Messi is God – you see him on the pitch and he is spectacular."

"Messi is unbelievable. It is great to get the chance to play against the best in the world. It doesn't really need repeating: he is a fantastic player."

"He's the best of all time."

"Messi has always been my idol."

"Messi is the best player in the world. We'd have to kidnap him to stop him."

"It's impossible to control Leo for 90 minutes."

"Messi is out of this world. He is a special player and you can't compare him to me. It would be unfair to him."

"It's a gift. I haven’t seen any other player, at least during my career, who plays like Messi does. For me that makes him the best footballer in the world."

"Messi is the best player of all time, and today he had a stormer."

"I think Messi's just beyond everyone else."

"I spent four beautiful years with Messi at Barcelona. He is an exceptional player. I'm very happy that he was my teammate."

"This award says I’m the best player in the world, but I’m not even the best player at Barcelona."

"He deserves 10 out of 10 for doing what he does."

"I see Messi every time he grabs the ball and accelerates. But he is shy, like a little brother who likes to hang out with PlayStation rather than talk. We must protect him. I'd personally put him in a drawer of my bedside table."

"Once they said they can only stop me with a pistol, but today you need a machine gun to stop him."

"For me, to watch Messi play is a pleasure – it's like having an orgasm – it's an incredible pleasure."

"The ball stays glued to his foot; I’ve seen great players in my career, but I’ve never seen anyone with Messi's ball control."

"He is probably the best player of the last 20 years. He is such a slippery player. Because of his height and quickness he is difficult to pin down and his balance is exceptional."

"If Gary Lineker is saying that Messi is making him realise just how sh*t he was — then imagine how the rest of us feel."

"My record stood for 40 years - 85 goals in 60 games - and now the best player in the world has broken it, and I'm delighted for him. He is an incredible player, gigantic."

"His control and technique while going at full speed is unique in the world."

"Messi will be the player to win the most Ballons d'Or in history. He will win five, six, seven. He is incomparable. He's in a different league."

"Messi is better than Maradona and Pelé. Every week he shows that he is capable of things that no one had done until now. Messi defies the laws of anatomy, he must have an extra bone in his ankle."

"I can't believe anyone can have played the game of football as well as Messi."

"Messi is simply the best player in the world. Messi is alone in his class as a player, it is impossible that there is another like him."

"Messi is the best player I've ever seen, better than Maradona and Cruyff combined."

"Newton and Einstein also had a certain level of autism. I hope that like them, Messi surpasses himself every day and continues giving us his beautiful brand of football."

"What’s really incredible is his consistency. It’s practically inhuman to keep going like him. What Messi has achieved, far outweighs what Cristiano has done."

"There is only one player who is doing things that I could never do and that is Messi."

"He's the great player of this generation, like there were great players in other generations."

"He's the first genius of the 21st century."

"I am not ashamed to admit that in the games against Barcelona I spent a lot of the time just hoping he would take up positions as far away from me as possible."

"He's a problem solver, a game changer, the greatest player to have played the game. I am more than 60 years old now, and I don't believe that I've seen, or that I'm likely to see, anyone better in my lifetime. The world's best when I was growing up was Pele and he would have been a great player now, too, but Messi surpasses him. He's also way out ahead of Diego Maradona - it's not even close anymore."

"I was lucky enough to play with Zidane, Ronaldo, Figo, Cristiano... but Messi is different; he makes everything look so easy, so effortless – even the impossible."

"Not often I sit and watch football and chuckle at how good someone is."

"Messi is the real deal when it comes to No10s. He represents a type of football that transcends borders."

"What Messi does is terrifying. It’s indescribable magic. You can’t analyze it."

"The US quota system meant stagnation for our sugar production [...] the preferential treatment given to Cuban sugar by the quota also meant that no other export crops could compete with it on an economic basis. Consequently, the only two activities of our agriculture were cultivation of sugar cane and the breeding of low-quality cattle on pastures which at the same time served as reserve areas for the sugar plantation owners."

"The North American government used the quota system on imports of Cuban sugar not only to protect her own sugar industry, as demanded by her own producers, but also to make possible the unrestricted introduction into our country of North American manufactured goods."

"When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken."