Ronaldo’s special, but Neymar is ‘the next Messi’ – says Barcelona team-mate Rakitic

Messi scored the 37th hat-trick of his career (yes, really - Ed.) as Barcelona beat Manchester City 4-0 on Wednesday. And the Argentine’s club colleague Rakitic believes that he is clearly the best player in the world.

"Sometimes, I laugh on the pitch watching Leo's skill,” the Croatian said. “If you want to see skill like that, you have to take PlayStation!

"Of course I like Cristiano [Ronaldo], he's a big player, and there are maybe 10 players who are really special. But if we speak about the best, it is Leo Messi.

"Neymar is on the way to being the next best. Barca will do the best thing to sign a new contract with him and maybe they can put a buyout clause as high as possible, because he will be the next Messi for sure.

"He's scored [nearly] 300 goals and he's only 24. He's really special."

The start of the season has not been smooth sailing for Neymar, Messi and co., with the Catalans dropping points in three of their eight league games to lie fourth in the table. The sale of big personalities like full-back Dani Alves could be one of the reasons for that stuttering start, but Rakitic says that Neymar is one of a number of ‘characters’ capable of filling that void.

"We lost the biggest character with Alves," Rakitic added. "He was the most important guy for the dressing room [for everything].

"But there are a lot of crazy – in a good way – guys like [Gerard] Pique, Jordi Alba, Luis [Suarez], Ney. It's a really good dressing room."