Messi deserved the MVP award in 2014 without question.. He has been directly involved in 5 goals out of 7 scored by Argentina and was the best creator by far in the tournament.
Average Rating: No.1 (8.52)
Most chances created: No.1 (that his teammates failed to score and his pass did not register as an assist does not take away from his greatness as the best creator in the tournament)
Most clear cut chances created: No.1
Most successful dribbles: No.1.
Most MOTM awards: No.1 (4 out of 7 games)
Most goals scored: No.3
Most accurate through balls: No 1
Most interceptions as an attacker: No 1
This is very unrigurous use of data and really not much better than using no data at all.
Other than 'average rating', every stat presented here is additive ("most X"). This is a problem when we are talking about a competition in which teams and players don't play the same amount of games. It is reasonable to assume that anyone who makes it to the semifinals has a better chance of having "most X" by virtue of playing more games. It also reasonable to assume that being good at football is going to correlate with advancing to the semifinals. So it becomes difficult to separate what is going on here unless the effects are very clear. In this case the effects are
not very clear since Messi stopped scoring goals after the group stages, so we cannot simply say "he is responsible for the extra 90 minutes that allowed him to rack more numbers" and so forth. Therefore you can't just say "whoever has the most, is best." That's the first problem.
The second problem is the almost total lack of context. I have no idea whether "most accurate through balls", "most successful dribbles," most clear cut chances created," etc. are a close match to 'best player of the tournament' level performance. All I know is that
Messi ranked #1 in these things. I have no idea who ranked #2 on accurate through balls, #3 in successful dribbles, and so forth. I don't even know
how many of these things Messi even did. I don't know if #2 was very close to #1. I don't know if #3 was very close to #2. I don't know anything. The argument is semi-circular, in a way. It is relying on you assuming that Messi is the best. If he is the best, then numbers must reflect that. Therefore, if he is #1 in such and such, it
must be a metric that properly reflects quality.
The third problem is that it's a selective argument. Anyone can see that "Most Assists" is not there. That is because Messi had 1 assist in the tournament and was nowhere close to the top of this fairly important metric. If this were a consistent stat that'd be one thing, but it isn't. On this same page, someone else has posted a table comparing Messi and Ronaldo and, unsurprisingly, it has
assists. A person might suspect that this is simply picking and choosing which number looks higher.
Another example of a selective argument is the use of the 'Average Rating' from Whoscored. This website also happens to give MOTM awards, and it happened to give Messi 5 MOTM awards. Why not use the Whoscored MOTM awards, which give Messi 5 awards, instead of the 4 official ones? Probably because Whoscored
also gives Arjen Robben 5 MOTM awards and so if we use that we can no longer claim that Messi was #1, "just"
joint #1.