Patrice Evra warns Lionel Messi to not mess with him

Manchester United's left-back Patrice Evra, who insists he will go into the Champions League final as the best left-back in the world, has told Barcelona's golden boy, Lionel Messi, to not mess with him.

The Manchester United player has the most daunting job of all in the Champions League final next Wednesday. He is the man charged with keeping Messi quiet.

But if confidence counts for anything, he can look forward to silencing Messi for the second successive season, The Sun reports.

The French stopper is convinced he can stand alongside any of the world's great defenders - and feels he proved the point with a rare bad game in the Carling Cup final back in March.

Evra, 28, insisted: "I've played for United for three years and had one bad game, so I was actually happy with the criticism because it made me believe I'm the best left-back in the world.

 "Every year I think I have improved. I have been honoured to be named in the World's Best XI twice, the Premier League XI twice - and things like that make you believe. But it's not easy.

 "You can be the best left-back in the world but if you play badly in the final, people will say you're the worst. And of course I am playing against Messi, so it won't be easy.

"But I won't prepare any differently against him, because every day in training I am up against people like Rooney, Berbatov, Ronaldo and Tevez, so you know what to do against big players,' Evra said.

"The only thing is, against Messi you can stop him 10 times, but if he passes you once and scores, people say 'Evra played a poor game'. I don't know if he's better this year but he's scored more goals and has probably been more important for Barcelona," he added.

Evra snuffed out the threat of Messi in both legs of the semi-final 12 months ago en route to United's Moscow triumph.