Arsène Wenger says that Robin van Persie has qualities similar to Lionel Messi

Van Persie has scored 26 goals in 31 games this year while not being a conventional centre-forward. “On that front, I see similarities positional-wise with Messi,” Wenger said. “He comes deep and likes to turn up in attack as well. Don’t make me make a comparison with Messi but just positional-wise he doesn’t play like a real centre-forward.”
Wenger praised Van Persie’s maturity, something he hopes to accelerate further having awarded him the captaincy, and hailed the Dutchman as a “super-talent technically”, and no one who witnessed this performance, and the technique shown in claiming those two goals, would argue with that.