Lionel Messi winning World Cup would define him but he’s already among the greatest of all

There have been times when the weight of a nation’s febrile hopes and dreams appeared too great a burden for Lionel Messi.

It made him anxious, sick with nerves. It made the fear of failure unbearable and the pain of defeat even worse.

Fernando Signorini, Argentina’s former fitness coach, recalls seeing Messi stagger into their dressing room, zombie-like, after a crushing 4-0 defeat by Germany in the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals, and collapse to the floor. There he sat, slumped in a gap between two benches, inconsolable, shouting, wailing, howling, “almost convulsing”.

Messi never asked to be his country’s saviour. If Diego Maradona had the ebullient, rebellious personality to back up his extraordinary talent as a footballer, making him an Argentine cultural icon in the tradition of Che Guevara or Eva Peron, then Messi has always been a different type. His gifts earned him a status that was at odds with a quiet, shy, introverted nature.

Some mistook it for indifference to the national cause. Messi had left his homeland for Barcelona at the age of 13 and he mumbled his way through the national anthem before games whereas Maradona — in the stands, on the touchline, on grainy old VHS footage of his 1980s pomp — belted it out proudly and passionately. But Messi did care. Every failure on the international stage cut deep. If anything he cared too much.

By 2016, the burden felt too great. He had been to three World Cups: twice a beaten quarter-finalist, once a beaten finalist. Now came a fourth consecutive failure at the Copa America: a beaten finalist for a third time when, after a stalemate with Chile,  he missed the target in the penalty shootout. Sergio Aguero said he had never seen his team-mate and close friend so “broken” as in the dressing room afterwards.

Messi on his way to a soul-crushing collapse (Photo: Javier Soriano/AFP via Getty Images)

Messi couldn’t take it anymore.

“For me, the national team is over,” he said after that Copa America final, holding back the tears. “I’ve done all I can. It’s been four finals; I tried. It was the thing I wanted the most, but I couldn’t get it. It’s very hard, but the decision is taken. There will be no going back.”

Barely five days later, Argentine newspaper La Nacion reported that Messi had had a change of heart. Rather than listen to those who insisted he could never do what Maradona had done, he was desperate to defy them and lead Argentina to glory.

He had felt he could no longer live with the burden of his nation’s hopes and dreams. But on reflection, he couldn’t live without it.

Spool forward to December 2022, a Tuesday night in Qatar, and Messi, aged 35, looked like a man free of the burden that had weighed so heavy on his shoulders for so long.

He had just produced another masterclass as Argentina swept past Croatia to reach his second World Cup final. At the end, standing on the halfway line, he doubled over, hands on his knees, looking down at the turf.

Was he crying? No, he was smiling — and his grin got wider and wider as Leandro Paredes embraced him and lifted him off the ground and then other team-mates, fellow veterans including Nicolas Otamendi and Angel Di Maria, flocked towards him to do likewise.

Watching Messi in those minutes after the final whistle was heart-warming. He looked so incredibly happy, linking arms with his team-mates in a celebratory throng as they bounced up and down and sang along with the supporters:

Muchachos

Ahora nos volvimos a ilusionar

Quiero ganar la tercera

Quiero ser campeón mundial

Y al Diego

Desde el cielo lo podemos ver

Con Don Diego y La Tota

Alentándolo a Lionel

Translation: “Guys, now we’re getting excited again. I want to win the third. I want to win to be world champion. And Diego, in the sky we can see him, with Don Diego and La Tota (Maradona’s parents), encouraging Lionel.”

The soundtrack to their campaign sounds better in Spanish, with an Argentinian accent. But then again, what doesn’t? There is another line about how “you will not understand the finals we lost, how many years I cried for them” but how victory over Brazil in the final of last year’s Copa America changed everything … and, yes, now they’re getting excited again.

Messi, triumphant, is heading for a World Cup final (Photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images)

So much of that excitement stems from Messi.

Enzo Fernandez, Julian Alvarez and others have impressed more and more as the tournament has gone on, but really Qatar 2022 feels almost as much like the Messi show as the 1986 World Cup felt like it was all about Maradona. Not quite the same — Maradona was 25, at the peak of his powers — but you don’t have to be obsessed with narrative and sporting history to recognise certain parallels.

One significant difference is that we know Sunday’s final against holders France will be his last shot at glory in the World Cup. He suggested as much before the tournament and reiterated that when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday night.

“It’s my last World Cup,” he said. “There’s a long way to go until the next one (in the summer of 2026), many years, and surely because of age I won’t get to it.”

But in many ways, he defies age. He cannot dart between defenders as quickly or as frequently as he used to, but the run that set up the third goal on Tuesday was a thing of beauty. Up against Josko Gvardiol, the most coveted young central defender in world football, Messi bamboozled the 20-year-old once on the right-hand touchline, then again, then again, along the byline, before teeing up Alvarez to make it 3-0. It really was glorious.

And now he stands on the threshold of… what exactly? Greatness? As subjective as the word might be, by any standard Messi achieved sporting greatness years ago. Greatest of his generation? To some of us, that also ceased to be a serious debate long ago, despite the brilliance, longevity and prolific strike rate of his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo.

Greatest of all time? Now that is a debate, albeit impossible to answer definitively when comparing players from eras as different as Pele, Maradona and Messi.

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The lack of a World Cup winner’s medal has always been the one argument that can be held against Messi — for now at least. And here we come back to his struggle, in the past, to handle that suffocating pressure as confidently as, say, Maradona did. But is that a fair portrayal?

Remember Nike’s Write The Future advert before that 2010 World Cup? It proposed the tournament in South Africa as something that would define the lives of Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Franck Ribery, Fabio Cannavaro and others for better or for worse.

In Rooney’s case, the ad proposed that a misplaced pass might mean an angry boy tearing down his Rooney poster, England fans rioting in the street and the stock market crashing, leaving him to work as a groundsman while living in a caravan (a bit far-fetched, but the bearded version of this future self was, it turns out, spot-on), whereas racing back to retrieve the situation and tackle Ribery would see him knighted and his face carved into the White Cliffs of Dover.

We were never given a picture of what Ronaldo’s nightmare scenario might be, perhaps because anything less than a glorious future seemed inconceivable.

Instead we saw a glimpse of a future in which he cuts the ribbon on the Estadio Cristiano Ronaldo, makes a cameo in The Simpsons, is adored everywhere he goes and gets feted as he arrives at the premiere of Ronaldo: The Movie.

The ad concluded with Ronaldo standing over a free kick, a moment of truth, and imagining that a giant statue of him would be unveiled back home if he scores it. And as he struck the ball with that famous right foot — clad in a Nike boot, of course — the screen faded to black and we were left to contemplate how that World Cup might define the legacy of some of the game’s biggest stars.

It didn’t really, which is just as well. Rooney had a terrible tournament, lacking sharpness after injury, and got a lot of stick on his return home. Drogba scored one goal, against Brazil, but didn’t make the impact he had hoped as Ivory Coast failed to make the last 16. Cannavaro and Ribery also suffered elimination at the group stage with Italy and France respectively.

As for Ronaldo, he scored just once for Portugal — the sixth goal in a 7-0 victory over North Korea. After his team were eliminated in the round of 16, he looked down a TV camera’s lens and spat angrily. Afterwards he said, “I feel a broken man, completely disconsolate, frustrated, and an unimaginable sadness. I am a human being and I have the right to suffer alone.”

Messi, as mentioned at the start of this article, fared no better in South Africa. And the memory endures, having been beguiled by his performances for Barcelona that season, of him looking pale, almost ghost-like, as he walked through the mixed zone past the waiting journalists after that 4-0 thrashing by the Germans in Cape Town.

Reading Guillem Balague’s Messi biography, in which Signorini describes the harrowing scenes in the dressing room before that, it all adds up.

The World Cup is brutal.

Is the standard of the football as rarefied as it is in the later stages of the Champions League? Almost certainly not. But that is a double-edged sword. At Barcelona, particularly under Pep Guardiola, Messi played in one of the most fluent, cohesive teams ever to have played the game. Then he went to South Africa and played for an Argentina side which, under Maradona’s management, was predictably chaotic — just as it was, more surprisingly, under Jorge Sampaoli at the 2018 World Cup.

Unlike Olympic athletes, who work in four-year cycles, trying to build towards a peak of performance at that precise point, footballers typically tend to turn up at World Cups mentally and physically drained at the end of a long season at club level. And in teams that are often makeshift by nature, star players such as Messi and Ronaldo — and Rooney back in the day, when he always seemed to arrive at tournaments carrying an injury — are expected to work their magic under extreme pressure, knowing that every game is do-or-die.

That didn’t stop Maradona producing a series of superhuman performances as he dragged Argentina to victory in 1986.

Contrary to some of the revisionism, it was hardly a team of no-hopers; many of them, including Jorge Burruchaga, had previously won or would go on to win the Copa Libertadores, while Jorge Valdano had just won La Liga with Real Madrid. But, whatever you have heard or read about Maradona in Mexico, his performances in the first three knockout ties against Uruguay, England and Belgium in particular were every bit as jaw-dropping at the time as legend suggests.

But that is the exception. To expect or demand that Messi and Ronaldo perform like Maradona in 1986 is simply not realistic. Maradona’s own experiences tell you that.

Maradona’s first World Cup, in 1982, ended in disgrace; having spent a fortnight in Spain being kicked from pillar to post, he planted his boot into the groin of Brazil midfielder Batista and was sent off. The second, four years later, everyone knows about. At risk of labouring the point, it was magnificent.

Maradona’s World Cup triumph in 1986 defined him but other tournaments were far less glorious (Photo: Getty Images)

His third, in 1990, was perhaps a notch or two down from Messi’s 2014 one — excellent by anyone else’s standards, but a little disappointing by his own. And his last, in 1994 at age 33, ended in disgrace like the first, this time for testing positive for the banned drug ephedrine after a group-stage victory over Nigeria. The World Cup experience brought out the worst in Maradona, as well as the best.

You could say similar of Zinedine Zidane.

He, more than anyone, is synonymous with hosts France’s World Cup triumph in 1998, scoring twice in the final against Brazil, but he was sent off against Saudi Arabia in the group stage for stamping on an opponent and didn’t return until the quarter-final. Four years later, he missed France’s first two games through injury and was unable to spare them from defeat by Denmark and an early exit. His swansong in 2006 is much romanticised, but his red card in the final, for headbutting Marco Materazzi, seemed a classic example of a star player cracking under intense pressure as well as provocation.

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The great Brazilian striker Ronaldo returned from career-threatening injury to score eight goals at the 2002 finals, ending up with the Golden Boot as well as a winner’s medal, but he too would identify with the pressure Messi and others have experienced on the biggest stake.

Four years before that, he was mysteriously withdrawn from Brazil’s team for the final against France, only to be restored to the starting line-up at the last moment. The situation was shrouded in secrecy at the time, but rumours persisted that he had suffered a seizure and been sent to hospital for tests on the morning of the final — a story he verified in the recent documentary about his career and in an interview with The Athletic.

“A phenomenon cannot fail, cannot feel pain, cannot stop scoring,” the Brazilian said, referring to the pressure to avoid showing weakness as a 21-year-old superstar. “What happened in France in 1998 was what happens at the World Cup. Everyone’s attention is focused on it. The whole world stops to watch it.”

And in those moments, even the greatest players — Messi, both Ronaldos, Zidane and, yes, even Maradona — have been known to find the pressure overwhelming.

It would seem a little too convenient to suggest this is the first time Messi has appeared free from the burden of carrying Argentina’s hopes and dreams. He certainly showed no sign of feeling the pressure as a teenager in 2006, making a series of eye-catching cameos before surprisingly being left on the bench as his team were beaten on penalties by Germany in the quarter-finals.

Without question the pressure got the better of him in 2010 — there was too much noise around him, and Maradona the manager was not exactly a calming presence — but in Brazil four years later he looked far more like his Barcelona self.

He scored four times in the group, including characteristically superb strikes to defeat Bosnia & Herzegovina and Iran, and then laid on the decisive goal for Di Maria against Switzerland in the last 16. Messi dominated the quarter-final against Belgium too, albeit without scoring, but he was quieter in the semi-final, as Argentina edged past the Netherlands on penalties, and in the final against Germany, when Mario Gotze broke the deadlock in the second half of extra time. Germany took their best chance and Argentina, specifically Gonzalo Higuain, missed theirs.

On such moments does history turn.

At Russia 2018, Messi clearly struggled. That was an old Argentina squad, mediocre in some areas, that had only narrowly scraped through the qualifying campaign thanks to his hat-trick in the final game away to Ecuador. In the group stage, he missed a penalty in a 1-1 draw with Iceland and then looked defeated and demoralised during a 3-0 loss to Croatia.

Back home, newspaper La Nacion quoted one squad insider as saying, “The Leo I know did not come to Russia. He is absent even when he is standing in front of you.”

Messi struck back decisively in the final group game against Nigeria, a sublime piece of control and equally adroit finish helping to take Argentina through to the knockout phase. Next they faced France, where Kylian Mbappe, more than a decade his junior, stole the show in a 4-3 win and Messi was left to wonder whether his last shot at World Cup glory had passed him by.

Messi was said to be present but absent in Russia as another World Cup slipped by (Photo: Getty Images)

Prior to his death in 2020, Maradona often spoke sympathetically about Messi, pointing out the challenges and pressures he faced. On other occasions, he was withering.

“We shouldn’t deify Messi any longer,” Maradona said in late 2018. “He’s Messi when he plays or Barcelona (…) and he’s another Messi with Argentina. He’s a great player, but he’s not a leader. It’s useless trying to make a leader out of a man who goes to the toilet 20 times before a game.”

This seemed a cheap shot, but it has been a recurring theme throughout Messi’s international career: his lack of leadership, his lack of personality, his inability to do as Maradona did. And yet he has produced world-class performances year after year after for Barcelona and now Paris Saint-Germain at club level and, at times, for Argentina.

Maradona was a phenomenal, generational talent whose temperament drove him to glory at one World Cup, undermined him at two others and sadly curtailed his career at the highest level. There is no perfect personality type for team sport, but is hard to embrace the notion that Messi, still irresistible in his mid-30s, is the one of the two men with a fatal flaw.

But maybe Messi’s less obvious faults have held him back on occasions when the stakes have been highest and the pressure at its most intense.

As Balague writes in Messi: The Definitive Autobiography, “Leo has to co-exist with anxiety, nerves, mistrust, mood, security, motivation, distress — and his handling of them can increase or decrease his performance levels. Well managed, they bring with them wisdom. Out of control, they ensure chaos.”

And never is the threat of chaos greater than when playing for Argentina at the World Cup.

Easy to forget now, but it is less than three weeks since Argentina were facing up to the threat of humiliation.

Beaten by Saudi Arabia in their opening game, they were deadlocked for over an hour against Mexico four days later and, as the pressure increased, Messi seemed to be having one of those games where, like against Croatia in 2018, he was getting quieter and quieter, as if retreating to his shell.

And then … one touch to control and BANG, a fierce left-foot driven past Guillermo Ochoa from 25 yards and Argentina were on a roll at last.

As he ran off in celebration, before being mobbed by his mostly younger team-mates, you could see the sense of wonder on his face, eyes and mouth wide open. It looked more like relief than joy. The joy only set in when he set up Fernandez to make it 2-0 with three minutes of normal time to play.

Messi and Argentina haven’t looked back. He didn’t score against Poland in the final group match — in fact, he had a penalty saved by Wojciech Szczesny — but his all-round performance was mesmerising. Likewise in the last 16 against Australia, when he scored one of those goals which he alone is capable of making look so easy.

He converted a penalty against both the Netherlands in the quarter-final (as well as one in the shootout) and Croatia in the semi-final, but in both of those matches his assists were what really took the breath away: a no-look pass threaded between Nathan Ake’s legs to set up Nahuel Molina against the Dutch and then that beguiling, bamboozling run past Gvardiol to set up Alvarez for the third on Tuesday.

Argentina have followed Messi’s character at this World Cup (Photo: Getty Images)

If you were watching Messi for the first time, those moments would bring you to your feet. When you have been watching him for years, you know they are second nature to him, even at this stage of his career, but they don’t happen quite as often as they used to.

The difference is that this time he is doing it in the knockout phase of a World Cup — somewhere, remarkably, he and indeed his great rival Ronaldo had never scored a goal before.

Messi puts his new-found sense of tranquillity with Argentina down to various things: maturity, fatherhood, even diet, but he also cites the spirit of his team-mates — a far less star-studded squad than in 2006, 2010 and 2014 — and the influence of the coach, Lionel Scaloni, who has brought a greater sense of calm and unity than Sampaoli in 2018 and in particular Maradona in 2010.

That victory over Brazil in the Copa America last year brought Argentina’s first trophy since 1993, a huge weight lifted from their shoulders.

“This brings us more calmness,” Messi said after that nervy win against Mexico. It wasn’t easy to detect much of that in the closing stages against Australia or the Netherlands, but it has been fascinating to see the way Messi has shaped his team’s mood in Qatar.

Against Poland he was frantic, setting the tone for a hyper-energetic display. Against the Netherlands, he was on a war footing, stung by perceived slights from Louis van Gaal and some of his players. Against Croatia, he appeared calmer and more sure-footed than ever before in a game of such magnitude for his country.

All of which brings us to Sunday, a World Cup final and an opportunity for… greatness? Immortality? In sporting terms, Messi is already there, at or very near the top of the pantheon, along with Pele, Maradona and, at a stretch, one or two others.

Imagine watching someone perform as Messi has done for the best part of two decades — not just a total of 791 goals for club and country but the range of his finishes, the beguiling dribbles, the slide-rule passes and the game intelligence to appreciate space and geometry in a way he couldn’t begin to explain — and trying to argue that his claims to greatness will hinge on one match he plays when he is 35 years old. He marked himself for greatness at a young age and has constantly underscored that status ever since.

Yes, it is tempting to look at it through the prism of that Nike ad from 12 years ago — this way greatness, that way oblivion — but there are a handful of players who are so exceptional that they have elevated themselves far beyond such conversations.

Cristiano Ronaldo is one of them.

He made history by becoming the first player to score at five World Cups, but his only real “Write The Future” moment across those five tournaments was a spectacular free kick to complete a hat-trick in a group match against Spain in 2018.

A disappointing total of eight goals across those five tournaments does not begin to reflect Ronaldo’s talent, but nor does it begin to define him. He is defined by being the record goalscorer in the history of Real Madrid, the Champions League and men’s international football and indeed by being one of the most famous people on the planet. That is all without ever coming close to winning a World Cup.

Messi could feasibly produce a vintage performance on Sunday but be unable to prevent a French victory. Or he could stay on the margins of the game and Argentina still win. In a team sport, conversations about greatness can never be reduced to a single match at the very back end of a player’s career — particularly when the player in question has proven his greatness over and over and over again.

But winning the World Cup final at this stage of his career really would be the crowning glory.

It would define an incredible career the way 1970 defined Pele and 1986 defined Maradona. It would mean achieving all he ever wanted — not just holding the World Cup in his hands at last but bringing joy to a nation which, perhaps more than any other, longs for success on the football pitch.

Messi has carried that burden for so long. As he nears the end of his odyssey, he finally looks comfortable with it.

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(Top photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images; design by Eamonn Dalton)