Argentina’s Lionel Messi erases any doubts with World Cup run

Lionel Messi did not cry, at least not at first.

He found the Argentinian supporters, smiling to them as if he was still a child in Rosario, pretending to have equaled Diego Maradona in leading La Albiceleste to the World Cup title, until his teammates descended upon him, tears in their eyes. Messi didn’t break until later, when he saw Sergio Agüero, his close friend, and reached to dry his right eye. Then he looked for his kids and hugged them tight.

“Everyone wants this,” Messi told the Argentinian newspaper Olé. “It is the dream of any child.”

Messi already owned a record seven Ballon d’Or trophies as the best player in the world, four UEFA Champions League trophies and 10 La Liga titles with Barcelona. But this was the lone gap on his résumé, and for so long, it looked like he would never fill it.

Six short years ago, after Messi lost his third international final with Argentina in the Copa América on penalties to Chile, it was Agüero who described his despondency as “the worst I’ve ever seen him.” That night at MetLife Stadium, Messi sunk into the depths of his sadness and emerged with a decision to retire from the national team. Two years prior, he had been on the losing end of a World Cup final in extra time. This was too much for him to bear.

“I tried,” he said then. “It was the thing I wanted the most, but I couldn’t get it.”

That decision didn’t last, but the criticism from home did.

“We shouldn’t deify Messi any longer,” said one Diego Armando Maradona in 2018. “He’s Messi when he plays for 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 the game.”

Now, after leading Argentina past France — on penalty kicks after the teams played to a 3-3 tie through 120 minutes — and through a World Cup gauntlet to its first title in 36 years, Messi has finally shed that label. He’s finally escaped the unending shadow of his countryman, and he did it by equaling — and arguably besting — Maradona’s immortal 1986 tournament.

Given that Messi’s club record is without equal, the debate between him and Maradona is over. So is the one between him and Cristiano Ronaldo, who suffered the nail in his proverbial coffin when Fernando Santos dropped him from Portugal’s lineup in its last two games of this World Cup, and the Portuguese looked better off without him.

It’s just Messi or Pelé now, but this was bigger than a made-for-TV debate over who’s the greatest ever.

This was a singular moment on par with anything in sporting history, a circle that opened all the way back in 2006 coming to a close with one of the greatest athletes in history reaching the pinnacle of his sport. It may not be his last time playing for Argentina — Messi walked back his plans to retire from the national team in the wake of victory — but we may not see anything like what he did over the last four weeks ever again.

It is not just the seven goals he scored throughout the World Cup, second only to France’s Kylian Mbappé, or his highlight-reel passing and buildup play during the competition. It is the way he fully owned his role as the leader of a team — and yes, of an entire country.

In the final, after Argentina let a 2-0 lead go to waste, Messi kept the group on even footing in extra time, scoring to put them back up 3-2, then calmly sending his penalty past Hugo Lloris after Mbappé tied the game again, sending it to a vomit-inducing shootout.

Two rounds earlier, after Argentina beat The Netherlands on penalties, Messi showed the other side of his emotions, telling Dutch striker Wout Weghorst in Spanish, “What are you looking at, fool?” The phrase, instantly, was immortalized in Argentina, where Messi’s lack of fire in comparison to the bombastic Maradona had so long been a central criticism of his character.

The most prescient moment, though, came after Argentina opened the tournament with a shocking loss to Saudi Arabia. It was the first defeat for La Albiceleste in 36 games, a run that included the 2021 Copa América final, the country’s first international trophy since 1993 and the game in which it became possible to visualize World Cup glory. All of that got thrown into doubt thanks to the stunning 2-1 loss to the Saudis — which put even advancing out of the group stage into doubt.

That was when Messi urged the country to stay calm, saying, “I ask the fans to trust us. This group will not let them down.”

They didn’t. And now, he never could.