Lionel Messi’s Tryst with Destiny

IN THE END—AND FOR LIONEL Messi’s purpose as an Argentinian footballer it surely is—it was worth the pain, tumult, and incredible wait. But atop the podium, where he had climbed to receive the first of the prizes of his night, Messi could wait no more. The Golden Ball tucked under his arm, Messi looked at the World Cup trophy with a boyish smile and rubbed his palms in gleeful, pantomimic anticipation. The largely Argentine crowd at the Lusail Stadium erupted, then erupted once more as Messi looked this way and that and planted a sly kiss on the trophy of gold.

The wait for the only elusive silverware of Messi’s career had at last ended after 16 years and five campaigns but he would be made to wait some more. They would first drape him in an emir’s robe, possibly because all wizards must wear cloaks. The diaphanous garment did little to hide the third star crowning the crest of his blue-and-white jersey as Messi stabbed the night air with his reward, puncturing holes in all those futile debates with each hoist of the trophy. Was he now better than the best of his peers, Cristiano Ronaldo, and was he finally the next Maradona? It did not matter. It never did. The only thing that did matter was he was now “Lionel Messi, World Champion” and his story was complete.

Despite his once-in-a-generation talent and despite being a fully developed footballer well before he was out of his teens, Messi’s path to ultimate glory in the Albiceleste stripes was fraught with plenty of peril and flooded with tears—quite the antithesis of his life as a club footballer, which was studded with more goals and glory than he could care for. La Liga? He has 10. Champions League? He has four. Ballon d’Or? He has seven. Titles with Argentina? Zero it was, until as recently as 2021. That journey was hard and long, the first step taken back in 2006.

It began a week shy of his 19th birthday in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, when coach José Pékerman brought on a cherubic boy as Argentina’s third and final substitute in the dying minutes of the group game against Serbia and Montenegro. Still, he found enough time and space to provide a crisp assist for a Hernán Crespo goal and score the following one himself. That’s as far as the love affair between Pékerman and Messi went at the 2006 World Cup, for in the quarterfinals against hosts Germany in Berlin, Messi was left on the bench and Argentina had their hearts broken in the penalty shootout. The world fumed on Messi’s behalf for the first time.
By the time 2010 rolled into South Africa, Pékerman had made way for Maradona—the legend that Messi had already come to emulate in style, appetite for goals, and hunger for recognition, for his club, that is. Could coach Maradona shine a light on Messi to do what he had done in 1986? Shortest answer: No. It was Messi’s only goalless World Cup campaign and Argentina was picked apart, in a serious bout of déjà vu, by Germany in the quarterfinals. Following a 4:0 hammering in Cape Town, Leo reportedly wept uncontrollably in the shower—an image that greatly upset El Diego.

But even that loss didn’t hurt Messi as much as the one in the following World Cup in Brazil to whom else but Germany, considering that Argentina succumbed in the final in Rio de Janeiro. Unlike in Cape Town, Argentina kept the Germans largely quiet at the Maracanã for the entirety of a match that went into extra time. But as the hundreds of thousands of Argentines who had taken over the streets and beaches of Rio prepared for penalties, Mario Götze struck in the very dregs of the contest—the 113th minute. Understandably, even being awarded the Golden Ball couldn’t cheer Messi up as he listlessly and symbolically walked past the other trophy on the podium that he really wanted. Now, all of Argentina wept with him, a nation sensing that he could well have blown his best, and last, opportunity.

It certainly seemed that way in Russia 2018, when Messi, now in his early 30s, missed from the spot in their opening match against Iceland, and his team was held to a 1:1 draw. It only got worse once Argentina were thumped 3:0 by eventual finalists Croatia, putting them on the very brink of the ignominy of a group-stage exit. Argentina’s fate now depended on favourable results in the group and, importantly, a moment of Messi magic so great that after he controlled a lobbing cross with his thigh and slotted the goal high into Nigeria’s net, a manic Maradona had to be physically restrained in the stadium’s VIP box.

“I don’t remember having ever suffered so much,” Messi would say after the 2:1 win over Nigeria. “But I knew that God was with us and would not leave us out of the competition.” But that’s exactly what transpired in the very next game; God perhaps looked the other way and Messi’s Argentina succumbed to eventual winners France. And so, the suffering heightened and prolonged, seamlessly World Cup to World Cup—Russia to Qatar—despite Argentina having gone unbeaten for 36 straight matches in the lead-up to the 2022 edition.

For better and worse, a lot had changed in Messi’s life before he landed in Doha last month. It was going to be his first World Cup while not playing for Barcelona, having tearfully parted ways with his boyhood club in 2021 and ostensibly joining the only team that could afford his exorbitant wages, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG)—owned, incidentally, by the state of Qatar. This was also going to be his first World Cup after having, at long last, won something of significance with Argentina—the Copa America in 2021. The smaller, continental monkey had slipped off his back; could he now rid himself of the larger, intercontinental gorilla, too? Seemed most unlikely immediately after their campaign kicked off at the Lusail Stadium on November 22.

Messi wouldn’t have known it when he slotted home Argentina’s opening goal from the penalty spot in the 10th minute, but he was playing against an inspired Saudi Arabia, the second-lowest ranked team (51st) of the tournament. The Saudis roared past Argentina’s defence twice in the space of eight second-half minutes, and the score would stay 2:1 at the final whistle thanks to the heroics of goalie Mohammed Al-Owais. Argentina’s unbeaten streak had been snapped by a least-expected opponent.

FEW PUNDITS WOULD have predicted Messi to go on to win the tournament at this point. After losing to the weakest team in the group, every subsequent match had turned into a must-win. But Lionel Scaloni, Argentina’s 44-year-old coach, looked at the problem as an opportunity to play each match like a final. Six matches, six finals—what greater motivation could Scaloni have given Messi? The Lionels go back a long way—Messi’s first World Cup was also right-back Scaloni’s only as a player. Having been there at the very beginning of Messi’s story, here Scaloni was at the very end, hoping to ghost-write the final chapter.

But it was always going to be a tough ask, mainly because Messi was 35 and yet a largely agricultural side, made up mostly of Cup debutants, revolved around the playmaking abilities of his great but old legs. Partly due to his age (even Messi can lose a step) but mainly because of the presence of Kylian Mbappé and Neymar at PSG, Messi had lost the privilege of strategies being built around him as far as his club career was concerned. For his country, however, Messi was never really given, nor perhaps wanted, the option to play second fiddle.

Off the ball, this Messi seldom ran and almost always strolled—evidently plotting and planning his next move. But some things never change, like his allergy to charging back and helping his defenders retrieve the ball and, significantly, his affinity (and ability) to create something out of nothing. On the latter, Scaloni and Argentina greatly relied in Qatar, and time and time again, Messi delivered. Against Mexico, the first of their six ‘finals’, Argentina were less than 30 minutes away from getting knocked out, having been held in a goalless choke-hold thus far.

But just when all seemed lost, Messi received a harmless ball in the 64th minute, a few good metres outside a well-secured Mexico box. No one else would have been able to see through the three defenders and the curly-maned goalkeeper, Guillermo Ochoa. But Messi is a visionary. So, he drilled the ball on the carpet, through a dense cluster of legs, and then past the diving left palm of Ochoa. The arena at Lusail shook under the weight of the celebrating Argentines, who had travelled the 14,000 km from Buenos Aires to Doha in terrific droves. Then it shook again, when a deft Messi assist to Enzo Fernández ended the evening 2:0.

The support of the travelling Argentina fan embalmed the squad and shook Scaloni to his core. “They have been with us [even] in defeat and it is like nothing I have experienced,” he said. “I try not to get emotional but it’s difficult because I am in the dream place for any Argentine.” Even Messi missing a penalty in the last group game against Poland didn’t spark off a collective nightmare, for Julián Álvarez, 22, and Alexis Mac Allister, 23—boys who once pasted posters of Messi on their bedroom walls—found a way.

The Poland match was the only one in this World Cup in which Messi did not find the back of the net. He would go on to define each of the four knockout games with his goals, but his wizardry was witnessed even beyond his scoring manoeuvres. Sometimes it was just a silken touch here, a cushioning pass there, a mesmeric dribble everywhere. Against Croatia in the semifinal, it was his gorgeous double turn that twisted defender Joko Gvardiol one way and immediately flipped him in the opposite other, only a second before providing a sublime assist to take Argentina into the final.

And what a final it was—the greatest one ever played to complete the greatest football tale ever told. An electric Messi charged Argentina to an inspired full-court press from the outset, so much so that as the South Americans drew fantastic circles around the defending champions, the French were seemingly too dazed to retaliate. One Argentina goal (Messi penalty) became two (a gravity-defying shot from a falling, bending Ángel di María) and yet a stunned France did not respond. Until the 80th minute that is, for that’s when Mbappé woke up.

Twice did France’s superstar score in the space of 90 seconds to send the match into extra time, where early in the second period, Messi once again drew Argentina ahead by kneeing the ball behind Hugo Lloris. But because nothing is ever over in this World Cup until it really is, Mbappé equalised in the 118th minute (scoring only the second-ever hattrick in a World Cup final), and Argentina was forced to win the match for a third time on the night.

Then we came to the end of Messi’s suffering. He set the tone for the shootout by scoring the first penalty but only crumpled in a heap after Gonzalo Montiel rolled his goal in some seven kicks and a dozen minutes later. He was picked up off the turf by his deliriously weeping teammates and later pulled into an embrace by his mother Celia, who had found her way to her beaming son. Messi had first left her as a 13-year-old to fly across the ocean to Spain and find his calling in football. Now, he had returned to his mother’s arms not only as a world champion but also as the most accomplished footballer of his time.

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