Echoes of the playground in magical Messi

Once the final penalty rolled into the French net, the thought that sprung to my mind was ‘I’ve got my column for this week” as I joined with what seemed like the entire universe in hailing Lionel Messi’s ascent to the pinnacle of world soccer.

Truth be told, the idea was in my mind for days beforehand so  I had more than altruistic reasons for wanting Argentina to beat France in a breathlessly exciting World Cup Final in Qatar on Sunday -  a column is a column and sometimes writer’s block is very real.

But contrary git that I am, I began to wonder - does the world need another piece extolling the God-like quality of the wee man from Rosario? You couldn’t watch the TV, read a paper or peruse social media without seeing the deification of the Argentine captain go into serious overdrive.

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Some of it is pure hyperbole, some completely “recency bias” but had either of France’s late, late efforts in added time found their way past Emiliano Martinez, then all of those headlines  that proclaimed Messi the greatest of all time would have been singing the praises, and rightly so, of France’s Kylian Mbappe.

The Frenchman is your prototypical modern day footballer - skillful yes, undoubtedly so, unbelievably so, but it is his blinding raw pace  and a physical power that makes you think he wouldn’t look out of place on the wing for the French rugby team or playing running back or wide receiver in the NFL that grabs your attention first and foremost.

Ronaldo fits that bill too - an incredible physical specimen who boasts rare physical attributes from his height to his speed to his phenomenal leaping ability and it seems as if most modern footballers fit the bill of the Portuguese great or the French flyer rather than little old Lionel Messi.

Messi harkens back to a different era when the “small” man still had a place at the table of high class sport. The “small man has disappeared from gaelic games too, Eoin Murchan bucking that trend but the days of players like Derek Savage of Galway or Dublin's Jason Sherlock winning their place on All-Ireland winning teams because of their gifts rather than physical attributes seems long gone.

Maybe that’s got to do with how we identify sporting talent these days. The best players in youth sport are often the more physically advanced, those lucky enough to have been born earlier in the year or blessed with a size advantage. They get fast-tracked into academies while the smaller kids are literally pushed to the side - first by their more physically advanced opponents and then by the coaches seeking to build winning teams.

For all his gifts, Messi doesn’t fit any of those bills - standing just 5 ft 7 inches, the former Barcelona great isn’t the long-striding, fast moving epitome of the modern footballer.  Nicknamed the “Little Flea” in Barca's famed La Masia academy, Messi is no slouch but even in his heyday, nobody talked about his blistering pace. But Messi is blessed with speed - speed of thought  and action and it is what always marked him out as a once in a lifetime talent.

Barca overlooked what many see as insurmountable obstacles to take a punt on the pint-sized rocket, recognising that beyond the physical attributes, Messi was something different, a throw-back to a time when having control of the ball at your feet was the only thing that counted.

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I’m not saying that Mbappe and Ronaldo or Lewandowski or any even Erling Haaland aren't incredibly gifted but let’s be honest, none of them can make the ball sing the way Messi has now over the guts of two decades.

There’s a story that when the young Messi was at Newell’s Old Boys Academy, he used to do a trick for the fans at the club’s home games. Starting out on the centre-spot, he juggled the ball across the field, up into the stands and right to the very back row before heading back down to the centre-spot, all without letting the ball hit the ground.

Now, I don’t know if that is an apocryphal tale but we can picture it happening because on so many occasions, Messi has conjured up the impossible to leave us all speechless and spellbound. As you’ve guessed by this point, I’m a huge Messi fan and if Leo 2022 isn’t the same beast that Leo 2012 to 2015 was, a diminished Messi is still far above mere mortals.

That's why it seems incredulous to think  that Messi may have ended up on the scrap-heap had he not landed in Barcelona because as much as he made Barcelona, Barca also made Messi! I’m not sure another club would have taken the punt on Messi the way Barca did -  maybe Ajax who also prize skill above size in their academy - but if ever a player came to embody a club, a style of play, certainly Lionel Messi did with sweeping moves and spectacular football. 

Messi in Barca colours almost seemed like a remorseless cold terminator whose only focus was putting the ball in the net, no matter how often he was kicked, hacked or provoked,   the notion that the best revenge was in putting the ball in the net as the “Take the Ball, Pass the Ball” philosophy of Pep Guardiola produced the most spellbinding football the world has seen in the last 30 years.

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Trouble is,  that’s not the style of Argentina - the almighty Diego Maradona wowed the world with the skills but Argentina, cliches aside, loved his  pugnacious and combative side just as much. For much of his  career, Messi was not loved in the same way in his Argentina homeland, his remorseless and clinical pursuit of excellence seeming an anathema to Argentine fans more comfortable with that snarling, passionate and cynical streak they revel in.

But this World Cup showed that deep down in his soul, Messi is every bit as  Argentine as his countrymen -  his confrontations with Louis Van Gaal and the Dutch team so typically Argentine if also so untypically Messi. To me, it reveals that Messi is driven every bit as much as his celebrated rival Ronaldo, every bit as competitive as any footballer but just far more insanely talented.

The  mythologising around Messi after Sunday’s Final is both fun and rather pointless - comparing Leo to Diego is as useless as comparing apples and oranges. Maradona played in a time when players literally hacked an opponent to the ground but then Messi has never had the same sort of scandal around him as Diego did in 1982 or 1994 nor the same nasty malevolent streak.

Pelé has always been regarded as the greatest but it is fair to say he had a better supporting cast for his three World Cups wins. Some  champion Ronaldo but I'll admit my aversion to Man Utd and Real Madrid always tell against him in my mind, even if he is undoubtedly one of the game's all time greats.

One of the greats who is never mentioned in these debates is Dutch legend Marco Van Basten - for those of you who know little of the former AC Milan striker, check out his three goals against England in Euro 88, his spectacular otherworldly goal in the Euro 88 Final against the USSR and a bullet header against Real Madrid in the old European Cup in 1989 and you begin to see what a truly special talent he was.

Van Basten indirectly led to a change in the rules of soccer when the tackle from behind was banned outright after his career was cut short at the age of 28. Just like  Messi, Van Basten never hid from the assassins but, playing in Italy, he paid a terrible price with the premature end of his career.

The protection Messi receives nowadays, often derided by older commentators, is down to what was done to Van Basten and thank God, the game changed. Because otherwise, we’d never have got the chance to witness the absurdly supernatural gifts of the wee Argentine magician.

You don't always get what you deserve

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Insofar as anyone deserves to win, and that’s a dangerously presumptive  concept, Messi deserved to crown his career with Sunday’s triumph. There is something magical and elemental about the way Messi plays the game, his dazzling arrays of tricks an antidote to systems and  coaching diktats.

That is why Messi holds us all in such a thrall - in an age when someone of his stature isn’t supposed to succeed and his wizardry redundant compared to statistical analysis and probability, Messi’s magic is that he returns us all to the playground where dreams are born and possibilities seem endless.

When he eventually hangs up his boots, soccer will seem that little bit diminished   but, as much as it is so subjective, all that needs to be said right now is -  All Hail the GOAT!