Don’t cry for me, Argentina
He is one of the greatest players of all time, but few players will be under more pressure at the World Cup than Argentina’s Lionel Messi. James Ducker explains.
It was symptomatic of the chaos that has followed Argentina on the rockiest of roads to Russia that their final World Cup warmup match, against Israel, was cancelled amid reported threats to Lionel Messi’s life.
Indeed, if the suits at the Argentine Football Association are intent on trying to ease the near-suffocating level of scrutiny on Messi as he bids to win the World Cup at the fourth time of asking, and finally erase the one blot on his storied career, they have a funny way of going about it. A fixture in Jerusalem at a time of heightened IsraeliPalestinian tensions, a week before Argentina face Iceland in their opening group D game (Sunday 1am NZT), hardly constitutes the wisest preparation, but then it was Messi himself who remarked what a ‘‘disaster AFA people are’’.
And so, instead of playing last Saturday evening, Argentina’s squad flew in to Moscow’s Zhukovsky Airport a day early on a private jet belonging to the Rolling Stones.
Whether Messi can put on a show that leaves a lasting legacy, or whether coach Jorge Sampaoli’s high-pressing tactics are too adventurous for a side with defensive shortcomings, it promises to be a story that engrosses far more than just followers of La Albiceleste.
The stakes are huge, not least for a player whose candidature as the greatest of all time hinges, for some, on what happens over the coming weeks.
An extra-time defeat by Germany in the 2014 World Cup final preceded back-to-back losses to Chile in the Copa America finals of 2015 and 2016 and, for Messi, losing a third final in as many years, and a fourth in nine years, was too much to take.
Argentina supporters were still digesting his penalty miss in that second successive shootout defeat by Chile in June 2016 when he announced his international retirement at pitch side. Two months later, he was back, but Messi, 30, has already hinted that he may quit for good if Argentina fall short again this summer. ‘‘It will depend how we do, how it ends,’’ he said.
It certainly must be strange for someone who has plundered 32 trophies at club level with Barcelona and been named world player of the year on five occasions to be the nearly-man of international football.
In truth, he has often been far better for his country than he is given credit for and, but for his rescue act against Ecuador in qualifying, Argentina would not even be in Russia.
It is actually a wonder Argentina’s problems do not run deeper, given how the AFA was operating without a president for almost two years after board members were embroiled in the Fifa scandal and the organisation flirted with bankruptcy.
Argentina had as many coaches during their troubled qualifying campaign as they did between 1974 and 1994 and the fact that all three managers had conflicting ideologies compounded the disarray.
He was directly involved in almost half of Argentina’s goals in qualifying, despite playing in only 10 of their 18 games, and in the 11 months up to October last year, no Argentina player, bar Messi, scored a competitive goal.
He is the player they cannot do without and yet, at the same time, the player whose influence has become so overarching that some teammates seem inhibited. Experienced figures such as Sergio Aguero and Angel Di Maria, in particular, will be under pressure to step up after so many tournament disappointments.
Alejandro Sabella, who was in charge in Brazil four years ago,