STAGE SET FOR MESSI'S LAST GREAT ACT OF BRILLIANCE
Argentine star has made some clutch plays to put his team one win away from glory
The casual Canadian soccer fan could be forgiven for not entirely understanding the fuss about Lionel Messi.
He had a list of trophies and accomplishments longer than he is, sure, but his best seasons with Barcelona were almost a decade ago, in a league that is only televised on premium cable in much of this country. It's been more than seven years since they won the Champions League, and in recent years they were best known in that competition for a quarterfinal collapse against Liverpool and then an 8-2 battering from Bayern Munich in the same round the following year.
On the international stage, when everyone is watching, his time playing for Argentina has been mostly disappointing, He even retired from the national team after the 2016 loss in the Copa America, only to come back and have a worse go of it at the 2018 World Cup. His team started off in Qatar by losing to Saudi Arabia. Not exactly the stuff of greatness.
And then the past week happened: Ah, right, there it is. He's a magician. I remember now.
First it was the remarkable pass to set up Argentina's first goal in Friday's quarterfinal against the Netherlands, a pullback to an oncoming Nahuel Molina that was a surprise to everyone in the stadium, including probably Molina. Then it was the absurd display of skill and ball control to the right of the Croatian goal in Tuesday's semifinal, where Messi faked out defender Josko Gvardiol, scooted around him while somehow maintaining possession, waited a beat for the poor man's soul to leave his body, and then slipped a perfectly weighted pass through a forest of legs for Julian Alvarez to slot home.
For all of his goal-scoring records, and they are many, this is the stuff that gets football people to roll their eyes back in their heads and lean into the couch cushions like they have just taken a drag off an expensive cigar and a sip of a 20-year-old whiskey.
Messi, the string-puller. Messi, the maestro. Messi, the legend.
Pep Guardiola, the manager who is presently collecting buckets full of trophies with Manchester City but who coached Messi for four years with Barcelona, once explained that the little Argentine does this kind of stuff in part because of the way he is always studying the pitch.
“Even when he's walking, he's not out of the game, he's involved,” Guardiola said in a documentary interview as he watched clips of Messi scanning the field.
“After five, 10 minutes, he has the map in his eyes and his brain, to know exactly what is the space and what is the panorama.”
“He knows exactly what's going to happen,” said Guardiola, probably overdoing it a bit now but warming to the theme, likening his former player to an animal scanning the jungle: “He smells who are the weak points in the back four.”
No one who has watched this World Cup would have considered Gvardiol a weak point, the masked Croatian having been a key to wins over Japan and Brazil. And yet Messi left him flailing anyway, testament to the fact that as much as he has an uncanny eye for the game, he also backs it up with the skill to execute the map that his brain has plotted.
And now, in what seems like a blur, he's a game away from the one missing piece from his legacy, the one title that has, for some, kept him a notch below Maradona and Pele on the list of all-time greats. A little over two weeks ago, Argentina was on the cusp of yet another World Cup disaster, having followed the shock loss to Saudi Arabia with an hour of scoreless play against Mexico in their second group stage game. But Messi pounced on a loose ball to break the tie and get Argentina's tournament, belatedly, rolling. They have since looked like the team that was one of the pre-competition favourites, while coming out just enough on the right side of the fine margins that often decide international football. They survived a ridiculous late comeback from the Dutch in the quarterfinal and then had a tight penalty call go in their favour against Croatia. Messi dispatched it into the top corner, ripping a highrisk shot that could not be saved if hit properly but would be in the second deck if he misjudged it. It was then that you couldn't help thinking about the script.
Was Messi, at 35 years old, about to win the tournament that even he had once given up on? Even his biggest fans would admit that the sunset years of his club career have been a bit grim. A few struggles with Barcelona, a teary farewell because the team was in financial crisis, and a move to Paris and the one team that could afford him while also not particularly needing him. It wasn't the end that would have been imagined seven or eight years ago, when he was racking up league titles and golden balls.
The last act, though, suddenly has the potential for a banger of a closing performance. There's only so much one player can do amid all the moving parts of a big international tournament. But given this last chance, Messi has done it. One game to go.
A last symphony from the maestro, perhaps.