Messi crowned

Well, we were going to try not to men­tion the Qatar World Cup, weren’t we? But after Barça leg­end Leo Messi rounded off a mag­nif­i­cent ca­reer with an equally mag­nif­i­cent World Cup win with Ar­gentina, it felt churl­ish not to ded­i­cate a few lines of this mag­a­zine to the great man’s achieve­ment. And some achieve­ment it was, given the sky blue and whites’ start to the com­pe­ti­tion, a 2-1 de­feat to min­nows Saudi Ara­bia. Many thought that was it, and Messi was des­tined to be one of the great­est ever play­ers – if not the best – never to lift a World Cup. But the bal­letic lit­tle ma­gi­cian had other ideas, and Ar­gentina went on from that chas­ten­ing de­feat in the open­ing game to top their group after 2-0 wins against Mex­ico and Poland.

The team was coached by an­other Li­onel, for­mer player Scaloni, who him­self was in se­vere dan­ger of be­com­ing a pariah fol­low­ing that open­ing de­feat. In the round of six­teen they played a valiant but ul­ti­mately lack­ing Aus­tralia, and were vastly su­pe­rior de­spite the close 2-1 score­line.

Then came the quar­ter fi­nals and their sternest test yet: Van Gaal’s Nether­lands. Now if you were to ask lo­cals which for­mer Barça man is held in greater es­teem in these parts, then you would be dis­missed as a bobo, given that Messi’s stel­lar rep­u­ta­tion dwarves that of the Dutch for­mer coach, who was never taken to Cata­lan hearts. De­spite his world­wide rep­u­ta­tion as an as­tute coach, his most fa­mous words here in Cat­alo­nia – still re­peated in jest by foot­ball fans today – were ad­dressed to a crit­i­cal jour­nal­ist in a post-game press con­fer­ence “Siem­pre negat­ifo!” (the Span­ish word neg­a­tivo mis­pro­nounced in Van Gaal’s ac­cent, and mean­ing “Al­ways neg­a­tive!”). The red-faced one didn’t do him­self too many favours here ei­ther, diss­ing Messi prior to the game by sug­gest­ing the Ar­gen­tine cap­tain was a weak­ness due to his not putting in the de­fen­sive work when his team didn’t have the ball, and then sug­gest­ing the Nether­lands would pre­vail if it came to penal­ties. The re­sult? A record-break­ing 18 yel­low cards in the game, which many com­men­ta­tors at­trib­uted to the Ar­gen­tines being riled by Dutch ar­ro­gance, while oth­ers – among them Messi him­self in a post-game on-field in­ter­view – sug­gested that the Span­ish in­ter­na­tional ref­eree, An­to­nio Mateu Lahoz, was not up to the task of of­fi­ci­at­ing such an im­por­tant and ten­sion-filled game. Oh, and Ar­gentina won on penal­ties, with some play­ers fa­mously taunt­ing the op­po­si­tion after the last spot kick was taken, and Messi ut­ter­ing the now fa­mous words “Qué miras bobo?” (What are you look­ing at, stu­pid?) to one of the on­look­ing Dutch play­ers dur­ing a post-match in­ter­view.

That spat be­hind them, Ar­gentina were into the semi-fi­nals, where they had been widely ex­pected to face Brazil, the dar­lings of foot­balling afi­ciona­dos every­where, in what was to be a clas­sic South Amer­i­can World Cup show­down. But Croa­tia, the coun­try that bats far above its av­er­age when it comes to foot­ball, had other ideas. After los­ing to France in the final last time round, Mod­ric, Ko­vacic et al. were aim­ing to make it two fi­nals in a row. A last-gasp extra-time equaliser against Brazil had taken their quar­ter final to penal­ties, which they had sub­se­quently won, leav­ing the dreams of head coach Tite and star player Ney­mar on the scrap heap. Ar­gentina proved a bridge too far for the Croa­t­ians, how­ever, and Messi led his side tri­umphantly into the final with a com­fort­able 3-0 win.

And then came one of the great­est World Cup fi­nals ever wit­nessed. Given the world’s need for he­roes, it was billed as Messi against the young pre­tender Mbappé, rather than Ar­gentina vs the hold­ers France, and on paper Di­dier De­schamps’ side looked the more likely win­ners, hav­ing them­selves had a mostly un­trou­bled route to the final. It has to be said that nei­ther player dis­ap­pointed, even though it took the French­man some time to get going. Ar­gentina had strolled into a 2-0 half-time lead and were in full con­trol of the game until the 70th minute, it look­ing for all the world that France had sim­ply failed to turn up on the biggest stage of all. But savvy foot­ball fans every­where would have known that the Ar­gen­tine dom­i­nance had come from im­mense en­deav­our in the first hour of the game – in­deed, they seemed to be play­ing with an extra man or two at times – and that tired­ness and sub­sti­tu­tions would play a part in the final out­come. And so it came to pass. In the last 10 min­utes of nor­mal time France scored twice, through Mbappé, and could eas­ily have won it as their sub­sti­tutes started to im­pose them­selves on the ex­hausted Ar­gen­tines. The game had been turned on its head. But Messi and his team held on to take it to extra time, where they again took the lead through a Messi goal, his sec­ond of the final fol­low­ing an ear­lier penalty. Back came France again, with that man Mbappé com­plet­ing his hat-trick, two from the penalty spot, one won­der­ful vol­ley, to take us to penal­ties.

It was the first World Cup final to be de­cided on penal­ties since Brazil beat Italy in Pasadena in 1994. Was it Messi’s des­tiny to lift the tro­phy? To the de­light not only of Ar­gen­tines, but of foot­ball fans every­where, and, yes, that in­cludes culers, it was.

FOOT­BALL