CHRISTMESSI

Is the leg­end now com­plete? Is it a case of all praise to The Great One, Li­onel Messi, the Mes­siah of Ar­gentina, Sav­iour of Rosario and FIFA-fam­ily favourite?

On the whole it seems so, but like so many pub­lic fig­ures, this 35 year old (who spent all his cru­cial teenage years at La Masia, the Barcelona Foot­ball Club youth acad­emy) sharply di­vides opin­ion. Even within me.

On the one hand, he’s un­doubt­edly the most skilled foot­baller I’ve ever seen. I was lucky enough to watch him play at the Camp Nou sta­dium in the King’s Cup final of 2013. He hit the cross­bar with a penalty but (un­like on tele­vi­sion) what I no­ticed more than any­thing else was that every pass, run and move­ment he made was at least 20 per­cent faster than any­one else. And just as through­out the world cup tour­na­ment, he was also more ac­cu­rate than any other player on the pitch.

Every time I’ve watched this wiz­ard play I’ve seen some­thing new to ad­mire about his work. In the semi final against Croa­tia he set up a goal with an op­po­nent lean­ing all over his 1.69 me­tres, as he con­trolled the ball and shifted po­si­tion sev­eral times. Shrug­ging his much big­ger pur­suer off, Messi’s strength and bal­ance in those vital sec­onds was a rare, rare thing. It meant his team was able to get into the final and go on to win the damn thing.

I was a good young foot­baller my­self and con­sid­ered try­ing to shoot for a ca­reer in the sport (or in cricket) so the tal­ents and longevity of a supreme ath­lete like Messi are im­pos­si­ble for me to dis­miss. What dis­turbs me is that while Messi has al­ways been a rel­a­tively “clean” sports­man on the field – well known for not fake ’div­ing’ to get a free kick, for ex­am­ple – his record off the field de­serves plenty of crit­i­cism.

For me, it’s hard to stom­ach his tax eva­sion of more than four mil­lion euros: using off­shore and shell com­pa­nies in Be­lize, Uruguay and Panama. In 2022 alone, his in­come has been put at 41 mil­lion US dol­lars. His var­i­ous acts of phil­an­thropy dur­ing a decade and a half ca­reer can’t take away from the ar­gu­ment that these high-pro­file guys need to be a role model as a cit­i­zen and celebrity.

“The Messi Brand” has Adi­das as its main cor­po­rate spon­sor. The same Adi­das that has a lengthy his­tory of human rights abuses against its work­ers and parts sup­pli­ers. Messi him­self would surely know but has cho­sen to ig­nore this.

The fact that he, with the major help of his team­mates and sup­port staff, has given count­less hours of plea­sure, and even joy, to mil­lions of peo­ple has to be con­sid­ered, though. With a round ball on an ex­panse of turf, Messi’s been an en­ter­tainer like no other. He’s gen­er­ally avoided Cris­tiano Ronaldo’s vain parad­ing or the un­eth­i­cal cheat­ing and self-abuse of Maradona.

In the end, I’d con­sider lift­ing the world cup as a fit­ting way to recog­nise Messi’s oth­er­worldly abil­ity. I just can’t help also wish­ing that our he­roes were more heroic when they step out of the arena.