2022 FIFA WC final rewind: One year since Lionel Messi lifted the World Cup and completed football | Football News
The cameras panned on Lionel Messi. This was supposed to be his night, wasn’t it? The night he completed football. The fulfillment of a career that had until then possessed every trophy – team and individual – except one. But in the 81st minute the smile on Messi’s face was one of embracing the harsh reality. Was this to be another 2014? After all the dazzling showmanship he’d put up on the pitch for the entirety of the tournament, was it all going to end in vain? Had the World Cup just been snatched away from his grasps, again? Was this another harsh reality check of sport not giving two hoots about a happy ending. A few yards from him, the French players were wheeling away in celebration. Kylian Mbappe had equalized for France after Argentina had dominated the entirety of the final.
The flashbacks for Messi, Argentina, and their vociferous supporters in Doha and elsewhere must’ve been bone-chilling. The script seemed eerily familiar to the heartbreaks they had endured in 2014, or 2015, even the year after. Three major finals losses that had left Messi in tears, contemplating retirement. Maybe he wasn’t destiny’s child after all. Maybe Diego Maradona had got it wrong in saying, “I have seen the player who will inherit my place in Argentine football and his name is Messi.” This was Argentina’s dearest, most-loved deity – bigger than Pope, yes – choosing his successor even before he played his World Cup match. Maybe he wasn’t the one to bring home a first world title since Maradona and the Class of ‘86.
Maybe in the years to come, or perhaps in the upcoming Apple TV documentary titled Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend, we’ll hear from the man what he was thinking as he bent down and smiled after the French equalized. This much is clear though, this was a Messi vastly different from those snakebitten years in the teens. His entire World Cup to that point had been evidence enough, the Argentine captain was in Qatar to win the whole thing.
With seven goals and three asss, he’d led the way in a campaign that was dealt a blow in the opening game itself. A defeat to Saudi Arabia that had left the Argentineans ‘dead’, in Messi’s precise assessment. It was he who’d bring them to life. Against Mexico with his peach of a strike from outside the box. Against Australia with a low-precisional strike inside a congested box off a run the Aussies couldn’t mark. Against the Dutch, fashioning a stab no-look pass between two legs and beyond three defenders. Against Croatia with a new ass of the tournament, one that saw him outrun and outsmart the best centre-back of the tournament, 15 years younger to him, from near the halfway line all the way to the six-yard box. And then against the French, tricking Hugo Lloris the wrong way from the spot kick. This was Messi making up for a hory of dismal penalty conversion rate at big tournaments. This was him doing everything he could to push Argentina all the way across the line. Over and over again.
Messi at Maracana in 2014 had cut a sorry figure, desperately looking for avenues to score but barely left unchecked the Germans. Messi in 2022 was a different beast, or rather a sage. One cunning enough to pick and choose his moments based on his own insane footballing IQ.
Like in the 108th minute in the final. There’s this gold-standard archivable footage of his from the minute where he goes from waddling around the centre circle, scanning 360 degree, turning on the afterburners and before you know it, he’s lurking in the penalty area waiting to pounce on a spill from Lloris. An ugly tap in that doesn’t even hit the netting, was he kidding us? After having a career with bucket loads of beauties, that’s the one he chose to win the greatest game of his life? The one to cement his legacy? Many would call it his ugliest goal on a football pitch – and many may be right – but make no make, it was worth its weight in dripping gold for the scorer. Messi celebrated it twice, before and after the referee deemed it a goal. Exultant, f pumping, on his knees, hugging, swearing and dispatching flying kisses, you name it. He’d have taken it for any of those golazos, wouldn’t he?
Maybe it was football being romantic in its own weird way: his ugliest goal on his most beautiful of nights. It wasn’t yet. Kylian Mbappe, born and bred in the city of love and romance, didn’t seem too akin to it. Twice more he beat Emi Martinez – in extra time and in the shootouts – and the camera followed Messi again.
He had to put that first penalty in. Once again, nothing fancy, just adequate enough. Just a slow roll of the ball-in that saw Hugo Lloris go the wrong way and come back right. Enough to make it 1-1. It had to be, for Argentina to win 4-2.
It was Gonzalo Montiel who drilled in the winning penalty, Emi Martinez was the hero in the shootout, but the cameras were fixated on one man. They had to be. Lionel Andres Messi was a world champion as he slumped to the ground first. They’d lift him up on their shoulders à la 1986 Azteca Mexico. Diego Maradona was right after all. There was a time when his countrymen had been pitiless to his successor. “I had a bad time. My family and the people who loved me did too. (Critics in Argentina) were very unfair to a generation of players and they said a lot of bad things about me. I’m not spiteful,” Messi would open up in a recent interview. “I feel it like a triumph for me to have changed that situation and won over all the people of Argentina. Today 95 percent or 100 percent of Argentines love me and that’s a beautiful feeling.” A happy ending, indeed.
