Messi great, not greatest-ever; Qatar 2022 good, but not best-ever

Presuming that a week’s time is enough for immediacy bias to get dialed down and also for sake of objectivity, it is prudent to revisit last Sunday’s FIFA World Cup final. Before the words written and spoken in the Messi-induced delirium pass off as the only truth and get etched in hory books, it’s wise to add a dash of nuance to the narrative. This all-important rewrite should start shortening Qatar 2022’s most used word. ‘Greatest’ needs to be made ‘Great’ urgently.
This past one and half-month; stunning goals, magical skills and ceaseless feel-good story lines had combined to form a dizzying sequence of footballing virtuosity. It’s a heady mix that forces the human mind to lose sense of perspective. Not surprisingly, everything, in and around those marvelous stadiums of this slick World Cup, we have been told, was either Greatest or Best-ever. Best-ever World Cup, Greatest final, Best-ever fairytale and at the end of it all the Greatest Of All Time holding the Cup.

A forensic audit of emotions is a necessary precaution in this era of exaggeration, where hype is the plinth on which sporting ecosystems are built. More so since embedded opinion-makers dressed as journals and rent-a-tweet influencers were state guests at Qatar. They took turns to be the well-paid brick-layers that built a wall to hide the flaws of sporting superheroes or some ‘coin-operated launderettes’ shipped in for sports-washing.
Argentina’s Lionel Messi celebrates at the end of the World Cup final soccer match between Argentina and France at the Lusail Stadium in Lusail, Qatar, Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022. Argentina won 4-2 in a penalty shootout after the match ended tied 3-3. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
While Qatar scaled it up, embellishment of sporting events and achievements has been a millennial trait. Social media lends its all-encompassing network to amplify unsubstantiated prophecies and sweeping statements made in the heat of the moment. Of late, ‘good goals’ have been labelled ‘great goals’ and an average ‘smart move’ has become ‘stroke of genius’. In this age of misinformation even the all-important Qatar proclamation that Messi is the greatest-ever also needs scrutiny.
To rate individuals as ‘best-ever across generations”, that too in team sports, is both unscientific and juvenile. In football, a sport that values passing and is played in a crowded field, it’s unwise to quantify the efforts of one player. virtue of his two Player of the Tournament Awards at the World Cup, Messi fans got the bragging rights over Criano Ronaldo’s army. These accolades, and the World Cup title, justified his status as the best player of his generation. But is he a GOAT? The old hands, those who didn’t quite discover football in this century, would say that Messi isn’t even the unquestionable best-ever in his own country.
There is a reason Diego Maradona’s giant crowd-covering portraits on fabric were part of the grand Buenos Aires home-coming party. Even a year after his death, mothers in Argentina read his story to kids at bedtime. The boy from the slums, a ball juggler who regaled crowds at half-time of local league games, showed early signs of super stardom. At his first club in the Little League, the coach took him to a doctor to add muscle to his legs. When he finished the treatment, the child prodigy, as he described, was “a racing colt”. A natural dribbler with lightning speed, that was Maradona.

His most famous celebrated goal, not the Hand of God one, happens to be his second strike against England in the 1986 World Cup. In the words of the boss of football writing Brian Glanville it was a goal that was “so unusual, almost romantic, that it might have been scored some schoolboy hero, or some remote Corinthian, from the days when dribbling was in vogue. It hardly belonged to so apparently a rational and rationalized an era as ours, as to a period in football when the dribbler seemed as extinct as the pterodactyl”.
Argentina’s Lionel Messi celebrates with the trophy in front of fans after winning the World Cup final. (AP)
It’s a goal for the ages. The No.10 gets the ball inside his own half, on the right wing. With a quick turn, he gets rid of three England players. While moving towards the penalty area, he is confronted a defender. His feints on the right, make the defender believe that he might run on the line and centre the ball. It would be foolish to think that Maradona was planning an ass.
the time he realised that Maradona had sold him a dummy, the legend with the powerful legs, was cantering towards the goal. Valdona, his trusted team mate, had been his left for most of his magical run. He could have passed but Maradona sells another lemon, this time he cons the goalkeeper and scores.
Years later Valdona would recall the goal: “At first I went along out of a sense of responsibility but I then realised I was just one more spectator. It was his goal and had nothing to do with the team. It was Diego’s personal adventure.”

At this World Cup, Messi got the ball around the real estate where Maradona got in 1986. Back then it was the quarter-final, this time Argentina was playing the semis against Croatia. Messi had to deal with the tournament’s most dreaded defender – the young energetic masked man Josko Gvardiol.
General view as a banner of Argentina’s Lionel Messi and former player Diego Maradona is seen ahead of the victory parade. (Reuters)
Messi got the ball just ahead of the half-line. He did the famous ‘stop and start’ routine, twed and turned too. But Gvardiol was at his ankle all the time. Maradona was faster and loved to take the opposition head-on. Messi’s skills are subtle. He takes small steps, keeps the ball tied to his shoelaces and strikes when his rivals least expect. Unlike Maradona against England, Messi goes on the outside, runs along the goal line to pass the ball to Julian Alvarez, who scores. Unlike Valdona against England, Alvarez was needed. He wasn’t a prop.
This isn’t a Maradona vs Messi debate, it’s a comparison to show that football throws up endless possibilities. Where Messi opted for a good ass when faced a stubborn defender, Maradona had the audacity to pull off a great goal taking on the entire England back line.
Bringing up the Maradona goal is just to show that what Messi did has been done before, with more style and jaw-dropping brilliance. Does this mean it’s Maradona who’s the GOAT and not Messi? Not really, long before Maradona, there was Pele.
Argentina super star Lionel Messi. (FILE)
At 17, he scored his first World Cup goal. If someone replicated what he did today, he would have trended on twitter for a month and got names likes GOD and GOAT. Pele would go on to score 1000 plus goals after that, many of the same quality.
Before that 1958 debut strike, Pele had got the ball with his back to the goal and a big burly Swedish defender glued to him. He swirled to his right while jumping to trap the ball on his chest. He used his shoulder to drop it to his feet. The routine was so quick, that his marker got shaken off. As he is about to pull the trigger, another back moves in with a desperate lunge and a raised leg exposing the spikes.
Lesser players would have attempted a hurried shot, missed the target or slumped to the ground to claim a penalty. Pele flipped the ball over the head of the defender, ran around and volleyed it back to the net. So does that make Pele the GOAT? Not really. Greatness or Greatest-ness can’t be owned, it’s just that the baton gets passed on from generation to another.

Similarly, the Qatar final, a contest that was brazenly one-sided for 80 minutes, too can’t be the best-ever everyone. Ask those chanting ‘Two World Wars and One World Cup’ when England beat Germany at home in the 1966 final. Morocco too can’t be the best-ever fairytale. Ask the South Koreans who followed the World Cup of 2002.Messi too can’t be the best-ever. Those who don’t agree should read Glanville or search for Pele goals on youtube.
Without doubt, Qatar did pull off an incident free and exciting event but the Arabian Nights puffery of “never seen before angels in boots kicking ball in football paradise” needs to be called out.