The song The Business, by Tiësto, is the last thing that is heard before the start of the game in each presentation show that was done in this World Cup. The tone, between dramatic and conclusive, increases the tension in the environment. It’s a push into an abyss of emotion. Then there is the countdown and football. The game that moved and maddened a nation. While it plays, Lionel Messi’s face is hard, serious. Trapped in his role. They are all waiting to see him and he does not want to fail. He takes responsibility for him.
Neat beard this time. Messi clothes are accommodated oblivious to the weather. He sure is nervous. No one could not be in his position. But he keeps it to himself. He doesn’t express it. With gum in his mouth, as always. Somewhere he must release all that hidden adrenaline. While the pumping of blood accelerates in the Argentine hearts, Messi walks the field. Literally. He doesn’t run. But when the game passes near him, he does not hide. On the contrary, he activates. At 35 he can no longer be the best in the world. And yet he manages to be the best in history.
Argentina has the ball, but it is when it reaches the captain that something different can really happen. The first thing he does, from the right, is the search for the side that passes. The Barcelona method. He found Tagliafico perfect twice. They were the first signs that Argentina tried to be sharp from the beginning. That he had studied France ad nauseam. That the fragility in the middle and the back of Koundé was an invitation to attack.
They were still in the study phase when Ousmane Dembele committed an unusual penalty against Di María. The fifth that they give to Argentina in the tournament. Messi got fourth. A raid to pure penalty and goal in the knockout stage. The one tonight in Lusail served for his plenary session in the knockout stage. He scored goals against Australia, the Netherlands, Croatia and France. He had never even done one before. In this World Cup he did it in every game. The sixth in the World Cup, the 12th in his career to catch up with… Pelé. And with those four, too, he has the same ones that Maradona did in his entire World Cup career. How can one person do it all?
In a recovered ball attack, there was a flipper combination: Molina, Mac Allister, Messi, Álvarez and Mac Allister (again), they put together a perfect one-touch run for Di María to score his goal in a World Cup final, the only one in which he needed to convert with the selection. And he started to cry, as if he was heartbroken. One more overflow, in the middle of the game. When everything was yet to be played.
But Messi was not moved. He yelled it like crazy, mind you. He hugged him. They were companions in a thousand battles and suffering. His slap pass in that action was of an aesthetic beauty that will be remembered forever. It was 2 to 0.
While Rodrigo De Paul, Enzo Fernández, Alexis Mac Allister and Julián Álvarez ran like mad around him, he reserved energy. That’s what it’s all about. His Navy did the rest of the work. They need the leader for other matters. Much more important. Not to say that he never collaborated. He went down to recover a couple of balls in the first half for which he received a huge ovation.
Later, they waited for him to pull the strings of the puppet. So that each member of this team moves to the side they want and without the opponents being able to anticipate or decipher each movement. A couple of very good chances were lost to widen the score in the first twenty minutes. It is true, then the worst came: the moment of darkness for the team, which appeared in several games in this campaign of champions. The downturn brought with it two goals from Mbappé, one from a penalty and another from a play, which put the score at 2-2 and forced everything to start again.
At times, when nerves were already on the surface and the result more uncertain than ever, it seemed that Messi was vanishing from the areas of influence, but as he did so many times; he reappeared at just the right time: in extra time, four minutes into extra time, he scored the goal that could have given the team the title before the penalty shootout. Lucas Montiel finished off a ball with spin, Lautaro Martínez lowered the ball for the rosarino star who immediately re-enabled Martínez. The Inter attacker finished off before Lloris left, who covered his shot, but it was left to Messi who, from the right, scored the 3 to 2. And there, the explosion, his celebration with his fist raised, his sweaty and red face . It seemed that everything was sealed? Not yet. They had to endure another punishment from Mbappe and wait for the penalty shootout.
It was there where Messi did not fail again. A soft shot, the ball rolled slowly towards goal, while keeper Lloris dived the other way. Dibu Martínez took care of the rest, so that the captain could enjoy the maximum peak of his career, as if he had lacked laurels. So yes, his definitive access to the football Olympus, eternal glory with the World Cup in his hands… dressed in a magician’s black cape.
Lionel Messi, the player who did not give up and fulfilled his lifelong dream: lifting the World Cup
Lionel Messi lifting the World Cup in Qatar 2022
Lionel Messi already has it all. He is eternal. It is Messi, the immortal. He lifted the World Cup in Qatar 2022. It should always have been like that. Today you no longer have to dream about it. The whole planet supported him. They knew that he deserved it like no one else, that he had cried and suffered unjustly, that he was disowned in his country and they demanded that he stay in Spain. Lionel will never owe himself a debt anymore. I didn’t have it with anyone, only with him. And he paid for it in the last breath of his World Cup life, when the endless tragedy loomed in the Qatari area. It is the final goodbye. It should be, because now Argentina will have to learn to compete without him.
But today the dream is all about Messi, about that boy who one day broke a window because he got locked up and had to get to play a game. Today he has the world at his feet. And not just today. He will have it forever. His presence will imply homage wherever he goes. In Germany 2006 he was a child. There was no room for his budding magic. In South Africa, Maradona on the bench, he could not shine. Brazil 2014 was a disappointment and Russia 2018, a regret.
His fifth world championship was the definitive one. The one who waited so long and had been cruelly denied, as if to teach him a life lesson: you are the best, but not the champion. Those words that resounded in his head at the Maracana and that today are meaningless. Messi is the best and the champion. For two decades he has been at the top of soccer. If the best screenwriter had written this, he couldn’t have come close to the epicity of the real thing. Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini is a Soccer God and there is no return.
He will sing and laugh like he never did, because each defeat hurt him, even though he was a millionaire and was idolized in all latitudes of the world. This had to happen so that the perfect circle would remain closed and no one would ever dare to open it again. Messi ends an era, his era, everyone’s era: because he shared his football, the football that he has felt in his heart, with each and every one of the inhabitants of the Earth .
No more comparisons, claims, flaming fingers. Messi did what so many millions of human dreams projected: to see him raise “the one of the World”. Like Maradona in the Azteca and Passarella in the Monumental. Argentina has three stars. They will scream it until their lungs can’t take it anymore. Today he has seen the Cup and was able to kiss it. Eight years ago he saw her from afar. It looked like the tragic collectible image that treasures a moment of eternal sorrow. Today Messi is everything he ever wanted to be. The best version of him. He has the World Cup and happiness has no end. All human beings should save this moment and count it until the end of time.
Argentina adds another world title with Messi breaking records
Soccer star Lionel Messi added other records to his remarkable career on Sunday in the match with which the Argentine team became world champion with their 4-2 victory on penalties against France, reaching their 26th match in the World Cup, a record unpublished.
Messi opened the scoreboard with a penalty kick at minute 23, at the start of a frantic game that ended 3-3 and in which Argentina was clearly superior but could not close it in the 90 minutes of the game or in the 30 minutes of extra time. He also made it 3-2 after extra time, when once again it seemed that Argentina was left with the title.
With 26 games, the captain of the “albiceleste” surpassed the German Lothar Matthäus by one appearance in the number of matches played in the World Cups.
The Paris Saint-Germain star had three appearances in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, five in South Africa 2010, seven in Brazil 2014, four in Russia 2018 and seven in Qatar.
Messi also won the Ballon d’Or for the best player of the tournament and the Silver Boot for scoring seven goals, only behind French attacker Kylian Mbappé.
In addition to the double in the final, the captain of the “albiceleste” scored against Saudi Arabia and Mexico in the group stage, against the Australian team in the round of 16, against the Netherlands in the quarterfinals and against Croatia in the semifinals.
Messi achieved two other marks on Sunday.
He surpassed Paolo Maldini as the player with the most minutes in World Cups, adding 2,284 compared to 2,217 for the former Italian defender. And he also added 17 victories in World Cup matches, equaling the mark of the German Miroslav Klose.
Messi raises his great dream to the sky of Lusail, the World Cup
Leo Messi, captain of the Argentina team, has raised his great dream, the World Cup, to the sky in Lusail, the great desire with which he completes an indelible and historic record.
Messi thus picked up the baton from the two previous world champion Albiceleste captains, Daniel Passarella in 1978 and Diego Armando Maradona in 1986, and Frenchman Hugo Lloris, rival in this final, winner with France in Russia in 2018.
The trophy, which was presented to the Lusail stadium before the match by Iker Casillas, champion with Spain in South Africa 2010, was returned to the pitch after the grand final by former Argentine soccer players Nery Pumpido and ‘Chencho’ Batista.
First, he collected the Ballon d’Or award for the best player, at which time, in front of the world, in front of a dedicated stadium, he kissed the World Cup trophy that minutes later he would raise to heaven once all the ‘bleus’ squads ‘ and from the Albiceleste to collect their corresponding medals.
He received the cup from the hands of the emir Tamim bin Hamad al Thani and Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, in charge of going out on stage installed on the grass for the awards ceremony together with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the presidents of Conmebol and from UEFA, Alejandro Domínguez and Aleksander Ceferin, and those from the federations, Claudio Tapia and Noel Le Graet.
Champion captains throughout history:
1930 Jose Nazassi (URU)
1934 Gianpiero Combi (ITA)
1938 Giuseppe Meazza (ITA)
1950 Obdulio Varela (URU)
1954 Fritz Walter (FRG)
1958 Hilderaldo Bellini (BRA)
1962 Mauro Ramos (BRA)
1966 Bobby Moore (ENG)
1970 Carlos Alberto (BRA)
1974 Frnaz Beckenbauer (FRG)
1978 Daniel Passarella (ARG)
1982 Dino Zoff (ITA)
1986 Diego Armando Maradona (ARG)
1990 Lothar Matthaus (FRG)
1994 Dunga (BRA)
1998 Didier Deschamps (FRA)
2002 Cafu (BRA)
2006 Fabio Cannavaro (ITA)
2010 Iker Casillas (ESP)
2014 Philipp Lahm (GER)
2018 Hugo Lloris (FRA)
2022 Leo Messi