The greatest player of this era has, apparently, hung up his boots with Argentina. After losing his fourth final (three of them in consecutive years) he has decided that his chances of attaining success with Argentina is as low as good songs coming out from Indian Pop.
The straw that broke the came’s back when he himself missed a penalty in the shoot-out, kicking the ball into the orbit which threatened to shatter a NASA satellite in the process. And now, with guilt and grief strangling him to the point of breathlessness, he has called it quits.
Or, was it really for that reason? We would like to think that there is something more to this than just gloom—and hence here are the 5 reasons why we think he quit the international scene…
Note: This is a light-hearted piece meant for humour purposes only. If you take this seriously, you need to watch less Game of Thrones and more Tom and Jerry.
#1 Move the limelight away from failure
This is just cunning, isn’t it? You are the best player in the world. You are the captain of the team. You are taking a penalty in the final shoot-out of a tournament. And you miss. The world erupts. Yours shatters. And your nation loses the final.
Everyone is talking about you. You are a hot topic. God, even volcanos are icy compared to this. Did Chile actually win the Copa America? Or was this game just a caricature art of Lionel Messi’s failure? The sharks are out and you are the one who will be ripped apart.
So, what do you do? You announce you are retiring from international football.
Lionel Messi did exactly that. Being the best player in the world, the media all but forgot about his miss (the ball is said to have safely on the planet that Anne Hathaway found at the end of the movie ‘Interstellar’) and only focused on his supposed retirement.
Right now, no-one is talking about the penalty miss. Everyone is flooding their Facebook and Twitter timelines by paying homage to the man for his services for the nation.
All that would look so hilarious once he, inevitably, announces he does a Shahid Afridi and comes back to play for Argentina.
#2 Making sure that he no longer misses penalties for Argentina
The greatest players in the world have all missed penalties. However, regardless of how difficult it is to score from the spot, it is always embarrassing to miss them. Whenever Cristiano Ronaldo scores a penalty, he is labeled as ‘Penaldo’. However, on the off-chance that he doesn’t, he is someone who is good for nothing.
With Lionel Messi, even scoring from penalties is an art. He scores them just like the others, but he isn’t like the others—and, hence, even something as usual as spot-kicks are also divine when taken with his feet.
Therefore, whenever he misses a penalty, it is an insult to his transcendence. To make sure that he doesn’t blaspheme his holiness any further, he has decided to quit from Argentina, reducing the number of penalties he takes and, as a result, plummeting the failure rate.
#3 He is a drama queen
Or this could just all be an elaborate attempt to make the people pamper him. An extension to the first slide, this could all be a faux pas masquerade to earn the sympathy of the general mass. No-one is blaming him now, most are just too sad to do that.
What is almost certain is that his decision to retire from internationals was a heat-of-the-moment thing, a reaction borne out of impulse. He is only 29 years old and can render a further three years of optimum service for his country in the least.
Keeping all this in account, it can be safely assumed that he will be back—like a drama queen who initially refuses to go to the prom but eventually attends it after her boyfriend pleads to her and buys her an expensive dress.
#4 To pay more attention on tax issues
Lionel Messi and taxes haven’t been the best of friends. In fact, it could be argued that the Argentine dislikes paying taxes more than Donald Trump hates immigrants. Most recently, he appeared in front of a court to prove his innocence regarding the tax-scandal he is in.
Apparently, he didn’t know anything about the issue as he was so busy playing that he hardly had time to think about anything else. Hence, to make sure that this doesn’t happen ever again, he has decided to quit playing for Argentina and pay taxes at the right time instead and be a ‘sanskaari’ citizen like Aloknath.
#5 To never again play with Higuain
Gonzalo Higuain is many things. Among them, he is the only player in the history of mankind to miss an easy chance in each of the three finals that he has played in since the 2014 World Cup.
He might have scored a blinder of a goal out of nowhere against Belgium in the World Cup—in a game where Messi was nearly invisible—but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that he misses in the final and denies Messi the opportunity to become the greatest ever.
Gonzalo Higuain is to Lionel Messi what Brexit is to the British youth: a disaster. And, hence, Lionel Messi has decided that he has had enough.
With his retirement, he will no longer have to play with the Napoli man and face the sorrow that he faced after losing the final—which was more than the sadness the audience felt when Will Smith had to kill his dog in ‘I am Legend.’
