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“We are talking about the best player in the world. It doesn’t matter if he’s a little bit injured: he can change everything and he did it again. Even if he’s half-crippled, he’s always there.”
“We are really lucky and proud to have Leo in the team and we have to use him when we are struggling a little bit. For us to have Leo on the pitch is really important because he is our reference as a forward. He can score, he can pass, he can do anything. He did everything to help Pedro get the goal.” Gerard Pique
I know this is a bold assessment, and that too so early with more than a year to go till the start of the world’s most celebrated football event, but it is worth having a look at an individual who I predict will play a stellar role in achieving something that has been long awaited in a football crazy country that already boasts of a so-called living God, but also keen to unleash a disciple who is already a messiah in the shores of Catalunya.
The time is right for the maestro Lionel Messi to hit the international jackpot as Argentina look forward to their captain and talisman for inspiration and leadership to end a long wait since 1986. For Messi, the 2014 World Cup would be the ideal opportunity to end all the debate regarding his so far less-than-impressive international pedigree compared to his messiah-like status for Barcelona in club football. Having won everything possible for the Catalans at a relatively tender age of 25, success with Argentina would be the ultimate satisfaction for this rare football phenomenon.
Since his debut as captain of Argentina in a friendly against Venezuela in Kolkata in 2011, manager Alejandro Sabella has seen his team flourish under the diminutive forward’s leadership skills. He is not at all a so-called traditional frontline leader with little things to say in the middle of the pitch or elsewhere, but what he does on the field with his feet inspires the rest of the flock, and that is the secret of his captaincy. With so much fame and success with Barcelona, there is hardly any negativity to speak of this superman of football. Spain, as the current World and double European champions, have benefited from the success of Barcelona. While most of Spain’s dominant display is partly indebted to the products of Catalan football, Lionel Messi has so far failed to match the same inspiration for Argentina. Many say Barcelona’s success is due to its poster boy Lionel Messi while a section of critics have analysed that Messi sometimes look lost in Argentina colours because he does not have a Xavi, Pedro, Iniesta and Fabregas at his disposal in the international arena, who constantly feed him with all the passes week in and week out in Spain.
The special man should win the World Cup for Argentina
Having said that, is he the Messi of today only because of his Barcelona team-mates? The answer could be yes, but is infact an overwhelming no. There is something much special in ‘Leo’ and the time has come for everyone, and Messi himself, to look beyond the Barca barrier.
Diego Maradona was not the best among the best just because he had incredible god-gifted skills; it was his ability to single-handedly take a nation forward and help them win football’s ultimate prize against all the odds. He was not just a captain of a football team but a leader and an ambassador of a country that was going through tough times and someone was needed to break the European stranglehold on the beautiful game in the early eighties and later on. Lionel Messi has to achieve that, to be bracketed among the best of the best.
Some of the goals that Messi has scored over the years, most notably the recent one against AC Milan in the Champions League pre-quarter final second leg at the Nou Camp that propelled Barcelona to a 4-0 home win after erasing a 2-0 first leg deficit, defy logic and physics. Messi-magic seems to work even when the ace footballer isn’t playing his best and Barcelona’s scrappy performance against Paris Saint Germain in the Champions League quarter final was proof to it. His performances each and every week and his record-breaking goal-scoring spree suggest that he is close enough to his idol Diego Maradona’s class and football stature, yet the latter would always be the best and no comparison will ever arise between the master and the prodigy until and unless the boy from Rosario wins Argentinian hearts by winning the World Cup in 2014.
Pundits have always argued that Messi cannot be considered in the same bracket as Maradona, Pele, Zidane or even Klinsmann and Del Piero without winning a career-defining international tournament. Yet, somehow I believe, having won everything possible in club football and winning all kinds of individual awards year after year, 2014 would be the crowning moment for Messi’s career as he looks set to lead his country to World Cup in his home continent, but at the soil of eternal rivals Brazil.
At the moment he is in the form of his life and everything seems to be going wonderfully well in the world around him. With the birth of his first son Thiago, Lionel Messi looks like he is the happiest person around and this happiness stemming from his fatherly responsibility seems to be reflecting on the field as he has led his country to the top spot in South American World Cup qualifying so far. Pressure is bound to be there on the international front as the hopes of an entire nation are resting on his shoulders but performing, and winning, for Barcelona in tight situations, particularly this season, has made the little man experienced enough to tackle the pressure.
Furthermore, when 2014 comes along, Messi will be nearly 27 years old and by definition this is the age to hit the footballing peak. Throughout the ’86 World Cup, Diego Maradona was surrounded by players who were a class apart from the great man and because of him they gelled as a unit, but in terms of talent they were nowhere close to the current set-up that Messi leads. The likes of Gonzalo Higuain, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero, Angel di Maria, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Javier Pastore and Javier Mascherano are leaders in their respective clubs and with Messi as captain, manager Alejandro Sabella has been able to keep these men together for sometime now. So when Brazil 2014 arrives, the Albiceleste will surely set foot on Brazilian shores confident enough that the 20th edition of the football showpiece is theirs for the taking and Lionel Messi’s chance to mark his stamp on the modern era of the game and virtually finish all the debates of his legendary status.
Messi will be the reason and the difference if Argentina are to be crowned World Champions for the third time in their history and what a setting it would mean, in the land of Samba, Pele and Ronaldo.
