FOOTBALL: THE MAESTRO FROM ROSARIO
A remarkable moment took place at the tail-end of FC Barcelona’s latest defeat of Real Madrid FC. As he is wont to do, Lionel Messi found himself a pocket of space, meeting Jordi Alba’s pass at the edge of the penalty box.
Without the aid of a settling touch, Messi slotted a finish that at once managed to be just outside the outstretched right hand, and just inside the upright right post, of Madrid’s goalkeeper Keylor Navas.
To celebrate, Messi ran towards the corner, which is customary, and took his jersey off, which is not — at least for him. After being mauled by his teammates, Messi held up the back of his shirt to the crowd, his instructions to the Madrid faithful clear: say my name, and don’t you forget it.
The moment evoked the grandness of ancient Rome’s colosseum — Barcelona’s greatest ever player, all 5’7” of him, asserting his dominance over 80,000 hostile Madridistas.
But what was thrilling about the moment was the latent threat. Football, remember, is a sport that has spawned an entire cottage industry of hooligan and fan violence.
To that baseline one can add that this was a game between Madrid and Barca, a rivalry testy enough for a book on it to be titled Fear and Loathing.
So as Messi stood face to face with a baying crowd, having stomped on the collective heart of Madrid and their fans with a 92nd-minute winner, engaging in what can plainly be called provocative behavior, I feared the worst. He’s going to inspire a riot, I thought, or at least get hit by a projectile.
But my fears were misplaced. Doubtless, there was a middle finger or two shown. But rather than responding to Messi angrily, the Madrid crowd evinced a combination of resignation and respect. They seemed to be saying: he’s too good and he did us again, el hijo de puta.
By now, the biographical details of the reclusive Lionel Andres Messi are known even to casual fans.
Born in Rosario, Argentina, left his home country for Spain because no local club would pay for his growth hormones, signed for Barcelona on a napkin, best player in history, yada yada yada. It is hard to believe he has played professional football for over a decade.
Five hundred Barcelona goals later, I still have to sometimes remind myself that yes, this guy is real, and yes, we are actually this lucky.
Lionel Messi recently scored his 500th goal for his club Barcelona. Amazing as that achievement is, his goals obscure as much about his brilliance as they reveal
All good things must come to an end, and when my mind drifts to the inevitable, I can only half-successfully expunge the reminders of his mortality and finiteness. Messi broke into the Argentina and Barcelona set-ups as the typical pibe, a word that literally translates to “kid” but in the Argentine context means much more.
In 1928, the editor of the sports monthly El Grafico proposed building a statue to honour the inventor of dribbling.
The statue would depict an Argentine, “a pibe with a dirty face, a mane of hair rebelling against the comb; with intelligent, roving, trickster and persuasive eyes and a sparkling gaze that seem to hint at a picaresque laugh.” Moreover, “it must seem as if he is dribbling with a rag ball. That is important: the ball cannot be any other.”
As Jonathan Wilson notes in his book on Argentine football, Angels with Dirty Faces, the description of the statue perfectly captures the essence of Argentine soccer.
The pibe is assuredly associated with dribbling, but also the idea of not growing up, evading adult responsibilities, and maintaining spontaneity.
The archetypical pibe was, of course, Diego Maradona, the man who never outgrew boyish impulses.
While Messi’s dribbling still conjures images of the mischievous child, his demeanor today is more padre than pibe. Certainly, there is sound reason for him to have graduated to the role of the fatherly figure.
No longer the young pup shepherded by Ronaldinho, nor the budding genius protected by veterans such as Puyol or Xavi, Messi is now 30. The famous “1987” generation at Barca’s youth academy La Masia — Messi, Gerard Pique, and Cesc Fabregas all played on the same youth team — has come of age.
Suddenly, Messi is the team’s elder statesman.
Thanks to Andres Iniesta’s inability to keep up with the rigours of two games a week, modern football’s standard schedule, Messi now wears the captain’s armband more often than not.
As if to stamp his newfound status as locker-room dad, Messi has grown a bushy beard and jettisoned the mop he sported in his teens and early twenties.
But though he is getting older, it is hard to make the case that Messi has peaked. The gap between him and every other player remains gargantuan and, in some senses, is actually growing.
Some unhelpfully juxtapose Messi with Cristiano Ronaldo, Madrid’s superstar and formerly of Manchester United, but in truth, the two are not comparable.
Ronaldo is an excellent goal-scoring forward whose exploits place him favourably to contemporaries such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robert Lewandowski, or David Villa.
But relative to Messi, he is a fairly one-dimensional player: an excellent finisher in and around the box, but unable to help build and create attacks from the deep or, more generally, impose himself on a game, especially against organised sides.
Even on the dimension of goal scoring — Ronaldo’s greatest strength — Messi is comfortably better.
Tellingly, unlike Ronaldo, one could redact every one of Messi’s goals and still leave a legendary player, probably the best since Maradona.
Messi’s link-up play, passing over short and long distances, ability to destabilise defences with dribbles and runs, close control when surrounded by defenders, intelligence and playmaking, and extraordinary knack for creating space with feints and leans mean that his goals, valuable and beautiful and consequential as they are, obscure as much as they reveal about his excellence.
For knowledgeable observers, there is no comparison between Messi and Ronaldo: Messi is easily a better player, possibly the best ever and certainly amongst the top two or three.
Indeed, a British blogger was once driven to question whether Messi was better at football than anyone else had ever been at anything else.
In this view, Messi’s true competitors are Mozart, Napoleon, and Da Vinci; bringing up Ronaldo in such conversations seems unfair to all involved.
Though Messi is almost guaranteed to do something hitherto-unseen in every single game, there are certain elements of his play that are joyous precisely because they are familiar.
You know what he’s going to do, but you don’t know how exactly he’s going to do it, and that’s the fun.