KAZAN: Lionel Messi walked out of the Kazan Arena on Saturday just like the way he walked in. Head bowed, expressionless, the only difference being that distress had turned to despair, the anxiety into anguish. Yet again, he had failed to score in a high-stakes World Cup knockout match. Yet again, the biggest prize in world football had eluded him.

One of the most enduring images of the 2014 World Cup is of Messi looking at the trophy, seemingly fixated with it, as he walked up to receive his runner-up medal after the final; the eyes of the world on him and his eyes on the most iconic piece of silverware in world football. He could’ve reached out and touched it yet he couldn’t do it. The right to touch it, to feel it, to hold it has to be earned. Four years later, in probably what would be his last chance to earn that right he wouldn’t even be able to see it from that close.

Upstaged by the fast-rising Kylian Mbappe, Messi and Argentina were eliminated from the World Cup in the round-of-16 on Saturday after suffering a 4-3 reverse; a scoreline that doesn’t really justify France’s dominance and looks flattering for the South Americans for whom their talismanic forward didn’t really show up apart for a few moments. The last two goals for Argentina did come thanks to Messi’s intervention but the stage was set, especially after their struggles to advance past the group stage, for their captain to conjure up those moments of inspiration, those moments of magic that stake his claim to be ‘Greatest Of All Time’.

Yet on a humid Kazan evening, all that wizardry, that sorcery was lost in the searing blue blur of France. French midfield enforcer N’Golo Kante never let him escape his peripheral vision. And when it wasn’t Kante, it was the fast-tracking Blaise Matuidi who would impede him.

Argentina coach Jorge Sampaoli had set his team up in a way that Messi was a false nine but he was forced to drop so deep at times that all he gave Argentina was false hope. There was hope though when Gabriel Mercado deflected his shot in to put Argentina 2-1 up but in a matter of what Sampaoli called 11 “strange minutes”, Argentina fell 4-2 behind. Even though Messi set up substitute Sergio Aguero to pull one back in stoppage time, it did little to raise hopes of a comeback.

Thankfully, though, only a few hours later Messi’s long-time nemesis Cristiano Ronaldo was also sent packing from the World Cup when Portugal lost 2-1 to Uruguay in Sochi, sparing the footballing world of the incessant comparisons between the two in the enduring debate over which of them is the best player of their generation.

Yet, with the World Cup title missing from their CVs, it severely tests their claim to be amongst football’s all-time greats. The World Cup in Russia realistically represented the last chance of Messi, 31, and Ronaldo, 33, to embellish their CVs with it.

But then again, for two players who have performed so consistently, so spectacularly for their clubs for so many seasons, why does a winning tournament that takes place once every four years, lasts just a month, and seven matches if you go all the way, define greatness? It’s because the World Cup isn’t just that quadrennial month-long festival of football. Think about what it means to people of Iceland and Panama, who took part in it for the first time in Russia and the wave of joy and emotion it brought. Think about what it means to the billions of fans watching it in their television sets at home — to people in Pakistan who have no hopes of seeing their national team qualify for it but yet it touches their lives in so many ways.

The road to Russia began back in March 2015 when Timor-Leste took on Mongolia in the first of the 936 games that will be played leading tol the final in Moscow on July 15, 2018. The World Cup finals merely are a celebration of the best 32 teams around the globe for the last four years, and therefore, the grandest stage of it all where the greatest players have led their teams to the greatest of triumphs. Pele and Ronaldo of Brazil, Diego Maradona of Argentina and Zinedine Zidane of France have all been there and done that.

Whether Ronaldo and Messi push themselves for another tilt at world glory remains to be seen but by the time the Qatar World Cup comes along in 2022, Ronaldo will be 37 while Messi will be 35 — hardly the age when a player can be the decisive factor for his team. They will have to ask themselves, their bodies, if they can handle that strain.

Ronaldo, the supreme athlete, might just tone himself for that one last go. He’s already shown adaptability with age, becoming a devastating finisher. Now, he calculates each run, producing those bursts of acceleration just at the right time. After the defeat to Uruguay, Portugal coach Fernando Santos hoped Ronaldo wouldn’t retire from international football. Santos will always make space for him. Ronaldo remains Portugal’s greatest ever player anyways, until of course someone else leads them to a World Cup title in the years ahead. He already has led his nation, a nation without any great expectations when it comes to football, to an international title — the Euro 2016.

Messi’s situation is completely the opposite. He carries the hopes of a wildly expectant nation and for all his exploits with Barcelona, he will always remain a rung below Maradona in his country for of his failure to end Argentina’s desperate search for an international title. He did come close, the 2014 World Cup final defeat followed by losses in the finals of the 2015 Copa America and the 2016 Copa America Centenario after which he briefly retired from international football, only to be persuaded to return.

But Argentina, and the numerous coaches that have come and gone during Messi’s international career, never managed to exploit his breathtaking talents. Conversely, it could be said that Messi never was able to fit into a system that was different to the one he was so used to playing for Barca.

Current Argentina coach Jorge Sampaoli’s philosophy of fielding teams that press high and attack without restraint worked wonders at Chile. He is a system coach and he didn’t have the players to apply that to the full in Russia. Maybe, if he stays on, he will be able to do that. Question is where an ageing Messi, if he decides to continue playing for Argentina, will fit in that side.

For now, Messi and Ronaldo will see the rest of the world’s greatest footballing spectacle unfold from the sidelines, possibly regretting that move or that sprint, that pass or that missed chance. There will be regret at not being able to win the tournament that captivates nations and cultures, and for one month holds the breath and imagination of almost every living person in the world. And now, there is every chance that this World Cup might see someone catapult to that rung of greatness to which Messi and Ronaldo don’t belong.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2018