Messi debuts in the Cup and has his final chance to be Maradona

In Messi’s mythology, the story took on legendary contours. It was half-time in a match between the professionals of Newell’s Old Boys, and the under-10 team, which had won any tournament, made the Olympic lap to be applauded by the fans.

The slightest of all the boys started to juggle the ball. One trick after another. When he reached the center of the field, the audience in the stadium now called Marcelo Bielsa started to scream.

“Maradona! Maradona!”

The lives of Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona are intertwined in the imaginary of Argentine football. A comparison that was sometimes good for the player who currently defends Paris Saint-Germain. In many others, a kind of curse. Mainly because of the absence of the most important title: the World Cup.

Maradona led Alviceleste to the conquest in 1986. Messi starts this Tuesday (22) his last attempt. Argentina faces Saudi Arabia at 7 am (Brasília time), at the Lusail stadium, in Qatar.

“For sure, it’s my last World Cup,” he warned.

The farewell maximizes everything he does in Doha. If you don’t train, why didn’t you train? If you train, why wasn’t it spared for the debut? At the University of Qatar, where the team gathers, Messimania is enhanced by journalists and employees of the AFA (Argentine Football Association). As happened with Maradona in his time.

What Messi says takes on larger proportions than usual. Even if they are trivial things. As with Maradona.

“I feel very good physically. I arrive in a great moment, both personally and physically, and I don’t have any problems”, said the current 10 this Monday (21).

In everything he says, a greater meaning is sought.

Saying that he is physically well serves to minimize fears about his right ankle. An image was published by different newspapers and websites in which the area appears to be quite swollen. According to the version of AFA officials, the striker had a small bag of gel under his sock to prevent inflammation.

And to say that you are in a great moment also in the personal part? Is it a reference to the World Cup in Russia, in 2018, when he looked downcast and was the target of rumors about his marital life?

Like Maradona, the current Messi, already in the final stretch of his career at the age of 35, seems to be living in a phase where nothing is what it seems. There is always a hidden meaning.

Lionel has always idolized Maradona. On October 7, 1993, when Maradona debuted for Newell’s in a friendly against Emelec (EQU), Lionel begged his father Jorge to take him. He says that the only book he has read so far is “Yo Soy el Diego” (I am Diego), the midfielder’s autobiography, written in partnership with journalists Daniel Arcucci and Ernesto Cherquis Bialo.

Upon debuting as a professional for Barcelona, ​​in October 2004, the 17-year-old boy received a call from his idol at his home. He was silent for several minutes.

“He couldn’t say anything,” his father recalls.

When informing the board of Barcelona about the existence of a child who was a phenomenon at the base of Argentine football, the agent (and advisor of the club) Josep Maria Minguella wrote only: “I found a new Maradona”.

“He could do anything with the ball at his feet. Anything. Like Diego,” Minguella told Folha. The businessman was the discoverer (for Spanish football) of both.

Wary of the possible exaggerated statement, Barcelona president Josep Lluís Núñez asked coach Tito Villanueva (who would later manage Messi in the professionals) to make a report on the boy. The coach ended his text with a summary: “Basically, he is a little Maradona”.

At first, being seen as the successor to the greatest Argentine player in history was good. But there was a moment when he became a burden. Even if Lionel doesn’t recognize it. The comparisons were heavy. Mainly because of a question asked a few times by Diego himself: why didn’t Messi show the same football in the Argentine national team as he did in Barcelona?

At the World Cup it was worse. Lionel watched, sitting helplessly on the bench, as his country was eliminated in the 2006 tournament. Already the best in the world and managed by the same Maradona, he left the Cup in South Africa in 2010 without scoring a goal. Elected star of the competition in 2014, he missed two chances in the final that normally (at Barcelona, ​​some would say) he would not waste. Germany was champion.

In 2018, it was disaster. Dull, appearing disinterested, he was a shadow of himself.

The comparison with Maradona was almost unfair because the two personalities have always been opposites. Diego went down in history (even if it’s not entirely true) as the player who single-handedly won a World Cup for Argentina in 1986. The hand of God, the “goal of the century”, arms in the air raising the cup… It’s everything Messi hasn’t done for his country on the pitch.

Even in 1990, already addicted to cocaine and with an ankle the size of a melon, Maradona, basically with willpower, led the selection to an improbable decision against the Germans.

“I’m really excited about achieving the dream we all want,” Messi said on Monday.

The last Cup of shirt 10 will be the first without Maradona. Next Friday (25) marks the two-year anniversary of the idol’s farewell.

In the days that followed the death of the reference not only of football but of life in Argentina, among all, one of the most touching tributes went to Messi.

He celebrated his goal for Barcelona with a Newell’s shirt, number 10 on his back, worn by Maradona in 1993. It is not known in which game. Maybe even against Emelec, when the boy Lionel was in the stands to start his connection with the World Cup winner. The missing title.