Lionel Messi has turned his back on international football. Larry W Smith / EPA
Lionel Messi has turned his back on international football. Larry W Smith / EPA

Opinion

A Messi legacy?

Should Lionel Messi’s record be tarnished by Argentina’s failure to win a major tournament?

National Editorial

27 June, 2016

Can Lionel Messi claim true greatness? With his unexpected retirement from international football following Argentina's loss to Chile in the Copa America final, will his reputation as one of the greatest to have played the game be compromised, leaving him a rung lower than players sucs as Pelé and Maradona and alongside similarly thwarted footballers such as Johan Cruyff?

That would be a particularly harsh judgment. For all the adulation lavished on its stars, football is at heart a team game. As the saying goes, a champion team will always beat a team of champions and the tactical nature of the modern game means a single player’s brilliance might not fix the deficiencies of the team.

So should Messi languish with a metaphorical asterisk next to his name? We say his personal ability is best reflected in his record as the only footballer in history to win five Fifa Ballons d’Or, the top male footballing award, even if his unimpeachable individual skills did not lead his country to similar heights.

KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY

July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington

July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon

1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share, which has grown about 1,000 per cent at present. Its highest closing price was $197.85 on June 27, 2024

1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs

2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website

2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006

2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black

2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year

2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video

2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started

2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products

2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013

2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS

2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa

2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition

2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone

The biog

Favourite pet: cats. She has two: Eva and Bito

Favourite city: Cape Town, South Africa

Hobby: Running. "I like to think I’m artsy but I’m not".

Favourite move: Romantic comedies, specifically Return to me. "I cry every time".

Favourite spot in Abu Dhabi: Saadiyat beach

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