It was a referendum on Lionel Messi, after all, but on a much humbler scale. Rather than answering “is he one of three best footballers in history”, the World Cup final on Sunday posed the query, “was he one of the three best footballers on his Argentina side”?
Astonishingly, the answer was “maybe not”.
This game found Argentina in a posture unseen so far in this tournament, playing defence first against the attack-minded Germans. Those developments had the unexpected effect of handing to Messi a freedom he had not known in Brazil. Spared from even the most basic defensive duties, he had time and space to walk around midfield without a defender breathing down his neck. He repeatedly waited for the tide of the game to wash back over him.
He did little with the opportunity.
Argentina’s surprisingly stout defence, led by Javier Mascherano, remained impenetrable and Argentina had three good chances at the other end. The first fell to Gonzalo Higuain, with the ball at his feet, inside the box, as the surprised beneficiary of a Toni Kroos gaffe. Higuain’s tame shot was not even on frame.
Showing a few bursts of speed, Messi turned the corner of the Germany defence, late in the half, and the ball came to a halt on the brink of the goal. Ezequiel Lavezzi, indefatigable in the first half, was ready to tap it in when Jerome Boateng cleared.
Messi’s last, best chance came early in the second half, as he ran onto a through pass from Lucas Biglia, a step ahead of Boateng. The ball was on his favoured left foot, and even with Manuel Neuer stationed appropriately, Messi had a sliver of goal to shoot at, inside the far post.
The ball rolled wide.
After that, Messi was hardly seen. Moments after the miss, he seemed to be clutching at his right hamstring. He may not have been fit. But perhaps it was simple fatigue. And maybe it was a sort of emotional and mental collapse of the sort that paralysed Brazil in Germany's 7-1 semi-final victory.
He must have been aware of the speculation that had him joining Pele and Maradona as one of the game’s greats if he could deliver a victory in the Maracana. He certainly could see the tens of thousands of his countrymen in the stadium willing him forward. It seemed he had nothing left to give.
He faded out of the game after the hour mark, and it was hard to watch. One had a sense that, two years ago, he would have seized this surprisingly open match by the throat and squeezed. Instead, he became a spectator to Germany’s triumph of the will.
These “greatest ever” debates so often turn on accidents of time and place and fitness in a specific match. Messi was not at his best at the very moment he could have climbed Olympus. Will he get another chance to make the World Cup ascent? He will be 31 in 2018. Even if he is still among the elite, he may not see a chance as pregnant with possibilities as this one.
poberjuerge@thenational.ae
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