WORLD CUP TALK: Mbappe has his medal, let Messi win this one

JAMIE Carragher said it best. Not many young kids grow up wanting to be Gary Neville. Carragher was being far too kind. No young kid grows up wanting to be Neville or Carragher or perhaps even Achraf Hakimi, the outstanding full-back at Qatar 2022.

There’s only one name, really, on the jersey, on the void deck, in the playground, in the mind’s eye.

Messi.

Pub bores and professional contrarians must play pretend, to be provocative for its own sake, to throw in Cristiano Ronaldo or Kylian Mbappe, or even Neymar if one were feeling particularly antagonistic, but the issue is settled beyond all reasonable doubt.

There is Lionel Messi and then there is everyone else. What other art form has its own category, an eternally reserved parking space for the chosen one? Perhaps there are The Beatles and everyone else, maybe Muhammad Ali and everyone else, but in both instances, their cultural impact transcended their respective professions.

Messi is purely football. He says little off the pitch, but creates peerless exhibitions on it. He said little when an Argentinian reporter gave up on questioning him and issued a statement of fact instead, reminding him that his contributions already surpass whatever happens in the World Cup final. A tad indulgent, perhaps, but she was right. And wrong.

Messi doesn’t need to bring it home for Argentina any more than he needs to silence Piers Morgan, Gary Neville or that insufferable one in your chat group who insists that Ronaldo is superior because, well, he’s just that kind of guy, the one who picks The Rolling Stones over The Beatles.

Messi must win the World Cup because it’s right, because it’s fair, at a tournament that is destined to be forever tarnished because it wasn’t right or fair and the whataboutery chorus will not change that uncomfortable reality.

Messi must prevail because if he doesn’t, he’ll finish his international career with no World Cup winners’ medals and Mbappe will have two, at the very least, and that’s a cruelly lopsided generational battle, further rewarding the apprentice and punishing the master for elusive karmic reasons that make no sense.

Our collective patience has already been sorely tested in these areas. What is Kismet's grand plan for us? Why Qatar? Why COVID-19? Why Ukraine? Why VAR? Why Harry and Meghan on Netflix? From the asinine to the apocalyptic, the existential questions continue to batter our sensibilities, making objective reasoning increasingly difficult.

But Messi winning the World Cup makes sense, to all of us, to that giddy reporter, to the Argentinians, to art lovers, to anyone with a pulse. In a world – and a World Cup – that has so often gone wrong, this feels right. This feels vital.

Messi at Qatar is like Elton John

So of course, we are pandering. Every Messi touch is magical. Every assist is otherworldly. Every pass is precise. Every moment is elevated, perhaps to a higher level than the quality on show deserves, but it doesn’t matter. Messi at Qatar 2022 is Elton John’s farewell tour. We’re not watching because they can still hit every note, every time. They can’t. We’re watching because they gave us the notes in the first place. They took us down the yellow brick road and we’re not yet ready to say goodbye.

And of course a World Cup winners’ medal may represent a “career Oscar”, the one handed to ageing actors for a lesser performance because there may not be another. Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman is not Al Pacino in The Godfather, but he was given the Oscar for the former to make amends, to pay tribute to a life-spanning talent.

Who would deny Messi a similar sendoff? Well, Mbappe would, obviously, the natural heir to the throne, the Joffrey Baratheon of Qatar 2022, but with actual ability and without the fratricidal, murderous tendencies. But he does want to kill his friend and club-mate, professionally speaking, on Sunday night.

Paris is their shared city of love, but they are playing in Doha, a city built on petrodollars, in a country that pays Mbappe and Messi’s wages at Paris-Saint Germain. Qatari money has brought them together in Ligue 1 and now again at the World Cup final.

Sentiment is for less cynical times.

Both men are in the running for the World Cup and the Golden Boot with five goals apiece. Either forward would be a worthy winner, but in a tournament that has often felt unworthy, the final needs a little extra. It needs history, the permanent and unsullied kind that restores credibility, not for Qatar – they’ve got 200 years of natural gas, they’ll be fine – but for us.

After an event built on the politics of oil, the showpiece could use a little clean energy at the end. Put simply, wouldn’t it be lovely if the right man did the right thing at the right time? It would certainly be a novel arrangement for those sitting among the gods, as gods, looking down on a footballer, an artist, controlling proceedings. What a novel outcome indeed.

Messi will overtake Germany’s Lothar Matthaus to make a record 26th World Cup appearance for a male player. He will be slower than Mbappe. He will probably cover less ground than Mbappe. He is a 35-year-old footballer in decline.

But all of these things were true when he collected the ball in the 69th minute against Croatia in the semi-final, but the mind was still willing and the flesh not yet weak. So he toyed with Josko Gvardiol. He danced again and we went with him, every stride, jink, prod and spin. We had to.

We had a rare chance to dance with the father of football again.

And the final is going to be our last waltz. There's never been a dance partner like Messi. He took us to places that we might one day reach with Mbappe, but not yet. There’s still time for the Frenchman. This doesn’t need to be about Mbappe, not now.

This is about what’s right, what’s necessary and what has to happen on Sunday night.

Let justice be done though the French heavens fall. Let Messi win his last World Cup.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 26 books.

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