Did Lionel Messi need to win a World Cup to be the best? “What? No!” replied Diego Maradona at his kitchen table in 2014. Maradona, the late Argentine great whose shadow hangs over Messi’s career, elaborated that winning football’s biggest trophy “has nothing to do with it. Don’t confuse the two . . . a World Cup will not take away anything he’s done”.
These words, published recently in Diego Maradona: The Last Interview And Other Conversations, resound ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final between France and Argentina. At 35, it is probably Messi’s last international match. But should he fail to win the one prize he lacks, that would not weaken his claim to be football’s Greatest of All Time or “GOAT” — fans on social media often refer to him with an emoji of the animal.
Two components go into the making of any sporting legend: brilliance and persona. Messi has only the former, as if he played like The Beatles while dressed as an accountant.