When You Have Lionel Messi Who Needs Achilles?

Whew! ! The world cup is over!

Joy abounds.

Everyone who loves football knows someone close to them who hates football. However, after this matchless, timeless, never to be surpassed game, no football fan will ever again have to justify why they love football.

Sit a cluster of die-hard sceptics down before a telly and play this match —- no, play this game to a thousand emotionally calcified haters, and you will have a thousand teary-eyed converts leaping to their feet and claiming to be true believers.

Some will say this match evolved into theatre in its final minutes of regular playing time and that during the penalty shoot-out, when human emotions were scrubbed bare, the event became art. All of that is true. However, the World Cup final of 2022, after stuttering along a well-worn narrative of failed expectations and poor performances, suddenly exploded into a pure, possibly once-in-a-lifetime expression of the purest, most exhilarating expression of pure human mythology. The action happened in real time, and the gods were streaming the game with us.

If the cultural analyst and critic Joseph Cambell had watched this game, he would have written another chapter of his seminal work, The Hero’s Journey. All the building blocks of heroic mythology were on show: The Call To Adventure, Abyss, Death & Rebirth, Light and darkness. The Hero and the Villain. The Golden Calf. The Dark Cave - Messi’s journey fulfilled every aspect of the Hero’s Journey, and it happened in real-time before us.

We watched an ageing Lionel Messi, much like Gandalf in his prime, hold up his staff to Mbappe the flaming bull-horned Balrog and cry: “You will not pass!” Or maybe Lionel was channelling the stout but noble Bilbo Baggins when he snatched the ring from the shuffling demon Gollum and claimed his right to be the True Ring Bearer. For those who claim Messi is a demi-god, as an explanation of Messi dragging his teammates across the finishing line, how about Achilles by way of Brad Pitt when he scolded Hector for not putting up a decent fight when he said: “Get up, Prince of Troy! I won't let a stone rob me of my glory!”

Homer walks the earth no more. But fathers, daughters, and sons will often tell later generations the tale of Lionel Messi, the former prodigy who, when his ankles possessed the dancing wings of Mercury, could weave through an entire battlefield of opponents. Towards the end of his glittering career, The Great Messi, with sporting immortality about to be snatched from his grasp by an ambitious, younger rival, dug deep into his gnarly human marrow and cast aside all the beauty and grace that has characterised every single goal of his career. To become the world champion and bring joy to his people, Messi stuck out his foot like a desperate Sunday footballer and scrambled the winning goal across the line with the ungainliest human movement possible.

To watch the great man willingly stoop so low to grasp the highest, sweetest victory was to realise that every demi-God carries a human gene and that every mortal is blessed with a divine spark.

Arguments about who is the best footballer will continue. However, by never giving up and achieving his most desired prize when his natural physical talents were significantly reduced, Messi may have claimed the top prize as the most outstanding role model to emerge from the football field.

How extraordinary it is that Christiano Ronaldo, who kept in lock-step with Messi, for almost two decades, towards the end of their great rivalry, has fallen so dramatically from greatness.

Was this all written in the stars?