The 'Messi' Vortex of Contrasting Disparates

In the end, the final of the football World Cup had boiled down to a contest between two vastly contrasting and disparate entities. 

A contest between one man – Messi – who, long touted to be the successor of the legendary Argentine football wizard Diego Maradona, had still not managed to lead his team to victory in this huge stage. And the entire German squad, which looked like it didn’t have any weaknesses at all. 

Logically, there was no looking beyond Germany when it came to expecting the results of the final. But to those who had thrust Messi into the shoes of a legend, logic never entered reasoning. And this is perhaps where, that the premise started to unravel. 

Taking a gaze back at the not-so-distant final, I can’t help but correlate Messi to India’s own prodigy, Sachin Tendulkar. Like Messi, Sachin Tendulkar too was cast – on countless occasions – in the mould of the saviour to rescue the Indian cricket team from its dregs of misery. Tendulkar did that too, not once or twice, but for years on end. A feat which, in the end, put him up on a pedestal that possibly no other Indian cricketer can equal. 

But unlike in the case with Messi, Tendulkar had no predecessors with looming records. Tendulkar’s greatness on the cricketing field stem from his own individuality – again, something’s that so unique that cannot be compared to any other cricketer. And moreover, irrespective of Tendulkar’s indispensability in the Indian cricketing team, as the years went by, even that indispensability evolved ensuring that Indian cricketing ranks didn’t remain a one-man show forever. 

Diego Maradona was – and perhaps still is – the next best thing to sliced bread as far as Argentine and international football is concerned. In a team sport, he single-handedly – at times, infamously even – managed to lead his nation to World Cup laurels and still continues to inspire his nation, despite being away from active action for almost two decades now. 

A regular tour-de-force was thus Señor Maradona. 

Contrarily, when gauging the impact that Messi had on this World Cup, immensely glaring discrepancies emerge. For a footballer par excellence, his performances were pretty average for most parts of the event. At times, even less than that. 

Against Germany, he wasn’t able to challenge or trouble their defenders much and the few good chances he got, were frittered away because of his team-mates’ inability to lend him support. And completely dissimilar to the fabled hero of the Argentine football past, there was no wiliness visible from him, leaving him almost nondescript on the field. Expectations remained unfulfilled with no last-gasp equaliser to the beauty scored by Götze that would have given the Argentines some brace to push the game to the penalties. 

Needless to say, the wait for reclaiming the World Cup title still continues for Argentina as does the wait to hold on to a slice of this tale of pride prolongs for Messi. They aren’t there yet, haven’t re-attained that level of greatness that defined them once, way back. Nor is Messi, despite his heroics at the highest stages of club level football. 

Moreover, for Messi personally, in the wake of what was evident for most parts at Maracana, to rub on more injuries, the stakes aren’t definitely aren't going to get any simpler for him to organise anew.