By: Stephen Marche
It could have been so beautiful. At home against Benfica in the Champions League, Barcelona defender Gerard Pique floated a lovely chip from midfield; Lionel Messi neatly gathered the ball in and found himself in space, where he likes to be. Just the goalie between him and the net. As he deked, the goalie’s head and outstretched arms caught Messi’s leg. He spun and managed to get a lobbed shot away, but it was saved before it could drift in. Messi went down clutching his knee, grimacing in pain. The Camp Nou went silent, the watching millions held their breath. The world game’s favourite son was laid out on a stretcher and driven off the field. And it came at the worst time.
Until the injury, Messi was steaming toward the record for most goals scored in a calendar year, set at 85 by Gerd Muller, the great German striker, 40 years ago. Messi was at 84, on the cusp of not one but two of the most significant milestones in soccer during his world-beating career. He’s also been nominated for an unprecedented fourth Ballon d’Or, shortlisted with Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta.
It seems only right for Messi to claim Muller’s record—it seems only right for him to claim every record. Hence the collective sigh of relief when the terrible-looking injury didn’t even keep him out for a game. When he took the field the following Sunday against Real Betis, the record was as good as his, surely. There was an of inevitability about it, that his being on the field guaranteed goals. When he danced into the box and slammed in No. 85, and when he took Iniesta’s backheel and slotted home No. 86, it was as much a relief as a triumph.
That’s because there’s a bigger question hanging over Lionel Messi—is he the best ever? This season, we’ve already seen the answer. We want him to break records because we want to confirm what we already know—that we’re watching not just the best footballer alive, but the best footballer to ever live. The greatest of all time.
That he is the greatest of his own time cannot be seriously doubted any longer. Occasionally, pundits try to pretend there’s some rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo. Ronaldo is a magnificent footballer, it’s true, but as long as Messi is around, Ronaldo will remain the only one convinced of his own supremacy. “I think it is only right if Cristiano does believe he is the best in the world. Anybody who gets 37–40 goals a season has a right to believe that,” says Carlos Tevez, the Manchester City forward and international teammate of Messi’s. “But if you push me, I am always going to go on the side of Messi.” Tevez was being diplomatic. If you look at the numbers, Messi beats Ronaldo in every statistical category. He scores more. He assists more. His team wins more. His team wins more when it is playing against Ronaldo’s. Their competition is a rivalry the way that Roger Federer used to have a rivalry with Andy Roddick. It’s a rivalry the way a hammer has a rivalry with a nail.
The European press long ago ran out of superlatives to describe Messi. They have had to grasp at theology. In 2010, a Spanish sports newspaper went with the headline, “Messi is the god of football. Stratospheric. Magical. Divine. Generous. Extraordinary.” El Mundo Deportivo tried a more explicitly monotheistic approach to the question of the ineffability of his talent. “There is only one God: Messi.” But since 2010, we have all become used to Messi’s brilliance, which is even more remarkable because it’s so consistent. Messi is just 25 but has already accrued astonishing accomplishments. The three Ballon d’Ors, five La Liga titles, two Copas del Rey and the Champions League three times.
Impressive as the numbers are, they don’t tell the whole story. Messi is amazingly fun to watch when he plays, constantly surprising, capable of both elaborate passing routines and amazing simplicity at key moments. He churns down the field in a flurry of nervous tension, and then arrives at perfect solutions as if they were organic. Messi’s approach to the game is one that makes him worthy of being loved as a sports hero. He doesn’t complain to the ref, he doesn’t sulk around the pitch when things aren’t going his way, and he doesn’t dive—there’s a much-loved YouTube compilation video of his near superhuman efforts not to fall when, really, he should. There’s something about him that’s just like watching a kid play the game he loves—he looks happy out there with the ball at his feet, and it makes you root for him. It makes you hold your breath when he goes down hurt; you don’t want to see him kept from playing. He has rapacious goal-scoring technique and is redefining what “clinical finishing” means, but he’s also managed to avoid the inherent selfishness of most natural goal scorers. His generosity sets him apart. Over the past three seasons, he leads Ronaldo in goals and has twice the number of assists. That dual threat—the ability to switch between individual power and team play—makes him exponentially more dangerous than any other player on the field. He truly transcends his position.
Comparisons between sports figures from different eras are fundamentally impossible. We all know it, but we can’t stop ourselves from doing it. Each great player responds to the reality of his own time; times change, the game changes, and what greatness means changes with them. Pele represented the Brazilian football of the ’60s, the beautiful game at its most expressive and exuberant. In our own time, the tiki-taka passing of Barcelona has achieved the same combination of aesthetic beauty and overwhelming success. Messi is by far the greatest exponent of this mode of football—that the dominant scorer is also a dominant passer explains what a “total football” approach can mean and how it can work.
Along the way, Messi has surpassed Pele in most of the significant scoring records, but you could argue—and no doubt many will—that Messi has not performed at the international level the way the heroes of the past have. He is having an exceptional international career anyway. With Argentina, he has 12 goals in his past nine games, moving him to fourth on the country’s all-time goal-scoring charts; in time he will undoubtedly push to the top of that list. He won a gold medal in the Beijing Olympics with Argentina, too. But so far he has not brought home the World Cup. Pele lifted the Jules Rimet trophy three times—so many that FIFA finally donated it to Brazil permanently. Messi will not match that feat. He may win one, which would give him the same status as a national hero like Maradona.
In the end, though, the greats are great not just because of a bunch of numbers. Pele was a source of inspiration for millions, possibly billions, raising him far above mere sporting greatness. He dedicated his thousandth goal to the poor children of Brazil. Those children did not forget. In Argentina, Maradona was a figure of national tragedy. He exemplified ferocious talent rising from crushing poverty and then blowing itself up with fame and drugs. Maradona has called Messi “his successor,” but the truth is that Messi’s story is far more hopeful than Maradona’s ever was. As a child, Messi was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency. FC Barcelona paid for his medical treatment from the age of 11. His is the rare positive sports story of loyalty accepted and rewarded.
Like Pele and Maradona, Messi is reaching beyond the game. In 1967, Pele famously caused a ceasefire in the Nigeria-Biafra war so both sides could watch him play. Messi, too, influences the political landscape. But in true form for a man with little evident appetite for celebrity or desire to be at the forefront of anything other than a sweeping Barca attack, he does it without putting himself at the centre of it. As Catalonia moves towards independence from Spain, the region looks to FC Barcelona as the heart of its cultural identity. As Barcelona does well, Catalonia swells with pride. And Barcelona’s success hinges on Messi. He’s not a Catalan icon—or even a Catalan—but he’s a quiet force in a movement that could change the face of Europe.
But that’s Messi, quietly influential. What makes all of his accomplishments even more incredible, even more unexpected, is how little he looks like a proper footballer. Ronaldo looks like a football player. He is strong and tall and agile and gorgeous. Nobody is going to be making underwear ads starring Lionel Messi anytime soon. Other great athletes appear as gods among men. They have something we don’t. They received more testosterone in the womb or something. Messi is a schlub, kind of a dweeb, certainly far from imposing, which makes his extraordinary abilities seem all the more extraordinary. His physical reality truly sets him apart from his predecessors.
In some ways, Messi is a lot like Wayne Gretzky. Both are anomalies rather than ideals. “The Great One” didn’t look like a great hockey player; he wasn’t particularly strong or tough. Gordie Howe was the prototypical hockey player, and Gretzky played nothing like him. But Gretzky and Messi are each something more and something less than the ideal for their sport. Messi’s diminutive stature, along with his ability to morph between roles, creating options that no other player has ever possessed, makes him unique. There will never be another Messi, just as there will never be another Gretzky.
Messi is beyond the game even as he could not be more fully within it. It’s worth watching every Barcelona game just for his presence on the pitch. When he’s gone—no doubt having painted his name all over the record books in ways that haven’t yet been imagined—we won’t see anything like him ever again.
Stephen Marche writes a monthly column, “A Thousand Words About Our Culture,” for Esquire magazine