Eleven minutes. That’s all Lionel Messi consumed to complete his latest hat-trick, the 59th of his career. Only four days ago had he authored his three-peat no 58, for his country against Bolivia. His autumnal bloom is grander than the midsummer peak of most other footballers.
But do the feats matter anymore? Does the celestial footballer need any more statistical embellishment? Heck, why does he even bother to kick the ball around, when he has achieved more than any other footballer ever had? What joy does he derive from humiliating defenders still? What then is the purpose of Messi still playing football, when he has every trophy mankind could offer him and a place among the footballing immortals?
Maybe, it’s just that deep inside him, he is still only 16. The El Mundo of his Barcelona B teammates. The one who never spoke. The one who only spoke the language of football. The shy one who brushstrokes vivid portraits with the ball. Telling him not to play is like telling Clint Eastwood to forget movies. The 94-year-old’s latest movie Juror No 2 will hit the screen next week. A decade ago, he was asked why he has not yet retired. He replied: “The art has not deserted me.” Art has not deserted him either—that is the biggest difference between him and his great contemporary Cristiano Ronaldo. Messi was football art; Ronaldo football craft. Both are noble virtues.
Messi did Messi things 🐐
First MLS hat trick to help @InterMiamiCF breaks the MLS single-season points record. pic.twitter.com/slAuAVHUS1
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) October 20, 2024
Art dwells on his feet. The first goal, against the New England Revolution in the season decider, who were leading Inter Miami at one stage, showed. Messi and Luis Suarez rolled back their Barcelona days with a couple of one-touch passes, before the Uruguayan back-heeled the ball to Messi’s path. It’s imperfect, but Messi turns the ball into perfection. Even without touching the ball. He dropped his right shoulder, drawing the defender to the right side. He let the ball roll under him, took a touch to take the ball away from the onrushing defender, slipped away and twisted his body in to curl the ball into the far corner. It was not so much a hit as a coax. The ball rose softly and curved gently past the outstretched arms of the goalkeeper. There was nothing decorous, just simple and minimalistic movements. Just two exquisite touches. A goal was born. The defender looked numb, as though saying, “there’s not much you can do against Messi.” Many defenders have mumbled the line in their heads. Several times.
Just 2.37 seconds later, he found the same part of the net with a poacher’s goal. He latched onto the end of a longish pass from the left, sneaked through the open front door of the defence, past a pair of distracted defenders. A routine goal by his standards but those quick feet were on show again. He received the ball with the outside of his left-boot, shifted to the inside and then finessed the ball through the legs of the goalkeeper, brushing the underside of his shorts.
The hat-trick goal was imagined in Camp Nou. Leonardo Campana chipped the ball from the edge of the box to Suarez lurking on the right flank. He composed a volleyed pass that an unmarked Messi sliced the ball into the left corner. Routine goal. But he was there. At the right time. At the right place.
His critics allege he has lost his speed, his physical speed. He indeed has, as for any 37-year-old athlete. But it does not affect him, or his game. Because his football brain moves faster than most others; his reflexes are still quicker than most. Age could rob him off his speed and suppleness. But not his intelligence. Precisely for these reasons, Argentina retains him in the squad, still builds the squad around him. Not as a goodwill gesture to one of the greatest of all time, but because they want him. In the sunset of their career, he is still the pillar that holds them, still the man from whom every thing originates and ends. If he retains his form and fitness, he could launch his country’s title defence in North America the year after.
Two years, he said after the Bolivia game, is too long a period to visualise. “I don’t like to accelerate time or look ahead. I try to enjoy every day. I hope I can keep playing at this level to feel good and be happy. I haven’t set a goal to reach the World Cup, but more so to live day-to-day and be well,” he said.
Then he uttered a sentence that explained him. “When I get to do what I love, I am happy,” he said. There is a certain purity about his love for the game. It is unconditional and unadulterated, from the depths of his heart, beyond numbers, honours and trophies. Football is not a pedestal for personal glory, but an end in itself, the one football has loved back too. Only when the art deserts him would he fade beyond the horizon.
