Lionel Messi is walking into history

By late afternoon on July 15, the roads in Barcelona had begun to empty. I was still an hour from the place where I planned to watch the Argentina-England semi-final, checking the dashboard clock, afraid I would miss the beginning and more afraid that this beginning might be Lionel Messi’s last.

On the indoor, air-conditioned field in Atlanta, under a roof closed against the Georgia heat, Messi wasn’t hurrying. The semi-final began as a rock fight: churning legs, desperate tugs, lunging tackles, the ball repeatedly disappearing beneath the urgency of reaching it. England’s younger players pressed and collided and chased. Inside all that motion, Messi walked.

At 39, Messi, one of the oldest players in the tournament, sprints less often than he once did and covers less ground. On July 19, he will play what is almost certainly his final World Cup match. In past tournaments, Argentina has doubted his genius, blamed him for every failure. But he has, without doubt, transformed football; he changed not only what a player could do with the ball but what a player could see before the ball arrived. He made patience an attacking act.

A match contains more than one clock. There’s the official one, bright and remorseless, and there’s the quieter time in which a defender tires, a midfielder loses half a yard, a passing lane remains open one second longer than it should. Messi moves slowly enough to watch that second clock: who follows him, who stops following, where the next space will be. The running belongs to the match everyone can see. Messi waits for the one concealed inside it.

Messi doesn’t walk because he’s left the game. He walks in order to enter it. He walked like that at 29. He walked like that at 19, too.

The mythology of young Messi was his speed: his low centre of gravity, the ball so close to his feet it appeared less controlled than persuaded, the sudden passage through spaces that didn’t seem to exist until he entered them. But even then, his deeper skill wasn’t simply that he moved faster than the game. It was that he saw the game sooner than anyone else.

At Barcelona, the club where he became famous, his vision lived inside a structure. Teammates won the ball, offered passing angles, ran beyond him and pulled defenders away. When Messi received a pass, several possible futures were already attached to it. He seemed capable of seeing them all.

That structure often disappeared behind Messi’s brilliance. Give him the ball, people concluded, and organisation became secondary. Barcelona treated Messi’s genius as part of a system. Argentina treated it as a substitute for one.

For years, Argentina made two related mistakes about him. It mistook his genius for a complete plan, and his reserve for indifference.

Messi, of course, wears the number 10. No Argentinian who wears that number enters alone. Diego Maradona, small and left-footed, had worn the shirt as a public storm. His speech, rebellion, joy and pain were impossible to miss. By the time Messi inherited the number, Maradona had established a national language of greatness that Messi was expected to speak.

Messi left Argentina for Spain at 13. Years later, when Argentina truly met him, much of his becoming had already happened on Barcelona’s team. Argentinians recognised the familiar gift – the small, left-footed genius – but not the unfamiliar figure carrying it.

In South American football, “pecho frio” – literally “cold chest” – is the old verdict against a player thought lacking in temperament when the moment demands it. At Barcelona, Messi’s stillness could be understood as concentration. With Argentina, it was entered as evidence in the case against him.

Argentina asked him not only to play like Messi but also to suffer like Maradona: to demonstrate, in voice and face and gesture, that defeat wounded him.

Between 2014 and 2016, Argentina lost three finals in three summers. Germany scored late in the World Cup final. Chile defeated Argentina on penalties in each of the next two Copa America finals. Messi converted his kick in the first shoot-out and missed in the second; teammates missed, too. But the cameras kept returning to him.

By that third defeat, Messi was no longer merely the greatest player on the losing side. He had become the explanation for why Argentina lost. His genius had become Argentina’s emergency service: Whatever the team failed to solve, he was expected to solve alone. Afterwards, he said he was finished with the national team. But he returned.

In 2018, Lionel Scaloni took over as coach and stopped asking Messi to be the beginning, middle and end of every attack. He assembled midfielders who could win the ball and carry it forward, forwards who could run beyond Messi and pull defenders away, defenders willing to step towards danger rather than retreat from it. Their work created choices. Messi’s genius remained exceptional; it was no longer the entire plan.

Scaloni also surrounded him with younger players who had grown up watching him. They ran for him, argued for him, sang with him. They didn’t ask him to prove his love of Argentina. They played for him, and for one another, as if it were already known.

The transformation became visible in the 2021 Copa America final against Brazil. That victory gave Argentina its first major trophy in 28 years and Messi his first with the senior national team. At the final whistle, he disappeared beneath his teammates’ bodies. He had carried Argentina through the tournament. Now they carried him.

The 2022 World Cup made Messi and Argentina’s new relationship a global affair. Against Mexico, with elimination suddenly possible, Messi scored the goal that seemed to steady Argentina’s tournament. Against the Netherlands, the quiet captain’s fury moved outwards: he argued, shouted and celebrated with defiance. His teammates joined him.

He had not become Maradona. He had become himself. By the time Messi lifted the 2022 World Cup trophy, Argentina had learnt to read both his silence and his fury as his own ways of bearing its collective burden.

On July 15 in Atlanta, 10 minutes into the second half, Anthony Gordon slipped behind Argentina’s defence to score. England led, 1-0. Thirty-five minutes remained. If the score held, Messi’s final World Cup would end there.

The Argentinian crowd was singing an old stadium song: “por esta camiseta, ganar o morir” – for this shirt, win or die. England was playing to win or go home. Argentina saw the more final deadline.

Scaloni began trading caution for attackers. England made the opposite bargain, adding defenders. Argentina exchanged safety for possibility. England exchanged possibility for time.

Messi walked between possibility and time. He has always walked. What changed was everyone around him. Argentina finally made the runs his vision required. Other players carried the match towards the moments only he could see.

In the 85th minute, Messi received the ball near the right edge of the penalty area. His teammate Enzo Fernandez appeared in a strip of grass behind two English defenders. Messi passed. Fernandez scored. England and Argentina drew even.

Seven minutes later, Messi crossed with his right foot – the one usually employed to return the ball to his left – to pass the ball to Lautaro Martinez at the far post. With a second goal, Argentina headed into another World Cup final.

The final will have its official clock, bright and remorseless. Messi will be watching the other one. At 19, he seemed able to outrun the future. At 39, he has reached that future’s edge, with a team beside him.

He will walk. Argentina will run. This may be the last time we see them like this. Whatever happens on July 19, that will be enough. NYTIMES