A last dance on a final stage for Lionel Messi

The last World Cup concert of Lionel Messi is on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. It is hallowed ground where Bruce Springsteen once sang The Promised Land and Coldplay played Higher Power. Messianic stuff, you might say. Bands come with a set list, Messi arrives always with an unknown composition. No one’s feet have ever made such inventive music but does he have anything left? We shall see.

It’s a profoundly moving thing, isn’t it, the end of beautiful things, when mourning is tied to gratitude. Sport is decided by the black and white of scores, yet suffused with the grey of emotion. When these strangers, whose athletic art for long consumes us, disappear, they leave a space which mostly gets filled by someone else but never completely. Even if Messi wins, something will feel lost.