The modern football supporter is the best footballer the world has never seen. He is a redoubtable expert the world constantly hears. He is a master puppet whose exalted view from the top tiers of gladiatorial arenas and from the lens of a high-definition camera give him knowledge and vision that surpasses that of the mortals on that green pitch.
This is a standard across sports, and very acceptable in the modern day. We’re all experts. We’ve earned the right to be, through the countless hours and monies we devote to the pursuit of watching and supporting teams, be they at international or at club level. Through our religious practice on our PlayStations, and our hours on Football Manager. Through our innumerable tweets and our expression of emotion on Facebook. Through our pickup games on the weekend and the hours we can spend doing keepy-uppies, rabonas and elasticos.
What’s a professional footballer's worth next to that level of commitment? A professional who gets paid millions of dollars should, of course, expect nothing less, and should deliver more than what is expected.
A footballer and football team have a lot more invested in them than just money. There are extreme emotions and hopes. And it all comes down to just one thing. Winning.
But then Lionel Messi, considered the greatest of all our puppets, got it wrong. The football, at most times seemingly a natural extension of his body, refused to be a mere addendum to his genius. Refused to curve hypnotically, or scream through the air gaily to its intended destination. Leo Messi shanked his penalty high and wide, his crying face became a meme, and Argentina lost. He broke down on live television and subsequently hinted that he couldn’t continue being our favourite toy, and punching bag, at least for Argentina. He betrayed the terms of our relationship.
He made losers out of us.
Quitting is a selfish, cowardly act, how dare he claim to be the best of us. Quitting is sad and painful, how dare he play with our emotions. Quitting meant we’ve supported his cause for nothing, how dare he deny us of the right to watch him play.
Quitting meant he had accepted defeat, how dare he deny us our victory.
Being a robot
Lionel Messi has been compared at various points in his career to a robot, an artificially intelligent life-form, a paranormal entity, to whom the most impossible thing were merely road-markers. The hard work, uprooting of his life, overcoming a physical deformity, countless hours honing his skill were dismissed as the basic requirement.
For over 16 years, he’s lived a vastly contrasting life at club and country level. A reticent, quiet man by all accounts, he explodes to life on a football pitch. Messi was born only to play football, they say. But not just to play, not in his homeland. Messi was born to lead them to deliverance, to be a leader of the teeming, passionate masses who have tasted this level of genius before, and expect that much more from the shiny new version.
The relationship between Argentina and Messi has been complicated, to say the least. When he was a mere stripling at Newell’s Old Boys, the boy from Rosario was spoken about in awed whispers. At 13 he moved to Barcelona, to the club willing to foot a $900-a-month bill for his growth hormone deficiency treatment.
He left Argentina, but kept the country close to his heart, eating only at Argentinian restaurants, being in a long-term relationship with his childhood sweetheart from his hometown, retaining his Rosarino accent.
Yet, his country never quite warmed to him, not for years.
'A man without a country'
He was sent off within seconds of his debut, and left the pitch in tears. He was left on the bench by Jose Pekerman as Argentina crashed out of the 2006 World Cup. He was barely acknowledged by his own support as a Maradona coached team crashed and burned in the 2010 World Cup. He was boo’d by his home crowd at the Copa America 2011, as Argentina exited in the quarter-finals. He was barely acknowledged as a pivotal part of the team for the first few years he played for them, with coaches refusing or unable to utilise his strengths as effectively as FC Barcelona and Pep Guardiola were doing. The Argentinian fans were apoplectic that this apparent Messiah seemed less committed to their cause than he did to Barcelona’s.
As Wright Thompson put it in his brilliant piece, Lionel Messi was in many ways “a man without a country”.
It all came to a head in a three-year period, starting with a catastrophic loss in the 2014 World Cup final. "Maradona, 1986" was all anyone ever said in the days leading up to that epochal day. Messi failed in the eyes of many to prove them right. He was no longer just an Argentine, but a Frenchman, an American, an Ethiopian, a Singaporean, a Panamanian. And he failed to lead them to victory.
Failing us all
He failed in the Copa America 2015. He failed in the Copa America Centenario in 2016. He failed himself, he failed his country, he failed us. He made chokers out of us.
There will be debate, and there has been plenty of it already, not least yet another rotten, tedious comparison with Cristiano Ronaldo, with the words "attitude" and "loser" thrown around. And so there will and should be, because we’ve earned it.
He may be the all-time leading goalscorer for Argentina with 55 goals and 35 assists for his nation. He may or may not have dragged his company to three major tournament finals. He may or may not even be the greatest of all time, based on where you sit.
There’s just one thing that can be said for certain.
Lionel Messi was doomed from that moment in 2005, aged 17, when he turned away from his marker and lobbed the keeper to score the first of his 456 goals for Barcelona and joyously leapt onto Ronaldinho’s back, a beaming 10-year-old child all over again. The day we first sat up and noticed him.
From that day on, he answered to us.
