Suddenly ghost hunters again: The unimaginable year of Lionel Messi

Suddenly ghost hunters again
The unimaginable year of Lionel Messi

By Florian Papenfuhs

In recent years, Lionel Messi’s story seems to have been told. Only the end of the career of his number ten separates FC Barcelona from sinking completely into mediocrity. Untitled is almost a tradition in the Argentine national team. Then summer 2021 will open a new chapter.

In 2016, the question of who is the best modern basketball player is off the table. LeBron James wins the third NBA title, the first with his Cleveland Cavaliers. Undisputed in the present, James focuses on the past: “My motivation is this ghost I’m chasing. He played in Chicago,” he told Sports Illustrated, referring to his idol Michael Jordan.

Only very few men and women get a chance to become a monument for their own sport, perhaps the greatest of all time. Among them is an Argentine footballer. Lionel Messi has also long outgrown his time. Players like Robert Lewandowski, whom he himself recently praised, or Cristiano Ronaldo, who was chosen as his great opponent from outside, are legends of football and still have to be measured against the phenomenal new Parisian.

Messi, on the other hand, experienced comparisons in another category throughout his career, analogous to LeBron James. Is he better than the 1000-goal fabulous figure Pelé? Despite all his shyness, can he mean more to his homeland than Argentina’s darling Diego Maradona? And is he taller in Barcelona than Johan Cruyff, perhaps the most important person in modern football?

Bankruptcy in Barcelona is a godsend

For some people the answers to these questions seem complete, for others it is still open. Most recently, despite all his ability, Messi threatens to drown in a rapidly degrading Barcelona. Again and again he straps the team onto his back, they win fewer and fewer titles despite their overqualified captain. At some point he will end his career there full of pathos, like Iniesta or Puyol once did. Certainly.

2021 was a remarkable, because it was almost unimaginable, section in Messi’s career, to be traced back to two moments in the summer. In mid-July, Messi will stretch the Copa America up into the night sky in Brazil. It is his first big title with the national team that beat the hosts in the final. After the game, Messi and Neymar sit joking in the cabin aisle. Argentina’s number ten top scorer, voted best player of the tournament.

A few weeks later, world football turns to Reims, a city in northern France with almost 200,000 inhabitants. The reason for all the excitement, however, is the guests. In the 65th minute, Lionel Messi clapped his good friend Neymar, with whom he is now playing. At the age of 34, for the first time in Messi’s professional career, a different club crest than that of FC Barcelona is emblazoned on his chest. The club’s imaginative books are finally flying around the ears in the summer, Messi could not even stay for free, the squad is simply too expensive. And so he joins the Qatar’s glamor project, Paris Saint-Germain.

The crew seems almost unfairly talented on their best days, a circus troupe like the Harlem Globetrotters. But there are also erratic, listless appearances, especially in important games, almost too often the whole club blows the fuse. Messi is said to lead the bunch of talent and defiance to the Champions League title, the Captain Copa America of the Paris Avengers. If he is noticeably strangled at the beginning with a new league, new role and new colleagues, he gets better and better in the end. Despite an initial deficit in training and knee problems, he scored five goals in five games in the group stage of the Champions League. When PSG beat Saint-Etienne at the end of November, Messi set up three goals.

Tom Brady or Michael Jordan?

Only one day later, on November 29th, 21st Robert Lewandowski won the Ballon d’Or. The election, which is hotly debated, at least in Germany, always has an undertone: The seventh award for Messi is largely a kind of life’s work award. But is that supposed to be it? Messi’s move to Paris is reminiscent of other great athletes. Michael Jordan ended his career with the Washington Wizards, Michael Schumacher acted as a mentor at Mercedes. Tom Brady shows that there is another way of doing things. Even after leaving the New England Patriots, he continues to break records and win titles with ease.

And so the Ballon d’Or is also a kind of commission. Is Lionel Messi still the best footballer in the world? In recent years, Robert Lewandowski has looked as if he was aging backwards and behind him the next generation is already scratching their hooves. PSG jewel Kylian Mbappé and Dortmund’s one-man buffalo herd Erling Haaland shoot everything short and small at a young age. And yet Messi is in exactly the right place to prove to the world one last time that he is the greatest.

Qatar could be the final of his career

The star ensemble of the Parisians has a real chance at the handle pot, despite all balance problems. Having to keep Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar at bay for 90 minutes is a problem for any team in the world. The team dominates the league, and after the disastrous 2020/21 season, in which they even missed the championship, national titles seem only a matter of form again. A lot is possible for Lionel Messi in 2022: the triple with PSG, subsequent Supercup wins, a collection of titles that comes dangerously close to that of record holder Dani Alves.

And just like the finale of his career, the World Cup awaits in a year after the Ballon d’or gala, which could be his again. It will be his fifth, no player has taken part in more World Cup finals. The national team is in a good mood and, in addition to winning the Copa, qualified for the tournament with great ease. At the age of 35, Lionel Messi could still become world champion. At the latest then the Argentine footballer could put the ghost-hunter equipment aside. Then he would be the ghost himself.

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