EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – After winning the 2022 World Cup, just before lifting the shimmering trophy, the Emir of Qatar approached Lionel Messi and adorned him in a bisht, a traditional hand-woven black robe reserved for Arab royalty.
There’s an enormous mural of it on the side of a building in Buenos Aires’ Palermo neighborhood.
There’s also a 5,000-square-foot mural of Messi in his home region of Rosario with the inscription: “From another galaxy, from my city.”
In Patagonia, there’s an 85-foot sculpture of Messi his No. 10 sky blue jersey, kneeling in supplication with the World Cup trophy between his legs, tapping the crest on his chest and pointing to the heavens.
People have tattoos of Messi. They name children Lionel or Lionela. They sing songs about him. They refer to him as D10S.
Which is another way of saying that, as Sunday’s World Cup final against Spain, still scoreless, went to 30 minutes of extra time with Argentina playing down a man, No. 10 was not coming out.
It was a decision born in reverence approaching religion, in hubris, in tactical defiance, and it was a decision that ultimately — perhaps poetically — led to Spain’s deserved 1-0 victory before 80,663 at MetLife Stadium.
Adulation can be blinding.
Here was the predicament coach Lionel Scaloni found himself in:
Messi has been an offensive marvel in this tournament at age 39, scoring eight goals and providing both assists in the dramatic 2-1 semifinal win against England. But no player has statistically run less, a solitary figure walking at midfield while nine teammates and goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez rip their hearts out on defense.
Then midfield workhorse Enzo Fernandez foolishly got a yellow card for shoving a Spanish player and, in the final minutes of regulation, got another for a brutal tackle on Spain’s Pau Cubarsi. They were defending with nine field players before; now it was eight.
Scaloni, Messi’s teammate from the 2006 World Cup who coaxed him into playing for the national team well past the age when most players retire, had already used his five allotted substitutes for regulation. Now, he was granted a sixth for extra time to fill the sudden hole in midfield as Spain poured forward.
The logical choice: Insert a defensive-minded midfielder, remove the 39-year-old Messi, hunker down, get everybody behind the ball and play — pray? — for penalty kicks.
Midfielder Marcos Senesi walked with the fourth official to the sideline, the sub board went up … and indeed a forward was coming out.
Coming out: No. 9, Julian Alvarez, 26 years old.
Messi was staying on.
They’d defend with eight.
Messi has earned that right, scoring 910 career goals, winning an incomprehensible eight Ballons d’Or awarded annually to the planet’s best soccer player, leading Argentina to an unprecedented run of Copa America, World Cup and Copa America titles in succession, then mystically turning back the clock through the group stage and four knockout matches here.
“I hope that everyone feels proud of him,” Scaloni said, “of what he’s achieved because he’s the best football player ever to set foot on a field. I have no doubt about this, and what he did during this World Cup was incredible. But also what he did before this.”
MetLife Stadium, though, has not been kind to D10S. Argentina played to a scoreless tie here against Chile in the 2016 Copa America final despite an 18-4 edge in shots. The game went to a penalty shootout, Messi missed, Argentina lost — and he impulsively announced his international retirement in a fit of frustration.
“I’m done playing with the national team,” Messi said that night. “I tried my hardest. It’s been four finals, and I was not able to win. I tried everything possible. It hurts me more than anyone, but it is evident that this is not for me. I want more than anyone to win a title with the national team, but unfortunately, it did not happen.”
He changed his mind two months later, won four major trophies with Argentina, achieved Messi-anic status back home and a decade later arrived at MetLife again for an afternoon of redemption.
It didn’t happen. He had one touch in the first 15 minutes against a suffocating, organized, disciplined Spanish defense that allowed one goal in eight matches and executed a sophisticated game plan limiting his space and service. He finished with 37 touches, the second fewest among any player who logged at least 90 minutes. Argentina finished with two shots, none on target and none before the 121st minute.
ESPN’s player ratings, on a 1 to 10 scale, gave Messi a 3. The Sporting News and SkySports gave him a 4.
The BBC was more generous with a 6, but noted: “If this was his final appearance on the World Cup stage, what a sad end for the legend.”
Spain finished with 20 shots, 12 on target, and the pressure on Argentina’s goal increased exponentially in extra time, as eight exhausted players tried to repel the onslaught as the 39-year-old guy walked at midfield, praying for a redemptive chance in a MetLife penalty shootout.
Nico Williams found the net in the 96th minute, only for Serbian referee Slavko Vincic to wave it off for a phantom foul, which merely fueled the here-we-go-again sentiment among the World-Cup-is-rigged crowd.
Ten minutes later, Pedro Porro sent a high cross to the far post that Williams headed back to Ferran Torres, who blasted it past Martinez from short range – a goal that even VAR couldn’t overturn.
Messi and Argentina desperately pressed forward for an equalizer, but there was no more magic in his boots.
As Spanish players lifted the trophy in a shower of golden confetti and FIFA president Gianni Infantino awkwardly tried to usher U.S. President Donald J. Trump out of the photo and off the stage, Messi sat alone on the grass to the side, his eyes welling with tears, staring into space.
“They were better, to be honest,” he said later. “We lost the game, and we accept that. That doesn’t mean that we will forget everything we’ve done so far, so I’d like to thank my people, my players and the country.”
It was a sad end for the legend, a passenger on the karma train roaring down the tracks.
Defender Lisandro Martinez was one of four players who held up a banner on the field after the win against England that declared the Falkland Islands — Islas Malvinas to them — to be Argentine despite strict FIFA regulations prohibiting political statements. Martinez went down with an injury late in the first half Sunday and had to be subbed off.
Then there was Fernandez, who is paid $12.6 million per year by English club Chelsea, posting a photo on social media of him laughing with teammates while “Wonderwall,” the English national team’s adopted anthem, played in the background. He got a red card and made the walk of shame to the locker room.
There were all the calls that seemingly always went Argentina’s way on their improbable journey to the final — the nullified goal against Egypt, the red card after a VAR review against Switzerland, all the cleats-up challenges that never drew a whistle, let alone a card.
Even after the final whistle, Argentina’s Facundo Medina shoved Rodri, the classy Spanish captain and Golden Ball winner as the tournament’s best player, as he ran on the field to celebrate. Soon, Leandro Paredes was kicking Spain’s Eric Garcia and hitting him in the throat before violently tackling another Spanish player to the ground.
It’s a big bill, and it came due Sunday afternoon.
Logic said Scaloni should have played the tactical percentages and subbed out D10S in extra time.
Adulation prevented him.
“He’s 39 years old, it’s unbelievable,” Scaloni said of D10S’s career. “It was crystal clear for me that he was going to play until he decided not to.”