Time to break the staff, bury the book and call time on that rough magic. There was, by the end, an undertone of sadness about Lionel Messi, New Jersey and a World Cup final that brought Spain the glory of an entirely deserved second trophy, and which saw Argentina offer almost nothing beyond a gnarled and gristly sense of resistance.
This is an Argentina team built on faith, devotional energy and a belief in the frankly irrational magic of your lone scurrying 39-year-old genius. Well, sometimes that magic will forsake you. The deus ex machina will refuse to appear. And he is perhaps gone from this stage now for good, a Prospero giving his final address to the crowd from a clanky metal bowl outside New York.
Messi’s third World Cup final has always been likely to end up his last, whatever happened in New Jersey. For the greatest player of this or any other age there was something else here, the sound of exit music just below the ambient noise, the realisation across 120 minutes that what you’re watching are the routines, the shapes, the movements, but without its own vital essence. England in Atlanta, that half hour when Thomas Tuchel’s team simply shrank, devoured by an aura, might just turn out to have been Messi’s last stand.
He was always going to rage against it. The far corner of the New York New Jersey Stadium pitch was in evening shadow as the game entered the third minute of added time at the end of extra time, the grass a deep autumnal green, the countdown inside the countdown almost done. A goal down and a man down at the end of eight tournament matches. Six World Cups deep, 39 years old, and playing here against opponents who had spent the last two hours enacting a very crisp, orderly suffocation. How much do you have left? How thin is that thread?
Messi was there all the same, scooting towards the corner flag, head bobbing, legs whirring in that familiar rodent-superhero style. He took Argentina’s final corners of the match, wringing out the last little drops, the last dusting of dip and veer and ping.
Fifteen minutes earlier Messi had been close to the halfway line, watching with a familiar expression of mild interest when the moment arrived to decide this bruising World Cup final. As Ferran Torres measured his stride and spanked the ball high into the net for the only goal, as the red shirts leapt and bounced by the corner flag, the stands writhing and falling over themselves, Messi bent at the waist and stared down at the turf.
The goal came from Spain’s 20th shot, to Argentina’s zero. The cut-back to Torres was Spain’s 715th completed pass. At the end of which Spain are not just champions, but clearly the best team at this World Cup, the embodiment of a system, a coherent sporting culture made flesh. The route to this point has involved beating both finalists from Qatar, as well as flushing out a ghost here, neutralising the hammer of England, subduing the magic that had dragged Argentina to this stage.
All morning New York had been hot and wild, jammed and breathless, basically a sustained assault on the senses. Or in other words, not really different to any other Sunday. But the stadium felt a little bit like the end of the road in more ways than one, the mild organisation sub-chaos of this World Cup finding full expression in the vast sun-frazzled queues waiting to get in.
This has been an unloved venue at this World Cup, rising up out of and rolling New Jersey asphalt like a giant discarded alien hubcap. But inside it’s a classic, stark gladiatorial bowl, the stands a rolling wall of noise an hour before the start. And this really should have been more of a match-up. Most obviously in terms of tactics and method. Spain are the ultimate systems team. Spain are process and craft, the football of some hyper-advanced Star Trek society on a planet where people in robes talk wisely about collective effort and shared rewards.
Whereas Argentina, well, what is this exactly? Sport as emotional nationalism. But European-coded too. Nothing expresses Argentina like Argentina’s football. And yet Argentina’s football is hugely cross-fertilised by Europe. Messi, its godhead, could have played for Spain, learned his method in Spain, and has become the apex point of modern European club football.
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From the start Argentina were playing cold here, as they had against England in the first half. Take time out of the game, compact it down, kill some of the space between you and the finish line. Give Messi something manageable.
Spain had 35 passes here before Messi moved beyond a walk. He basically spent most of the early exchanges getting out of the way, edging back out of the crush like a minor uncle at a wedding. Famously Messi likes to process and watch in these moments, to measure the currents and the angles. He certainly had a very good view of Spain passing the ball around, another VIP looking on from the best seat in the house, mildly more interested, all things considered, than Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.
By half-time Argentina had already begun to dry out in the sun, a desiccated thing, footballing biltong. At which point the World Cup got a front row view of another version of the world. On the one hand, a muddled, hard, ragged scoreless game of football with a sense of unyielding forces, of waiting while some difficult piece of algebra is resolved.
On the other, Madonna gyrating furiously on a screen, followed by the great revolving Korean pop-godhead BTS. The Ted Lasso actor, as Ted Lasso, did a skit with Justin Bieber, who then strummed a guitar and sang a song of almost total anti-energy, walking along a little bent and constipated, long shorts, white shoes, basically doing Messi.
Shakira was successfully Shakira. Hundreds of humans in brightly coloured clothes appeared and waggled tarpaulins. It was a show. Not a good show. But then, we already had a show, didn’t we?
“YuRRR score at HAFF time. SpAAAiinnnn Zero, Aggrrnetina ZrSerro,” the owner of the world’s most annoying voice announced as the players reappeared. At which point the day and the game continued to drain towards its end point. In their non-Messi periods Argentina are a team that will make you lose yourself, play badly, forget what football is for.
But Spain are too good for this. They will take the ball away before you can do it. From the 70th minute on, Argentina were simply laying themselves down in front of the traffic, stopping the day, a team with no hope of winning this final beyond taking it to penalties. Two minutes into stoppage time at the end of the 90 they lost Enzo Fernández, sent off for a second yellow card in 10 minutes. And that was always going to be that.
Messi will continue to play for Inter Miami, and perhaps even for Argentina for a while. But this is his stage, this is the space he has defined. Let’s face it, he probably won’t be back again. It felt appropriate that he was walking as the final whistle was blown, and from there just kept on walking, didn’t break stride as Spain’s players and staff ran on and the stadium began to explode around them.
Messi’s super-skill, even in his ferretty, fast-twitch prime, has been all about creating his own moments of calm and stillness, a quality that has become ever more alluring as the space has congested on the pitch and the noise and light become ever more intense off it.
Even at his dotage at this World Cup Messi has been a delight, still able to dredge up those surge moments where he makes the universe around him symmetrical, soft, open to his touch. Spain may have finessed him, but they haven’t been able to make a player quite like him. Then again, we may never see another again.
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