Lionel Messi, the greatest of all time
Can we talk about that final for a second? WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THAT FINAL.
Happy Holidays, Otters!! Thanks for reading Things You Otter Know. As ever, I’m Ottavia Paluch.
Late update this week—Christmas prep has been stressful. I don’t know when I’ll write next but I’ll totally send you one more email before the year is up. I just HAVE to tie up 2022 in a nice pretty bow, y’know?
And I know I told you last week that I was going to talk about my amazing trip to Lee’s Palace last Friday night, but that’s going to have to be a story for another time because oh my word DID YOU WATCH THAT WORLD CUP FINAL OH MY GOD IT WAS RIDICULOUS.
Like, even though sport is one of my favourite things, I almost never talk about sports on this Substack because I’m paranoid I’m gonna bore you all to death and you’re all gonna unsubscribe. (I have complained about the Toronto Maple Leafs here, though, and I will love them until I die even though they let me down every year.) But we haaaaave to talk about this game. Hopefully you’ll enjoy my thoughts on my. If you weren’t watching, what were you doing instead? I’d love to hear about your feelings of regret:
Zooming out, it’s hard not to think about how cool the World Cup is. For one month the eyes of the world focused on this tiny country in Western Asia because we wanted to see rich, ripped, athletic men from all over the world kick a ball about. Humanity is weird.
Thing is, putting your attention towards rich, ripped, athletic men from all over the world kicking a ball about in Qatar is a great way to distract yourself from the more horrifying stories coming out of Qatar. Two of my favourite sports journalists and thinkers, Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin, wrote a piece for the Nation that outlines all of it perfectly. You should give it a read. And check out some of the other stuff they’ve written if you want. (I took an online sports journalism dual credit class at Seneca College earlier this year and I wrote a piece that cited 7 sources, ALL OF WHICH came from Dave and Jules. And let me tell you, there have been multiple instances where I’ve wanted to cover something sports-related and corruption-adjacent for this Substack, only to do some research about it and realize that Dave and Jules have written about it so much more succinctly and perfectly than I could even dare to attempt.)
Among the more negative headlines coming out of Qatar, there was one in particular that hit home for me. Grant Wahl, surely the best soccer journalist America’s ever produced, died suddenly in Qatar this month. Grant was one of my favourite journalists, period. As a neurodivergent kid obsessed with sports, I encountered Grant’s work regularly while he was writing for Sports Illustrated. And when he left SI for Substack, I read his stuff there regularly, too. All the way up until his tragic and untimely death. Initially people thought there was some foul play involved but that got cleared up a few days ago. No matter the circumstances, it really is heartbreaking knowing that we’ll never know how Grant would memorialize this incredible World Cup final. Nothing I write today is going to match up to anything he’s written. But I’m gonna write about it anyways because I think that’s what he would want.
The headlines going into this were something along the lines of Messi vs. Mbappé or Mbappé vs Messi or Young French Guy vs Older Argentine Man or whatever. Which feels lazy to me, but what else would you write? They are two of the best players around. They’re both teammates at Paris Saint-Germain, that insanely rich club that dominates Ligue 1 every year. And now they were going to play each other for the biggest prize in sports. Freaking Disney couldn’t write a better script.
There’s a contrast and a similarity to the two of their playing styles, the likes of which millions of people—billions, really—just go crazy over. Kylian Mbappé isn’t even 24 yet, somehow, but he looks much older. And he has a nose for the net unlike few others in world football today. His finishing is otherworldly, his footwork is ridiculous, and he scores in bunches. Yet the real thing that sets him apart is his speed. Watching him in action, you’d think your TV was broken. It’s like he’s on skates while the opposing team is wearing flip-flops. I’m telling you, this baguette could lace up against Usain Bolt and hold his own. He beats 3 defenders on the regular without breaking a sweat. It’s like his forehead is made of Botox. Clint Smith thinks Mbappe is going to go down as one of the greats no matter what his future holds. He’s right. It’s so rare to see a guy look this good and this put-together so early in his career. He has confidence in spades and you can’t blame him for it.
Oh, and by the way, he’s already won a World Cup.
No, like, I’m not even kidding. France won the last World Cup. Mbappe somehow scored four goals during the overall tournament as an 18-year-old. Ridiculousness. France were and continue to be an incredibly stacked footballing nation.
And then there’s Lionel Messi. The magical, magnificent Lionel Messi.
Joe Posnanski, whose Substack I adore, wrote about a Messi conversation he had with Grant Wahl one time:
Grant was asking me to write about Lionel Messi because he wanted me to have the experience. That’s how Grant was. His thinking was undoubtedly something like: “Hey, you’re at a World Cup for the first time in your life, who knows if you will ever be at another one, you HAVE to write about the greatest soccer player in the world. Go do it, man! It will be fun! Go see what watching Lionel Messi play this beautiful game sparks inside you!”
So here’s my stab at what Grant wanted Joe to do: Messi is honest to god the greatest player I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s 35 and he’s won every individual trophy there is to win in soccer, some of them multiple times. He grew up poor but by 17 he was playing meaningful minutes for Barcelona and setting up goals for friggin Ronaldinho. By 19 he was the face of football. You’ve watched this guy play, surely. You know exactly why he’s considered one of, if not the greatest of all time.
With the ball at his feet, Messi can get the opposing team’s backline spilling over like a stack of dominos. He makes goalkeepers look foolish for even trying to stop him. He drives coaches crazy. There’s a joy in his style of play, and yet also a relentlessness. He works his tail off for every goal, assist, shot and pass he makes. The small directional feints, the slight drops of the shoulder, the tiny touches that make it seem like his cleats are made of silk—he makes the most difficult ideas feel obvious, effortless, genius. Like, you know how when people talk about (my hero) Wayne Gretzky, they say he saw the game of hockey better than anyone else, that he was always 5 moves ahead of the opposition? Messi’s like that for me. The two of them were both so elite and yet so humble that they simply commanded your respect.
I can’t really add anything to the conversation that’s been going on for 15 years about Leo—I’m some rando kid from Canada who only started watching soccer, what, six years ago? Yet the fact that Messi is in the twilight years of his career and still playing incredible soccer against players ten years younger than him is objectively remarkable. Unlike Cristiano Ronaldo, his greatest rival and contemporary—like, let me get this straight, I think Ronaldo’s one of a kind, for reasons good and bad—Messi’s adapted his game to suit his age. At his peak he was nearly as quick as Mbappe, and would go on these incredible 40-yard rushes that make for some of the best videos in all of YouTube. He can still turn it on when he wants to, as we saw in the semis against Croatia. But now he does most of his work in short bursts, these little fleeting moments of creativity that can often leave you breathless. He was phenomenal in this final.
Until this week, Messi had never won a World Cup, but it was understandably the one gap in his resume he had long dreamed of filling. For so long those in Argentina said that unless he won a World Cup, he would never be considered as good as another Argentine legend, Diego Maradona (and if my mom knows his name, then you definitely do).
In 2014 Messi led Argentina to the final only to lose in extra-time to Germany. (The guy who scored the winning goal, Mario Götze, hasn’t done anything remotely worthy of note since, but at least he’ll get Oktoberfest beer bought for him for the rest of his life.) I don’t think Messi losing in the final was his fault—he simply didn’t have a reliable supporting cast around him even though he tends to make the players around him better. It’s only fair that his last chance to win a World Cup was also his best chance. This year’s Argentine squad was very good—perhaps not as strong as France, but still pretty damn exemplary. It was chock-full of young talent like Enzo Fernández and Julián Álvarez (both of whom will get absolutely PAID by huge clubs in the coming months), but also players who have proven themselves on big stages in the past, like Emi Martínez and Ángel Di María. And you could see it on their faces after the final whistle of this final—they adore him. They wanted to win all it for him.
My dad and I watched the final together, and there were so many times where we couldn’t believe what we were watching. The first 80 minutes were interesting in that Argentina were just taking France APART. 20 minutes into it Di María won a penalty which…eh, to me it was a soft call, but whatever…and Messi stepped up to bury it like he had been doing it all his life, which he kinda has been. 15 minutes later Argentina went on a fast break, where Messi made one of the loveliest passes I’ve ever seen, knocking the ball over the feet of two defenders and towards Álvarez, who kicked it to Alexis Mac Allister, who crossed it over towards Di María. All of this before the end of the first half. (Soccer is a 90 minute game.)
France, for the vast majority of this game, were incredibly sloppy, a total shell of themselves. All signs pointed towards Argentina absolutely routing them like 5-0 or something. And then, with 12 minturs left, France won a penalty, which Mbappé scored through sheer will. French President Emmanuel Macron cellied (cellyed?) hard for the cameras like he so often does. Barely a minute later, Messi tried going on a run but was stripped of the ball. France’s Kingsley Coman took a second to think before lobbing it to Adrien Rabiot, who sent it to Mbappé. Then Mbappé and Marcus Thuram did a beautiful little give-and-go, finished off by an Mbappé volley so audacious and yet so pristine that my dad literally got off the couch, head in hands, in disbelief over what he just saw. Mbappé had barely seen the ball up to that point on the game, but what he did here made for one of the greatest goals in a World Cup final, or of any game, for that matter. The game was completely turned on its head.
With a minute left, Messi launched a rocket far from goal that very nearly went in. But it remained 2-2 after 90 minutes.
In tournaments like these they do two 15-minutes halves if both teams can’t be separated. They call it extra time. And in extra time, Messi was dancing. He waltzed; he tangoed: he cha-cha’d. It’s crazy how short and yet how determined he is compared to everyone else on the pitch. Argentina generated chance after chance but France held firm, blocking shot after shot. And in the 107th minute Messi orchestrated a beautiful passing play that ended up with him shooting a ball within a metre of goal that crossed the goal line before bouncing off a French defender and retuning back into play. Wait a second, I thought. Didn’t that go in? I know my eyesight is awful, but…? Nope. It went in. Lionel Messi may have written the storybook ending to this final.
“If Argentina wins this, then Messi’s the GOAT,” I told my dad.
But WAIT! There’s more! Because with 5 minutes left in extra time, France won a corner, during which Mbappé unloaded a shot that hit an Argentine player in the elbow. Soccer rules state that the ball is not supposed to hit a player’s arm. (I guess they like it best when it hits the foot, for some odd reason.) Just like that, France had won another penalty, with Mbappé scoring from the spot again, completing a hat trick—a World Cup final hat trick, no less—and tying the game up at 3.
In the few seconds of extra time that were left, a French long ball found its way towards young forward Randal Kolo Muani, who as a result was essentially one-on-one with goalkeeper Martínez. 9 times out of 10 that sort of chance results in a goal. But this time it ricocheted hard off of Martínez’s foot and out of play. An honestly unbelievable save.
World Cup finals rarely end in penalty shootouts. This one did not disappoint. Mbappé scored nicely, and then Messi dispatched a penalty so sweet and soft my dad and I cackled. To have the poise to do something like that when the eyes of the world are upon you? He’s a freak and so is Mbappé.
Then Martínez saved Conan’s penalty and Argentina’s Paulo Dyabala buried his.
Frenchman Aurélien Tchouaméni missed the net entirely. Argentine Leandro Paredes just snuck his in past the outstretched hand of Hugo Lloris.
Kolo Muani sort of avenged his miss in extra time by scoring his penalty, but Gonzalo Montiel easily made his, making history for his country in the process. Argentina had done it, Messi had done it, and we all watched them celebrate in total shock and awe.
WHAT! A! GAME!
Most of the time the World Cup Final doesn’t really live up to its billing as the premiere event in sports. The spectacle is always there, sure, but the games themselves aren’t always the most entertaining. Given the magnitude of the moment, the collective of stars on the pitch, and the sheer amount of drama we all suffered through, this game was worthy of the title and then some. And it was a truly beautiful way to finish off Messi’s career. The debate can rage on if you want it to, but to me this World Cup final cements Messi’s legacy as the best to ever do it. Now, my historical soccer knowledge is rather spotty, and I’ll never know what it was like to watch the greats play, to watch Pélé or Maradona or Beckenbausr or Cruyuff play. But of the last 15 years there has been no one more adored and impactful and also brilliant. Watching Leo celebrate, I was shocked by how proud I was of him. And I have never met Lionel Messi. But I guess he has that effect on people.
Fans and pundits alike are calling this year’s final the greatest soccer game that’s ever been played. Which sounds like an exaggeration until you realize it’s absolutely warranted. It was an experience like no other, and Peter Drury’s poetic commentary—YouTube it when you get a chance—perfectly articulated the collective feelings we all felt while watching it. Like, I was shaking during the penalty shootout, and I was watching as a neutral fan. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to be in Mendoza or Nice and rooting so hard and so madly for the country of your bloodline. I’d rather die.
And have you seen the scenes of people in Buenos Aires after the final penalty, flooding the streets like syrup floods a pancake? I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It’s the sort of communal joy I wish everyone could experience at least once in their life. Very few things in our lives can do that. But sports can. And that’s why we love it so much.
🦦 —O— 🦦