By Tom Reynolds
The closest
Messi had come to winning the World Cup before 2022 was an extra-time defeat by
Germany in the 2014 tournament in Brazil
When Lionel Messi won the World Cup at the fifth and, seemingly, final attempt in Qatar last December, it was the last jigsaw piece in arguably the greatest footballing CV of all time.
But victory was only part of the story.
Behind the scenes and then on the biggest
stage, Messi's transformation in the Middle East became evident.
The 35-year-old's genius has long been beyond
doubt and debate. But his character had changed. As a teenager, Messi was so
painfully shy he would get changed in the corridor to avoid his team-mates in
the Barcelona youth set-up.
"This World Cup he was different,"
said Argentina and Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez.
"We are probably more aggressive than
the players in the national teams he's played with before. So he's probably
becoming a little more like us - that bad boy."
Here, some of the stars from the
recently-released BBC Sport documentary Lionel Messi: Destiny, unpack and
dissect that final evolution of Messi - from shy teenage genius to talismanic
"bad boy".
Short presentational grey line
"He's a great lad but he can't even
direct traffic. How can you give the national team to Scaloni?"
Diego Maradona's typically colourful thoughts
regarding Lionel Scaloni's appointment to the Argentina manager job in 2018
captured the mood of the nation.
Putting it bluntly, Scaloni was a Lionel
Messi appointment - a deliberate decision by the Argentine Football Association
to keep a generational talent onside and in the side.
In the years prior to Scaloni's appointment,
Messi had a troubled relationship with the national team and, at times, with
the national boss.
After a talented Argentina team was
comprehensively beaten by Germany in the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup,
Maradona, then-Argentina coach, criticised Messi's leadership qualities.
A fiasco of a 2018 World Cup campaign brought
an early exit for Argentina and another coach in Jorge Sampaoli.
Sandwiched in between was 2016, a year which
saw Messi briefly retire from international football after missing a penalty in
the Copa America final defeat by Chile.
Such set-backs ensured that the number one
motivation for the Argentine FA in appointing Scaloni was to keep their number
one star happy.
"The FA had a single objective, to find
a manager who could work with Messi and get the best out of him," said
Messi biographer Guillem Balague.
"When Scaloni took over he said to
Messi, 'what do you think, what would work for you?'.
"It was an equal conversation, and you
have to do that when you have the best player in the world."
Argentine journalist Marcela Mora y Araujo added:
"He was appointed without massive press coverage or a presentation moment
- there seemed to be little energy to go hunting for big names.
"Most people were furious. We didn't
know much about him. The thought was that the job should go to a football celebrity
or influential character, and it just went to a guy who was sort of
anonymous."
However, it was that anonymity, small-town
humility and lack of ego that endeared Scaloni to the Argentina squad - and
crucially, to Messi.
"Scaloni's very relaxed," Argentina
and Manchester City forward Julian Alvarez said. "Very honest, and he has
that thing of coming from a small town. I also identify with that a lot because
I also come from a small town, and you can see that human quality that he
has."
Martinez added: "You're always going to
have talented players, but it's how you manage them. It's like having a Ferrari
- if you don't know how to drive it, then you're going to crash on every
corner. That's the only explanation I can give for Scaloni - he knows exactly
how to drive a Ferrari."
Creating a home from home in Qatar
Looking after what was under the bonnet was
vital to keep Messi - and ultimately the Argentina squad - happy in Qatar.
Despite leaving Argentina as a teenager, Messi
has held on to much of his Argentine roots and specifically his hometown
Rosario.
"He speaks with an Argentinean accent,
eats Argentinean food, watches Argentinean films and listens to Argentinean
music," said Jonathan Wilson, author of Angels With Dirty Faces - a
footballing history of Argentina.
Scaloni and the Argentine FA were fastidious
about leaning into those home comforts for Messi and his team-mates, creating a
"little Argentina" at their World Cup base at Qatar University.
Early in the Scaloni reign, some of the
younger players bonded with Messi by knocking on his hotel door and asking him
to play the Argentine card game of Truco.
That same game was ubiquitous in Qatar along
with Argentine tea called mate, and, more importantly, asados (barbeques) with
imported Argentine beef. It was reported the team brought in 900kg of the meat
for their campaign.
"I think for all Argentina people, if
you have mate and a beautiful barbeque you don't need more in life," said
Messi's former Argentina team-mate Pablo Zabaleta.
According to both Balague and Mora y Araujo,
these techniques ensured Argentina got the best out of Messi, transporting the
top player in the world back to a childhood left behind when he moved to
Barcelona aged just 13.
On the pitch, the echoes of that childhood
were most clearly heard during the quarter-final win over the Netherlands.
Dutch manager Louis van Gaal had questioned
Messi's work-rate off the ball before the match. It was a move that angered his
team-mates and added fuel to a historic enmity between the pair.
"Attacking Leo... you shouldn't do that
to Argentines," Brighton's Alexis Mac Allister said.
Messi's feelings spilled out in the 73rd
minute of the quarter-final. Messi celebrated Argentina's second goal by
standing in front of the dugout, cupping his ears to seemingly mock Van Gaal's
previous comments.
Messi and former Argentina international Juan
Roman Riquelme are now close friends.
Before though, during Riquelme's solitary
season at Barcelona in 2002, the relationship was more one of adulation.
Riquelme's former agent once recalled a
teenage Messi "sitting looking at Riquelme as if he were Jesus
Christ" at a barbeque arranged for Barca's South American players.
Mora y Araujo suggested Messi's celebration
against the Netherlands - one which Riquelme has performed throughout his
career - also reflected Messi's historic frustration at his friend being played
out of his usual position during his time under Van Gaal at Barcelona in the
early 2000s.
"It was surprising coming from
Messi," she said. "The nod to Riquelme was unexpected."
Whatever the motivation of the celebration,
it was not the end of Messi's combativity.
After the match, the Argentine forward
confronted Dutch assistant Edgar Davids on the sidelines and in the tunnel he
interrupted his own live TV interview to insult the Holland "number
19", as Messi called him, Wout Weghorst.
"In the tunnel on the way to the
changing rooms - 'the number 19', as he calls him, walks by," Mora y
Araujo added. "Messi interrupts the interview to say, 'go away silly, what
are you looking at?'.
"Messi's delivery was very spontaneous.
It has Rosario intonations, it's something someone's grandmother might say.
"It's clearly not mild anger he's
expressing."
Balague suggested Messi "reacted in a
way that, even he himself, did not recognise".
To understand the outburst it is necessary to
go all the way back to Messi's childhood in his hometown of Rosario, 185 miles
(300km) north west of Buenos Aires.
"There is an edge to Messi at the World
Cup, and that is to do with the people he has got around him and him feeling
comfortable with that.
"Because when he was 12, he was probably
like that in the streets.
"Then when he moves to Barcelona he has
to be a different person, more Catalan, more distant, more quiet.
"But he had that in him.
"It's not that he became Maradona. It
was the Rosario in him that appeared in the World Cup in front of our
eyes."
Both Mora y Araujo and Balague point out that
the insult Messi chose for Weghorst - "bobo" - is a word that only
"kids use".
And Martinez agreed with Balague in
suggesting the change was akin to a child falling in with the wrong crowd at
school.
"We are probably more aggressive than
the players in the national teams he's played with before," he said.
"So he's probably becoming a little more like us - that bad boy."
Messi and
Martinez (lying down) would finish the World Cup with individual awards for the
best player and best goalkeeper respectively
For Wilson, Messi finding his voice was as
much about the players that weren't there.
The presence of big talkers such as Javier
Mascherano in previous Argentine teams meant Messi wasn't needed to perform
that role.
But in Qatar, there was a vacuum.
Journalist Christian Martin was embedded in
the Argentine camp throughout the tournament.
Both he - and Messi biographer Balague - were
struck by how Messi filled that vacuum, from as early as the first match.
A shock 2-1 defeat by Saudi Arabia left one
of the pre-tournament favourites facing a potential early flight home.
Historically, after such a setback, Messi
would spend the least time possible amid the gauntlet of microphones in the
media 'mixed zone' players are obliged to walk through.
"It took him an hour to go through the
mixed zone after Saudi Arabia," said Balague.
"He was saying 'we're better than
this'."
Martinez added: "He spoke to every
single broadcaster and repeated the same sentence: 'Believe in us, we won't let
you down. Stick with us.'
"It was a very strong sentence by
Leo."
Zabaleta said: "I think we really
enjoyed Messi, being a proper leader, but in a good way.
"In hard situations he was the only one
talking, he didn't want to send some of the inexperienced players out to the
media and that was great to see."
This willingness to front up, in the press
and on the pitch such as in the Holland game led to articles galore on the
notion that Messi had become "Maradonised" and had found his
"inner Diego".
But Mora y Araujo disagrees with the idea
that Messi was channelling, or becoming, Maradona. Rather, he was, perhaps
finally, comfortable in his own skin - a far cry from the teenager carrying the
weight of his family's fortunes at Barcelona or the superstar weighed down by a
nation's expectations at previous World Cups.
She said: "There was a lot of smiling on
the pitch. His head was up. He was confident.
"He showed and transmitted an acceptance
of himself. There was no awkwardness in delivering his awkwardness if that
makes sense.
"People were texting and writing, 'has
Messi been taken over by the spirit of Maradona...? Maradona speaks through Messi…'
No! He hasn't turned into Maradona. He has grown into himself.
"For many years there was enormous
pressure on Messi to perform, or to be, or to behave to some nebulous demand to
be more Argentinean, to be more passionate, to be more like Maradona.
Messi, who
turned 19 at the tournament, was an unused substitute in Argentina's
quarter-final defeat against hosts Germany at the 2006 World Cup
"I think for a long time he was
uncomfortable with that.
"The main observable thing about Messi
at this World Cup was a comfort in his own body. Less pressure to perform. More
comfortable being himself."
Comfortable in himself. And comfortable with
the stakes.
"I think he must have felt the breath of
history on his shoulder. He must have felt time closing in on him," said
Wilson.
According to Mora y Araujo, dealing with the
clock ticking down on his career was Messi's greatest feat in Qatar. For a
month he was able to kept calm, without dulling a ferocious desire to win.
"That's a very interesting combination.
At the 2006 World Cup, he famously sat on the bench and didn't even get to play
in the quarter-final defeat by Germany.
"There was a grouching, tantrum-y,
child-like reaction so at odds with the Messi we saw in Qatar.
"It is a great progression to a point of
emotional maturity.
"And I think it's wonderful to see that
growth over a career of almost two decades."
Did Messi come of age? Did he channel the
late Maradona? Did he rediscover a personality left behind in the backstreet
games of his hometown of Rosario?
Whatever was going on in Messi's mind in the
Middle East, it helped realise his sole focus - the winner's medal.
"I think after this World Cup - he
completed football," Martinez said.
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