Argentina vs France LIVE – FIFA WC Final LIVE: Waiting for Lionel Messi at the touchline, after the extended celebrations with the fans, was Lionel Scaloni. He wrapped him in an embrace, tears rolling down his cheeks, blending with the sweat on Messi’s shirt. Only a few days ago Scaloni had urged his team to restrain their emotions, but here the manager was in a moment of unrestrained emotions. Others from dugout intervened, Scaloni’s assistants Pablo Aimar and Walter Samuels too leapt over Messi. Perhaps, Messi too might have shed a drop of tear, as the moment that he is a step away from fulfilling his last burning dream, that is to win a World Cup, began to sink in. Follow FIFA World Cup 2022 FINAL updates with InsideSport.IN.
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The moment fittingly captured the unshakeable bond within the team, the robe of comfort around Messi. How Messi wants to win the World Cup for his country and Diego Maradona—never has he called it “my dream” but always “our dream.” How the country, team and coaches want to win the World Cup for Messi.
It has not always been the case within the team; there were few such moments of raw, emotional outpour during the last World Cup under Alejandro Sabella, when he resembled a fastidious college lecturer and Messi cut a detached, often isolated figure, in a melancholic world of himself. He had, allegedly, fallen out with assistants too. One of the assistants. Claudio Gugnali claimed that, “When we tell him something that bothers him, he reacts.”
Most of the present crew were his teammates, some, like Aimar, he looked up to when polishing his genius at the La Masia Academy, men he calls friends and brothers. Both Ayala and Scaloni were in the eleven when Messi made his first appearance for his country, in a friendly match against Hungary in 2005, when he came in as a second-half substitute and was sent off after 45 seconds on the pitch for a challenge on Vilmos Vanczák.
Years later, but before Scaloni became the country’s coach, Messi revisited the game. “I was being fouled and then I pulled his shirt, he fell down and he exaggerated his reaction. I was in tears, but I remember Leo (Scaloni) and Juan (Pablo Sorin) protesting, pleading with the referee. After the game, I was still crying but all of them comforted me.”
Argentina’s pin-up boy then was Aimar, Messi’s idol with laid-back wavy hair and insouciant passing range. “He was, and is, my idol. I really like to watch him play and I have followed his career since the beginning at River Plate. When I grew up all I wanted was to be like him,” he would say. They played together in the 2006 World Cup, and were pitted against each other in countless Barcelona versus Valencia/Zaragoza encounters. Years later, Aimar bursted into tears when he watched Messi score against Mexico in the group stage. “From being his idol, to being playing with him and now part of the coaching group, this has been a most beautiful journey. A privilege,” he told Clarin before the World Cup.
After the World Cup in Russia, Messi shrunk into a self-woven shell. The national team seemed like a burden that was crushing him, a blue-and-white painted cage of suffocation. Rumours floated around that he had snapped his ties with the national team, and even if he did not officially announce his retirement, he was practically retired. Even before the World Cup, Messi seemed disillusioned and had deliberated on retiring. “I was thinking about this in the dressing room. That’s it. The national team is over for me. It’s been four finals. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be for me. I couldn’t do it. That’s it.”
Then Scaloni, who was Sabella’s assistant but forged in the ideals of his mentor Jose Pekerman, sent him a simple WhatsApp message, “Hi Leo, I’m Scaloni. With Pablo (Pablo) we want to talk to you (with you).”
Messi could not refuse them because they were both friends. A more detailed telephone conversation followed, and Scaloni won him over with his vision. Scaloni later recounted to ESPN: “He told us that he’d come back, that he was committed and that if we called him, he’d play. It was very natural. He shows a love for the national team which is evident when you see him play.” Messi was convinced to not only extend his international career but also win what he has not won. The first target was COPA, he won it last year. The next World Cup, he is just a match away.
Scaloni was not the coach Argentina wanted. High-profile ones like Mauricio Pochettino were approached but could not strike a deal. But Scaloni turned out to be the manager Argentina needed. Someone low-profile yet firm, not a coach-philosopher but a coach who understood his team, unassuming yet forthright. He is not fixated with theories and tactics, like Sabella, but more flexible in his methods. There was so much criticism over his appointment that Diego Maradona deemed him “not even capable of directing traffic”. But he has now won his critics over.
He immediately roped in Aimar, Ayala and Samuels. All experienced footballers, but inexperienced coaches. Scaloni was criticised. He reasoned: “They are not only good coaches but legends of the game that the players would look up to.” What he spoke without speaking is all had a streak of combativeness that stood out as much as their skills in their peak. If Argentina were to win trophies, they had to be combative. Perhaps, it was the feistiness of Samuels and Ayala that Messi channeled against the Dutch.
As importantly, Scaloni and Co created an environment of brotherhood in the team. In Sabella’s days, the team had resembled an accumulation of jewels picked from different clubs and playing in their own worlds. Scaloni gradually weeded many out—like Javier Mascherano, Gonzalo Higuain, Lucas Biglia, Ever Banega and Marcos Rojo—and blooded younger ones such as Lautaro Martinez, Rodrigo De Paul, Leandro Paredes and Enzo Fernandez. In them Messi found love and brotherhood, perhaps for the first time he left Barcelona. In Barcelona, it was always about brotherhood and camaraderie, an ideal Johan Cruyff had installed.
The focal point remained Messi, yet the focus was not unflinching enough to suffocate him. He was not imprisoned in a theoretical prison of tactics. He was furnished a free role, “because”, as Scaloni admits, “he sees football in a different plane.” The indulgence is not to the degree of other players suffering, but coexisting harmoniously. It inadvertently helped that most of the youngsters grew up as Messi fanboys and are willing to do anything for him. It was not always the case with his contemporaries around. Just a couple of them remain in this team—Angel di Maria and Nicolas Otamendi. One of his ex-teammates, Sergio Aguero, handed him out the man of the match award after the Croatia game. Aguero cried, showing how much the moment meant for him.
In a sense, though Messi is the eldest member of the team, he might not feel like one. For there are those that played with him, those he had idolised, those that he can connect with, those that can understand him, and those that he could lean on for advice, opinions and suggestions. Maybe, he is feeling young again, and thus putting on a vintage show.
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