Football is so much more than numbers and tactics, so much more than a strategic chess match. Football is theatre, pure theatre of human experience and today in Atlanta, we saw a drama, a full bloodied spectacle of unfiltered human emotion.
When that final whistle shrilled through the hot Atlanta night, signaling a truly agonizing, a truly beautiful, truly heart stopping 3-2 victory for Argentina against an Egypt who have made themselves so hard to beat, the stadium did not so much erupt, as weep. And at the very heart of it all, Messi dropped to the grass. He did not jump, he did not scream and fist pump; he just buried his face in his hands.
The best player the world has ever seen, cried like a baby.
He cried with such unadulterated abandon, such utter release, such joy. Such relief. In that moment the heaviest crown in the world of sport felt light as a feather on the head of the man who has so often borne it with such grace, such dignity. Messi. Oh what a man.
Staring into the abyss
For 77 brutal, agonizing minutes, the world and its sporting inhabitants prepared for the death of the dream. Egypt playing with the spirit of a hundred lions came into this encounter and bullied and bullied. They deserved everything they have worked so hard for: two goals against the reigning champions, the second a piece of utter perfection and to be up by two against them in the last 16 it was simply sensational.
They were inspired, they were brave and they made the champions look lost.
For the first seventy odd minutes it all seemed over. Argentina were ghosts, their midfield looked sluggish, their attacks predictable and the clock ticked closer and closer to the gallows. The champions were staring directly into the heart of a devastating and ignominous exit from this tournament. But then they found themselves and the the last 13 minutes happened
The 13-minute resurrection
It was pure defiant grit and bloody-mindedness in the 79th minute when Lionel Messi deliverd a perfect cross, and Cristian Romero rose above a sea of Egyptian jerseys to hook Argentina back from the dead. The crowd inside this magnificent arena sucked in their collective breath and let it out as a huge wave of sound and emotion. And with a goal back, Argentina could breathe again, or at least, they could have a good go.
A mere four minutes later, the undisputed number ten in the world wrote his script, and what a script it would prove to be.
In the 83rd minute Messi himself made himself at home on the grass, a sublime piece of football trickery gave him an opening that he took without any bother whatsoever. The sheer pandemonium inside this stadium was a delight. And then, with the specter of extra-time hanging in the air like an oppressive, dreadful mist, Enzo Fernandez wrote himself into history with a cool and clinical finish in the 93rd minute, winning the match at the death with the third goal in just 13 minutes.
Three goals. Thirteen minutes. This stadium a sea of jubilant, crying, laughing football mad men.
The coronation of the undisputed GOAT
It was far more than a mere victory today, this was a coronation for the all-time greatest. Messi did not just save Argentina tonight, he dragged his team from the very brink of annihilation back into the tournament with one of the all-time greatest individual performances at a World Cup.
Messi now isn't just the highest scorer in World Cup history, but also the all-time leading assist maker at World Cups, and is now the first ever player in the history of the competition to have scored in six consecutive knock-out stage matches.
Today, sitting on that Atlanta grass, surrounded by his weeping team mates, Messi had proved without any question, without any doubt, not to count him out ever again.
His tears, weren’t just of relief but of twenty years of carried hopes, and expectations being momentarily eased, with a final, dazzling burst of brilliance just when it was most needed.
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