"What are you looking at, silly, go over there." Messi did not need to become Maradona to win the World Cup but it is likely that, inwardly, Leo believed that he did. The gesture of the captain of the albiceleste against the Dutch player Wout Weghorst, after Argentina's victory in the quarterfinals, was not calculated but impulsive; a hot outburst, as seen in the images.
Unconsciously, with that phrase, La Pulga was transmuted into Pelusa, just as Argentine fans have been demanding of Messi since he made his debut with the senior team 17 years ago.
If the star had missed any of the two penalties he converted and Argentina had lost, today Leo would be the main culprit. And, of course, he would not have surpassed Diego even if Maradona never won four Champions Leagues, ten Spanish Leagues, a total of 25 titles with Barça or a Copa América, demonstrating a regularity that the Argentine myth never exhibited.
This hypothesis has already come true in the past and its maximum exponent occurred when the then Barcelona player exploded and announced that he was leaving the national team, after the defeat against Chile in the 2016 Copa América final.
The Argentines did not understand why Messi was the best in the world with Barça but could not make the albiceleste champion, without realizing that in Barcelona he was part of a team, a gear where football modesty and generosity were a trademark , while Argentina was a sum of individualities united by a coach who believed that putting Ten on the field would be enough for him to string together masterful goalscoring plays. As Maradona did, even if it was with the hand of God. They were other times.
Messi grew up and became a captain and leader and a veteran admired by his teammates. And he returned to the team that he never left to claim his place. Even on the electronic traffic signs in the city of Buenos Aires, those responsible for him wrote: "Lio, don't go." He overcame the mistreatment of the Argentine media and fans who accused him of being a cold chest, of not feeling the shirt like Maradona.
It didn't matter that he was educated, that he spoke fairly, that he didn't jump into the pool and that in his private life he was a normal person, in a relationship with his longtime girlfriend and with a discreet life. On the contrary, all this worked against him.
Despite the fact that Leo was from as humble origins as Diego – he was not born in a villa but his Rosario neighborhood is not Beverly Hills – Argentines idolized Pelusa and many identified with his economic rise from poverty. A rise that was never social because Maradona, until the day he died, was from the town. The God of the people to whom everything was forgiven: from assaulting his partner to shooting journalists with a shotgun.
Messi was not even forgiven for never having played for a club in Argentina.
It is true that generalizations are always hateful and that, in Argentina, there is a certain generational gap that divides those who saw Maradona win the World Cup and those who grew up knowing that there was a half-Catalan Argentine who was said to be the best player in the world. . An irrational and bipolar gap that made the same journalists who vilified him one day exalt him the next.
Throughout this World Cup, the pressure of the Maradona spectrum has hovered over Messi, even in the song most sung by the fans; that Muchachos de La Mosca Tse-Tse, whose lyrics sing that "we can see Diego from heaven with Don Diego and with Tota encouraging Lionel." Even Maradona's parents were more miraculous for Argentines than Messi's, whose family always closed ranks and protected Leo as much or more than Don Diego and Doña Tota.
But all that was left behind. Messi is already God, a modest god and so well educated that when he gets hot the most that comes out of his mouth is “stupid”. Neither "you have it inside", nor "that they keep sucking it", emblematic phrases of Maradona that until now were part of the celebrations of the fans. Until Sunday.
Now he takes the "what do you look at" of the modest God who lacked a World Cup. There is no longer any doubt who is the best. Or if?
