When the World Cup winners play Austria on Monday, the Argentine genius Lionel Messi will be on the verge of making even more football history.
Messi, who turns 39 on Wednesday, tied Miroslav Klose’s all-time World Cup record of 16 goals with a hat-trick in a 3-0 victory over Algeria. It was then revealed that his father is recuperating from an unidentified “health issue” after the captain sobbed after his first goal.
Messi, an attacker for Inter Miami, had not even committed to participating in the competition in North America until the very last minute. However, no one could have reasonably predicted that he would not be leading Argentina’s quest to become the first side to win back-to-back World Cup titles since Brazil in 1962.
Four years ago, the former Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain wizard led his country to victory in the World Cup, and the opportunity to serve his country on the largest platform once more proved to be too much to resist. Messi would have the ideal opportunity to surpass Klose’s record in Argentina’s second group match against Austria at the magnificent air-conditioned Dallas Cowboys stadium.
“In the end, it’s just a statistic and nothing more,” AFP quoted Messi, widely regarded as the greatest footballer of all time, as saying.
With one game remaining, a victory over Austria would put Lionel Scaloni’s team on the verge of the round of 32 as Group J victors, allowing Messi to recover for the knockout stages.
Under the leadership of the highly regarded Ralf Rangnick, Austria will not be easy to beat. After defeating rookies Jordan 3-1, they are also getting closer to the next round.
It’s easy to forget that Messi wasn’t always seen as a deity by Argentina supporters after the exhilaration of four years ago. Prior to his more than 15 brilliant years at Barcelona, there were concerns that he had not demonstrated the same level of brilliance for his nation.
Now that he is getting close to middle age, Messi’s mere presence motivates his teammates both on and off the field.
“If anyone thought this group was better off without Leo, today it became clear that Leo is the most important of them all,” midfielder Alexis Mac Allister said after the Algeria show.
Even if his legs aren’t as strong as they once were and he now plays more sporadically, the rest of the Argentina team is more than willing to do the grunt work and let him play when he wants.
Messi’s teammate at his first World Cup in 2006, Scaloni, has created an ecology around their skipper.
“He’s playing with a group of friends, with people that are going to play with their heart for him. Whenever they need to have a conversation with him they can just approach him and it’s really hard to explain whatever he conveys. I could stay here with you for over an hour trying to explain exactly what he does, but you need to be there to really understand. You need to understand the atmosphere, the ambience,” said the Argentina boss.
The Argentina players have made it clear that they will stop at nothing to enable Messi to wreak his greatest havoc on opposition defenses, in contrast to Portugal, where an aging Cristiano Ronaldo has become a headache for coach Roberto Martinez.
“He’s been my idol since I was a kid. Naturally, you want to repay that,” his fellow forward Julian Alvarez told DAZN.
In a more direct statement, Rodrigo De Paul, who plays alongside Messi at Inter Miami, said: “He makes you want to go to war if he asks you to.”
