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With Lionel Messi’s Return to Form, His Biggest Career Challenge Now Awaits Him With Bated Breath

Messi returns to form

Lionel Messi is 35 years old, and sports generalists would argue that it is only natural for a player’s powers to start waning with age and that he cannot be the same player he was five years ago or even two years ago. And yet, his decline in form – particularly over the last year – has had more to do with circumstance than age. But as the World Cup draws near, the mercurial Argentine has begun to hit form again.

Lionel Messi Finally Hits Form Again, But Not Before Enduring a Difficult Period

The Barcelona Exit

Over two years ago, in the summer of 2020, Barcelona were destroyed 8-2 at Camp Nou in the Champions League semifinal second leg by Bayern Munich, who went on to win the tournament that season. Less than a fortnight later, Messi expressed his desire to leave the Catalan giants because he wasn’t happy with how the club was run. Eventually, however, he ended up staying at his home of 20 years for another season.

When a player, particularly a high-profile one, is forced to stay when they want to leave, it almost never ends well for either party. And yet, Messi finished the 2020/21 season with an astonishing 38 goals and 14 assists. Although the big trophies eluded Barcelona, For him the season could not have ended any better as he lifted his first major trophy with Argentina when they beat Brazil in the final of the Copa America.

At first, it is difficult to fathom why the Copa America title tasted extra sweet to Messi, who has won a record 35 trophies with Barcelona, including 10 La Liga titles, 4 Champions Leagues, and 7 Copa del Reys. It is, however, no secret that success, as much as it had come to him seamlessly in blue and yellow, eluded him for the longest time in blue and white.

Read More: Messi’s Greatest Barcelona Goals

He had to settle for a runners-up medal on three occasions (2007, 2015, and 2016) before he could get his hands on the trophy last year. At the 2014 World Cup, he came agonisingly close to – as many believe – replicating Diego Maradona’s thrill and success at the 1986 World Cup. Messi, who was involved in 7 of the 8 goals Argentina scored in the finals and was the best player at the tournament by some distance, fell short at the last leg against Germany.

Then in 2016, he missed a penalty in the shootout in the final against Chile. After Argentina had lost a second successive Copa America final, Messi was the subject of unrelenting – some would say unfair – criticism. So much so that he decided to retire from international football, only to return a couple of months later.

Read More: Xavi Would Love to Bring Messi Back to Barcelona

All this while, in what almost seemed like a parallel universe, the goals and accolades were coming thick and fast for him at club level. But as Messi saw it, the threads at Barcelona – perhaps the most carefully woven fabric world football has ever seen – were being picked apart almost strategically, tainted by politics.

The Argentinian international had seen enough, and when his contract was up in the summer of 2021, he chose to leave, not because he wanted to but because he was left with no other choice and signed with Paris Saint-Germain.

A Slow Start To Life at Paris Saint-Germain

On the back of that bitter cause célèbre, it is not hard to imagine that Messi might not have been in the best space emotionally, with his mind still at Barcelona but also aware that there was a job to be done as a footballer for PSG.

It was no surprise then that Messi was largely underwhelming – almost anonymous – last season, contributing a meagre 11 goals and 15 assists for PSG. Statistics might reflect only half the story in football, but the other half here was not all that pretty either. His impact had reduced alarmingly, and this was demonstrated by how Real Madrid fans seemed more fearful of Kylian Mbappe than of him in their Champions League Round of 16 tie.

Read More: Take a Look at PSG Before the Qatari Takeover

Enter this season. Messi has 12 goals and 13 assists already. He is the main man again, whose graph of performance will likely determine which way the tide will swing in the big games. It also helps that he finds himself in good company at PSG. In fact, since Qatar Sports Investments’ takeover of the club in 2012, this season looks like their best bet to win the Champions League.

The French club have tried it all in the last ten years. First, the Zlatan Ibrahimovic era, where they never seemed genuine Champions League title contenders. Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Bayern Munich (perhaps in that exact same order) were always a couple of notches above them. Then came the hot signing of Neymar in the summer of 2017 for the sort of fee that, if you enter it on google and convert it to the lowest possible valued currency, it might just give you an error. Shortly after that, Mbappe arrived, but it was not quite working for PSG on Europe’s biggest stage even then, as Neymar either went missing or was injured in the crucial games.

The Mercurial Messi Lights up the Parc des Princes

When Messi receives the ball on the edge of the D, the football world slouches forward in trepidation. Then when he steps inside onto his left, leaving the defender for dead, spectators are half an inch off their seats. And when he slots the ball into the bottom corner in typical fashion, the entire stadium seems to turn a shade of Messi-induced blue (or whatever colour jersey he’s wearing). The opponents, almost in quiet acquiescence, walk to the centre circle for the restart, at which point, viewers give out a sigh in astonishment and admiration, as if, for a brief moment, humanity had just been salvaged.

This was Messi’s second goal against Maccabi Haifa in PSG‘s 7-2 win in the Champions League. It was not the first time he had given fans a moment like that. A while after the match ended, a feeling of oddity lingered. While the world was marvelling at his genius, there was a sense of novelty – too predominant to ignore – to his performance. This kind of display from Messi had been routine for a decade and a half, but somehow, it felt as if the world had almost forgotten what it was like to watch him in full swing.

Messi Returns to Form in World Cup Year

This season, however, Neymar and Mbappe have both been in the form of their lives. The Brazilian has 14 goals and 11 assists, and the Frenchman has been equally good, if not better, with 17 goals and 4 assists. Add Messi to the mix of this aggressive yet moderately balanced PSG side, and there is a recipe for potential Champions League glory.

There is an argument about other teams being better than PSG this season, equipped with better squads (think Manchester City), with more solid, well-gelled teams (think Bayern Munich).

And that segues the conversation perfectly to the World Cup this year. Even if we count out the two penny-halfpennies, there is enough of a shout for quite a few teams – England, Brazil, Spain, and Germany to win the World Cup.

And yet, in both the Champions League and the World Cup, there has been enough evidence since 2005 that there is hardly a team in world football that can stop Messi when he is in the mood.

If Messi can indeed carry Argentina all the way in Qatar, it will wipe out any doubt from the minds of those who do not yet consider him the best player to ever kick a ball only because he hasn’t won the biggest competition with his country. The Champions League, for a player who has won it four times already, might seem like a small matter compared to the World Cup. But Messi has often been labelled a ‘Barcelona player’. Someone so suited to their system that it renders him ineffective in any other, and so winning the Big Ears with another club would also be a big statement, leaving hardly any room for doubt regarding what he lacked after he retires.

For the aforementioned reasons, this could well prove to be the biggest season of Messi’s career. But even if it isn’t, at least he has fans in trepidation again, off their seats again, and for a brief moment, when he does his thing, humanity is salvaged again.

Prem Deshpande

Prem Deshpande

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