How do you finish writing a masterpiece? It’s a question some of the greatest minds in history have wrestled with.
For Lionel Messi, the World Cup story is winding down, and with it, his iconic career reaches its final chapter. The climax and falling action have been written. This unbelievable tale just needs a conclusion.
As if it were penned by Shakespeare or Sophocles, Messi’s swan song on the world’s stage is shaping up to rival anything they ever wrote.
A young prodigy brought halfway around the world, from Rosario, Argentina to Barcelona, Spain on a promise scribbled on a paper napkin because there was nothing else to sign him on. Messi’s ascension through La Masia and Barcelona coincides almost exactly with Spain’s rise as a world power in international soccer.
Leo first stepped on the Camp Nou field in 2004, just months after Spain was embarrassed in the group stage at the Euros. Four years later, the Pep Guardiola revolution was underway with Messi leading the charge, while Spain was conquering the first of three straight major titles with a Barcelona-bred nucleus.
In an alternate universe, the pride of Argentina and the heir apparent to Diego Maradona could’ve chosen the easier path of joining his Barca mates to form a Spain dynasty. Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Piqué, Puyol. The men Leo thrived with at the club level could’ve easily been his ticket to international glory.
He could’ve been forming triangles with them in the red of Spain and winning every trophy imaginable. Instead, he stayed loyal to his birth country, endured unimaginable pain and ridicule, and fulfilled his prophecy of overtaking Maradona in Argentina’s eyes.
Now, many years, tears, and triumphs later, it all converges for one final showdown between the boy who became king and the adopted nation that helped raise him.
Messi’s legacy is sealed.
Win or lose against La Roja in New Jersey on Sunday, he will go down as the greatest soccer player who ever lived. The sweet poetry of it all is that the next chosen one, the future of the sport, another left-footed gift from God bred in La Masia, stands on the other side hoping to end this final chapter in the tone of a Greek tragedy instead of a fairytale.
Whether it closes with a second World Cup trophy or a bittersweet passing of the torch, you couldn’t have asked for a more poetic final act for one of the greatest tales ever written.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The poetry of Lionel Messi’s final World Cup act
