Of all, them.
Of the many looks that the grand final in Qatar deserves, the beautiful duel between Messi and Mbappé is the one that generates the most expectation.
Two companions, two generations, two styles.
They represent the eternal and mythological struggle between power and wisdom that, whatever the result, soccer will recreate and the World Cup will make famous.
Two leaders so universal that at this point they seem like fictional characters.
Comic book heroes with superpowers and, at the same time, poor guys with the demand of a country on their backs.
The final will be a separate match between two unique footballers: one who represents the past and the other the future, but on Sunday they will combine everything in the present and forever, because the World Cup makes history without asking about age.
While Mbappé and Messi look for the moment to open the game on the channel,
The incomparable feeling.
It makes me want to continue around to portray the football that is leaving and the one that is coming, but my body asks me to be
Argentine
.
I think that if this World Cup, for well-known reasons, had something artificial, Argentina contributed to give it life and authenticity.
We are talking about an impoverished country that politics has divided into antagonistic halves, but that found in this Selection the illusion to unite, even to feel more and better country than the one we knew how to build.
A crazy, singing and superstitious passion that not everyone understands and that only has the purpose of continuing to celebrate the "old and beloved Argentine football", as Menotti once said.
In the communion achieved between those who shout and those who play, there is a strange coherence: the fans sweat like players and the players feel football like fans.
All to defend the pride of a football that, informal as it may seem, is a substantial part of our identity.
A head full of football.
Messi is no longer a player, but a wise man, an idea of perfection that the genius rounded off after a thousand games.
He found the synthesis of the infinite game and expresses it in small doses and with the rhythmic rhythm that his physique allows him at this point.
In everything he does there is competitive bravery, but also something pedagogical, as if he wanted to tell us, in each intervention, this is what football is.
I believe him and it's beautiful to see that everyone already believes him because what he does is difficult, beautiful, useful and exciting.
What else does it take to love someone?
Messi has chosen the World Cup in Qatar to summarize, showing us glorious flashes, synthesis that contain the entirety of football.
The pause, the feint, the distraction, the deceit, the ability to agree time and space, the punctuality of the pass, the poison of the shot,
The owner of the World Cup.
Lionel Scaloni and the coaching staff that accompanies him worked with skill and wise discretion.
They knew that center stage did not belong to them.
If soccer is competition, Messi;
if soccer is art, Messi;
if football is spectacle, Messi;
If football is about men who play with a life story behind them, Messi too, because at this point, if this World Cup has a backbone story, it is indisputably Messi's.
He led like never before a group of talented players who know their trade inside out, he feels that soccer is a popular mandate and they had the courage to overcome obstacles that pushed the game to the limit.
The prize is a World Cup final.
Thanks for that guys.
And why not?
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