With Argentina trailing Germany in the 120th minute of the World Cup final, Lionel Messi drew a foul on the edge of the penalty area. He had a chance to score the latest goal in the tournament's history, send the match to penalties and end any debate about whether or not he's on Pele and Diego Maradona's level once and for all.
Lionel Messi’s greatness isn’t defined by the World Cup
After three World Cups, Lionel Messi has yet to lift the biggest prize in world soccer. He’s on Pele and Diego Maradona’s level anyway.
Laurence Griffiths
As Messi accepted the Golden Ball award that he neither wanted, nor had anything to do with handing out, he was roundly criticized, as if he had conspired with FIFA to steal it from James Rodriguez and complete a master marketing plan. Nothing short of smacking Sepp Blatter over the head with the trophy would have drawn praise in that moment.
Messi set up the game-winning goal in the Round of 16 and wasn’t needed to produce a victory in the quarterfinals, but when his team needed him the most in the semifinals and final, he disappointed. He wasn’t terrible, but he wasn’t the Messi anyone expected to see either. Everyone was waiting for him to take over at some point, but for 120 minutes of two straight games, Messi was unable to produce a goal or an assist. And that, many will have you believe, is what separates him from Maradona and Pele.
World Cup
However, the career paths of these three players makes it impossible to compare them. Debates will still be had forever, and they’ll include some other transcendent player that comes along in the next 20 years, but they’ll never be settled. There’s nothing that clearly separates any of Messi, Maradona or Pele from the other two, with each claiming accolades the other two will never be able to touch.
Pele has won the World Cup three times and scored over 1000 professional goals, but he never played in Europe. Whether he was too scared to go somewhere he might be less than a king or making a selfless decision for the good of his country is a question that’s never been answered, but it’s also irrelevant. What matters is that he never went. He played in Intercontinental Cup finals against great European teams, but he never spent an entire season playing at that level.
He also played on three of the greatest international teams of all time, surrounded by other superstars. When Pele went down with an injury in the 1962 World Cup, his team didn't need him. They went on to win the tournament without him. Does this Argentina team get past the Round of 16 without Lionel Messi? And what would have happened to Brazil in 1970 if Jairzinho and Rivellino went down, like Angel Di Maria and Sergio Aguero -- nowhere near the stars those two were in their time -- did?
Maradona went to Europe and was excellent, but he never made a European Cup quarterfinal with Napoli. He didn't have the teammates Messi has at Barcelona by any stretch of the imagination, but Messi's still lifted that trophy three times. Messi also scored more goals for Barcelona in the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons than Maradona did in his entire 7-year career at Napoli. The most goals Maradona has ever scored in a season in Europe is 21. Messi? 73. And Pele's best competitive scoring season? 66 goals.
This isn’t to say that Messi is clearly better than Pele or Maradona, just that a claim he’s the best to ever play the game shouldn’t be dismissed. Pele and Maradona have more World Cup wins and spectacular World Cup moments, but Messi has accomplished things that Pele and Maradona didn’t even really try to achieve, and very well could have failed at even if they did.
Even if Messi never wins the World Cup and never wins another Golden Ball in much more convincing fashion, he’ll always have a more impressive scoring record than Pele and Maradona. He’ll always have three more European cups than both of them. His final kick of the World Cup was embarrassing, but it shouldn’t define his career.
Messi has to wait another four years to prove his worth to people who think there’s only one soccer competition that matters, but he’s clearly one of the greatest players of all time, and he may very well finish his career acknowledged as clearly best to have ever lived. And it doesn’t matter where fans and pundits choose to place him in the pantheon of the stars: He’s still Lionel Messi, and we’re still lucky to have him.
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