Humiliation just as likely as glory for Messi’s Argentina

Lionel Messi enters the World Cup with huge pressure on his shoulders, but he leads the worst Argentina side in a generation.

Lionel Messi isn’t a man defined by what he says. In fact, it’s rare he says anything of any note at all. Interviews, at least insightful ones, are rare from the Argentine. As an off-field personality, some might even call him boring. It’s just as well he’s the greatest soccer player of his generation on the field. But with the World Cup on the horizon, Messi made some telling remarks.

“I’ve said it lots of times, [success] doesn’t depend on a single player,” the 30-year-old made a point of highlighting after a World Cup warm-up match against Haiti in which he’d scored a hat-trick. “Even less nowadays as football has become more and more complicated. We have great players individually and little by little we’ll grow strong as a team.”

Reading between the lines, this was a symbolic pushback against the prevailing narrative around Messi. Never before has the pressure weighed so heavily on the shoulders of the playmaker. Never before in his career has expectation been so out of sync with reality. This could result in a career-defining summer for Messi.

Argentina only just made it to the World Cup in the first place, relying on a hat-trick from their best player and spiritual leader in their final qualifier to scrape through. That in itself was an illustration of where La Albiceleste are as a team at the moment — to stand any chance in Russia, Messi might have to drag them all the way himself.

It’s not realistic to expect him to do that, though. Messi might have led his country to the final of the last World Cup four years ago, but Argentina were in far better shape back then than they are now. He had help. Angel Di Maria scored a round of 16 winner in extra time against Switzerland, for example. Gonzalo Higuain also came up with the goods against Belgium in the quarterfinals. This summer, Messi doesn’t appear to have such a strong supporting cast.

To fully comprehend the pressure on Messi it’s important to look at the context this World Cup is set against for the Barcelona man. For as long as he has been one of the very best, for as long as the Diego Maradona comparisons have been around, Messi has been expected to lead his country to World Cup glory. Without that, his career, in the eyes of many, will be lacking one defining image.

Messi’s relationship with his own country and countrymen has long been a difficult one. For all his success, for all that he has achieved at the top level of the game, he doesn’t yet match up to the great Maradona in the eyes of most Argentineans. As they see it, his achievements are that of Barcelona’s, not Argentina’s. What has he done for his country? It’s a question that continues to dog Messi.

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Of course, in the grand scheme of things Messi’s career won’t be tainted should he fail to add a World Cup winner’s medal to his collection. The Champions League is where the great and good of modern soccer now make their mark and in that respect Messi has more than proven his worth over the years.

But this summer might be his last chance to quell the one doubt that threatens to taint his legacy. Even Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi’s great adversary, has an international honor with Portugal to show, winning the European Championships two years ago. At 30 years old, at the peak of his powers, Messi is running out of opportunities.

And yet he has never looked further away from World Cup glory. He’s captain of the worst Argentina team in a generation. If La Albiceleste are to go all the way in Russia this summer it will go down as one of the great World Cup triumphs. An upset, even. It’s more likely Argentina will suffer humiliation instead. In another way, that would also provide a defining moment for Messi in his struggle with his own heritage.