It may sound at once counter-intuitive and ludicrously impossible, but the key to getting a clear and accurate measure of Lionel Messi’s greatness lies in forgetting — that is, forgetting that you ever saw him play, simply wiping your memory clean of every single act of outrageous genius that the little Argentine has conjured up, and which you have been fortunate enough to have witnessed.
In a world where we feel eminently capable of rating players’ merit only because we are able to remember — forget, for a moment, Marcel Proust’s sagacious utterance on remembrance of things past — only because we can readily recall great moments of athletic perfection, who would think that some sort of selective amnesia would do the trick in placing a virtuoso conductor of football orchestra in his rightful place in the pantheon?
But try this. Just imagine Messi never existed. And then imagine if you could have ever imagined that the kind of things that the Barcelona superstar has done on the field was humanly possible.
How tough an ask is this? Is it at all realistic? Or, does it sound downright ridiculous?
Surely, if you are from the Baby Boomer generation, you’d perhaps tend to rate Pele right at the top. The great Brazilian not only featured in three of his country’s World Cup triumphs but also won six Brazilian championships for Santos, although the standard of European club competition of the new millennium, and the demands made by it, are not at all comparable to inter-club football in Brazil in the 1960s.
Then there will be plenty of support for Diego Maradona too. The flawed genius won a World Cup for Argentina almost single-handedly — no pun intended, so forget the Hand of God goal — in Mexico in 1986.
But Maradona himself has admitted recently that Messi is “killing it with his goals.’’ What the ‘it’ refers to may be debatable; but one might presume that it has something to do with the comparison between the demi-god of the 1980s and the Barca maestro; for those words were spoken not long after Messi’s second goal in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League semifinal against Bayern Munich last week left those watching in a state of slack-jawed stupefaction.
Numero Uno If the apogee of athletic accomplishment is to be able to bring to life moments that are gorgeous and transcendent, then few modern sportsmen of this generation — with the possible exception of Roger Federer at his peak — can come anywhere close to Messi.
And that second goal, chipped exquisitely over Manuel Neuer after humiliating, rather than merely outwitting, Jerome Boateng, was as fine an example of Mesgic (to marry Messi and his magic) as you might have ever seen.
“Messi is just incredible. He is the best player of all time. I can compare him with Pele,” said Pep Guardiola, the man who won three La Liga trophies and two Champions League titles with Messi’s Barcelona.
Even from a nation where the vast majority may have little time for soccer, the reactions were characterised by awe of the jaw-dropping variety. “MagisterialMessi” gushed NBA legend Kobe Bryant on Twitter.
But the former English striker Gary Linekar captured the essence of that goal, as a spectator, the best. “It’s such a joy to watch Messi. The greatest!”
The graceful economy of movement, the kinaesthetic awareness, the sheer joy in the process of attaining peak performance...all these make Messi in full flow an incandescently beautiful sight.
Jean Cocteau, the French writer and filmmaker, wrote this short two-sentence masterpiece in describing the greatness of the ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky: “His body knew. His limbs had intelligence.’’
Boateng, and hundreds of other footballers of this era, were they as eloquent, would perhaps say something to match this when talking of Messi.
Now, tell me, if you have succeeded in that little forgetting trick, could you have imagined that such a state was attainable on a football field time and again?
Expressing the inexpressible Surely Pele, George Best, Maradona and a few others might have now and then forced you to find expression for the inexpressible with their wizardry.
But it is debatable if they have done so as many times as has Messi.
Jamie Carragher, the former English footballer, who is now a Sky Sports commentator, said it best in his The Daily Mail column.
“It was a privilege to be in the Nou Camp on Wednesday and when Messi scored that magical second goal to flatten Bayern Munich, the reaction in the Sky studio was as frenzied as the Catalans who surrounded us; we were all out of our seats, shouting, screaming and acclaiming his genius.’’
Messi’s is undoubtedly the most eloquent pair of feet seen in modern football. And this is precisely why a good number of his contemporaries as well as former greats believe that he is ``from another planet.’’
We know of only one planet; of only one form of life. And Messi too is a product of Darwinian evolution, which sounds kind of mundane.
But as John Updike wrote, here is a man who “give[s] the mundane its beautiful due.’’
No more shouting and screaming, please. After you have seen it all, just sit quietly and meditate: genius, genius, genius. And… thanks, thanks, thanks.
