It is not often that professional footballers retire from internationals at the peak of their game. When the 29-year-old Lionel Messi, widely reckoned to be the most skilled footballer today, announced after the 2016 Copa America Final against Chile that
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Indeed, it has been Messi’s unique burden — and a heavy one — that his relative lack of international success is often projected against his stupendous record as a club footballer. As the highest goal-scorer and chief playmaker for FC Barcelona, he has been crucial to the team’s four UEFA Champions League victories and eight La Liga titles, marking the club’s most proficient spell of winning both in Europe and in Spain. FC Barcelona’s talent pool has been wider and the team’s technical superiority has been honed over two decades, with Messi himself being a product of the club’s youth system. Argentina did not manage to consistently field a squad that complemented Messi’s unique talents as much as his club did. To his credit, he has played at different positions for his country and fulfilled various tactical roles — as a winger, forward and more recently as an midfield playmaker, the “ enganche” — and performed them well. But with teams employing defensive and hard-nosed measures to curtail Messi — as Chile did in the Copa finals — it was left to his playmaking and his team-mates’ abilities to lift the squad. This has been much easier with FC Barcelona with its full complement of skilled footballers than with Argentina in the last decade.