Why Messi winning the WC doesn’t put him in the GOAT conversation but does get him close:
It is unfair to the whole Argentinian team , who played as one great unit, to only talk about as a Messi WC than a team win! Had it not been for players like the GK Martinez, the big match man Di Maria, Di Paul, Alvarez, Otamendi, Molina, Mac Allister etc, there would be no win.
- At 35 years old, this was his 5th attempt to win a WC. If you keep giving someone a shot at something , they will eventually win it. In comparison, Pele had long retired by age 35, and had already won 3 WCs by age 30!
- Same with his Copa America won last year in Brazil at age 34: this was his 6th Copa America attempt. Just like with the WC, You give someone so many attempts at something, they will eventually win it. Comparing to Ronaldo, he had won 2 CA by age 22 from just 2 attempts.
- While Argentina and Messi deserved to win, the road to victory wasn’t covered in red carpet. They beat Australia with difficulty in the second round. Then had to resort to penalties to beat the Netherlands. After beating Croatia in convincing fashion in the semi-final, they appeared to be on their way to an easy victory in the final against France, only to lose the lead twice and win it in penalties again. Of course, there is not much wrong with winning in PK , after all my own favorite team - Brazil - won their 1994 title through penalties. But the point is, they were far from a dominant team and more of a hustle and grind type of team.
- Messi scored 4 of his 7 goals at the WC from penalties. In fact, Argentina was awarded the most penalties in a World Cup with 5, where Messi scored 4 as mentioned earlier and missed one. This is not to suggest that taking penalties is easy , especially in a WC final, but they are relatively not as hard as scoring from open play or set pieces etc. Even if Messi got half the amount of penalties (2) and scored both, he would be on 5 goals.
- On the other hand, The team with the worst disciplinary record at Qatar 2022 was, not very shocking, Argentina! Eighteen yellow cards were shown to players from Argentina during the tournament. But oddly, not a single red!
- And last but not least and literally no one ever mentioned this since it doesn’t matter much but France’s second goal by Mbappe was the result of Messi giving the ball away leading to a French counter attack.
It is unfair to the whole Argentinian team , who played as one great unit, to only talk about as a Messi WC than a team win! Had it not been for players like the GK Martinez, the big match man Di Maria, Di Paul, Alvarez, Otamendi, Molina, Mac Allister etc, there would be no win.
