Before penalties started at the end of the World Cup final, I left the room on the second floor of the Football Cafe in New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood, where I was watching the match along with a friend, a foot or so from Susan Sarandon (somehow), and ran up to the roof.
I have never been able to stomach watching penalties as a player or as a fan. It’s a trait I share with my father, who was once so rattled after the first few penalties while we were watching a match that he left to go to sleep because they were driving up his anxiety.
There is a photo of Pep Guardiola sitting in a chair with his arms folded, facing away from goal as his team took penalties. To me, that’s the only possible way to deal; that and the match had already exhausted me of emotion. Argentina had given up a two-goal lead after dominating for almost 80 minutes. The teams traded goals in extra time, but each time it seemed that Argentina had won, France — Kylian Mbappe in particular — would pull right back. I was already breathing hard, as if I had played 120 minutes as well. So, to avoid becoming an emotional mess, I ran up to the roof of the building, sat in one of the few seats there, folded my arms and looked out into the blue sky of Sunday afternoon.
The problem with trying to avoid the World Cup, especially in one of the biggest cities in the world, is that one would have to lock themselves in their apartment and avoid everything. Sitting on the roof, I was instead exposed to a different kind of anxiety. All around me, from the apartments nearby and the hundreds of people watching the match below me, were the sounds of the game. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. After every penalty, the world around me swelled with reaction, loud cheering mixed as well with groans of disappointment, which made it impossible to tell which team was doing well. Then my phone started vibrating with friends and family reacting to the makes and misses. The plan to avoid what was going on was failing spectacularly.
– ESPN’s writers pick their 2022 World Cup best XIs
Like millions of people around the world, I badly wanted Lionel Messi to win the World Cup. And because the sport of football, the absurd drama of it all, has a way of making one religious in the silliest way, I was sitting on the roof with my eyes closed, trying to focus my ears away from the sounds of the game and, deep inside my heart, asking God or any higher power who was open to being convinced that Messi be allowed the title that has eluded him his whole career.
There was nothing that I could bargain with. Instead, I was making the argument that it would make so many people happy. Knowing that God and the gods have more important things to worry about, I also started preparing myself for the bitterness of disappointment.
The bad moment came, and though a loss in the group stages isn’t always fatal, it was still hard not to panic.
It took until the ending of their game against Poland for a bit of relief to set in. Argentina was not only assured a place in the knockout rounds, but also finished top of the group. Things were going well, though relief is not relaxation. It’s impossible to relax during the World Cup, even when one doesn’t have a direct rooting interest. The competition can be so chaotic that until the last second of a match is over, everything feels possible. When one does have a direct rooting interest, the tournament feels like ingenious torture.
What the loss against Saudi Arabia also did was expose Argentina as vulnerable. They were defeated by two extraordinary goals, which could be reasonably written off as a bizarre event, but the World Cup has a penchant for making these kinds of bizarre events common. The loss was a football memento mori.
What tends to annoy me so much about the narratives surrounding players like Messi, and the comparisons to past and present greats, is that as fun and easy as those arguments are to make and latch onto, it can sometimes cloud the true wonder of the sport. It seems to me that it would be better if athletes were judged as artists as well, so that we can see their great performances and seasons as the masterpieces that they are. Performances that we should sometimes stand in front of, without debating and trying to tear each down in comparison to another, and simply enjoy.
– Where does Qatar 2022 rank among all-time World Cups?
What I adore about Messi is similar to what I adored about Kaká. He’s an artist who has interpreted the sport in such a phenomenal way that it has expanded the possibilities for wonder within it. His stats speak for themselves; what can’t be measured, and what he is also a master of, are those moments of awe. He did things routinely, and with ease, that others spent their whole careers chasing just once.
For almost two decades, whenever Messi got the ball, the possibility that something brilliant could happen wasn’t just a hope or ideal, but an assured thing. A pass, a feint, a nutmeg, a dribble, an assist, a goal. He could get the ball and beat four or five defenders, cutting through them at full speed, with hands all over him, and it would feel surreal. Until he then did it again. And again. And again. Or he’d make a pass that would leave even his most experienced and creative teammates speechless. Even as he got older and no longer had the speed and dribbling that were some of his best weapons, he transformed into an unassailable playmaker to continue his singular creative practice.
