What Messi Means

“Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn’t end.” As it is in life and love, so it is in soccer. From the outset, the 2026 World Cup was sure to mark an ending for Lionel Messi—not to his career as a whole, and likely not even to his days with the Argentina national team, but to his time on the sport’s center stage, the venue which featured the 20-year unfurling of the exciting, hopeful, heartbreaking, agonizing, inspiring, and triumphant story that has defined one of the greatest tales sports have ever told.

Across its full length, Messi’s career at the World Cup was anything but predictable—featuring defeat when it seemed he would win, wins when it seemed victory had passed him by, and, most ridiculous of all, one last final against a teenager he had, unsuspectingly but almost literally, baptized as his heir when that teen was a baby. But being a story about life, this one too would have only one ending: Father Time confirming his undefeated record by at last claiming victory over one of his most stubborn opponents. It’s not that Messi’s Argentina had to lose to Spain, but Messi did and does have to lose to the inexorable passage of time. The loss on Sunday, and his completely peripheral role in the action therein, just made for a particularly tidy conclusion. I wouldn’t exactly call the match’s outcome scripted, at least not in the conspiratorial, “FIFA is rigging it!” sense that clouded too much of the conversation around Argentina’s tournament, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the paranoiacs disagree. After all, Tom Cruise, who first spoke the famous quote that starts this article, took to the field before Sunday’s final and gave a speech about the nature of life, love, and soccer.

Throughout the tournament, there has been a duality at the heart of Messi’s 2026 World Cup. On one hand, seeing how incredibly he played made you think, Holy shit, Messi is 39 years old and is still the best! On the other, the unmistakable limitations of his aged body, evident even on his best days, made you think, Man, 39-year-old Messi is nowhere near as good as the younger versions. Far from being any kind of criticism, the latter impression only amplified the former. It speaks to how amazing a player he is and was: even when ambling around the pitch with a cane and creaky knees, Messi can still do things the rest can only dream about. Still, 39 isn’t 25, or even 35. The total anonymity Messi displayed in such a one-sided final can only be understood as proof that, for all the skills he has successfully preserved over the years, he has nevertheless lost a lot of what once made him at least omnipresent, and very often omnipotent.