First, he sank to the ground, grimacing. Play continued for a few seconds and then came the communal gasp.
Lionel Messi was down. And Lionel Messi is not a player who goes down for nothing.
Argentina’s playmaker and talisman clutched his right ankle. He had fallen on his own, with no obvious kick to point to as the cause of the injury that he knew meant his evening was over.
He took off his right boot and stood up gingerly. The physios asked him how he was but they must have known. He shuffled to the touchline, every step a little dagger in Argentine hearts. Then the board went up: Nicolas Gonzalez on, Messi off.
Messi walked slowly to the bench and threw his boot onto the floor. He sunk into his seat, placing his face in his hands. Leandro Paredes, his team-mate, ruffled his hair but said nothing. What was there to say?
A second or two later, the camera returned to Messi, zooming in on the most recognisable face in football. Humanity, even. And Messi, the arch stoic, was no longer able to hold back the emotion.
The crowd chanted his name. Messi was sobbing.
The tears were for the moment — Argentina needed him; they always do — but it was impossible to abstract them from the wider context. For Messi, wherever he treads in this extended career outro, is always accompanied by the unmistakable sense of an ending.
Messi is 37. He confirmed earlier in the week that this was to be his final edition of the competition. The mood music around the Argentina camp has suggested that it might be his last major tournament, period. He will be 38 when the next World Cup starts in the United States, Mexico and Canada, and will turn 39 during the tournament.
Those endless summer days spent watching Messi gambol around the football pitches of our souls? They could now be numbered.
Stopping is never an appealing prospect for any sportsperson. Athletes die twice, they say. Messi’s incredible longevity — and continued excellence — has been an effective shield against retirement talk but no one can run forever. At some stage, everything you do becomes the last time. Everything comes laced with heavy finality.
Messi, clearly, seems to have some inkling of what awaits him on the other side of the great beyond. “I am a bit scared of it all ending,” he told ESPN Argentina earlier this year. “I try not to think about it. I try to enjoy it. I do that more now because I’m aware there’s not a lot of time left.”
Here, on a stifling, charged night at the Hard Rock Stadium, he surely wasn’t banking on being denied a chunk of that remaining balance. As he sat there on the bench, an ice pack on his swollen ankle and yellow vest covering his blue and white jersey, it was tempting to wonder what was going through Messi’s mind.
(Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images)
Perhaps, in that instance, he simply became a fan. Perhaps the vision of the team playing without him — an image he will have to get used to in the decades ahead — twisted his already knotted guts into new, uncomfortable shapes.
Post-game, Argentina head coach Lionel Scaloni said that Messi didn’t want to come off but his injury rendered any other option redundant.
“Leo has something that everyone should have,” said Scaloni. “He’s the best in history and, even with an ankle like that, he doesn’t want to go off.
“It’s not because he’s selfish but because he doesn’t want to let his team-mates down. He was born to be on a pitch.”
At least there was, in the end, relief. When Lautaro Martinez stroked home the winning goal four minutes before midnight in Miami, it was telling that the biggest huddle of players was not around the scorer. No, Argentina’s players flocked to Messi, their guiding light.
(Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images)
“When we talk about players who have left a mark on the history of football, we try to extend their careers when we begin to see the end,” his Inter Miami coach, Tata Martino, said recently. “I believe that Leo and his family are preparing themselves for when that ending will come. It comes for everyone.”
It has not come for Messi quite yet. He will play on in MLS when this injury heals, maybe even do his bit to get Argentina to the World Cup, but this was the final episode of Messi Does Tournaments and another staging post on the way to The End. The real end. The day this absurd, magical, laugh-out-loud-good little sprite of a footballer skips away into the past tense.
“I’m lucky I can do something I’m passionate about,” Messi said in the Apple documentary about his American adventure. “I know these are my last years and I know when I don’t have this, I’m going to miss it dearly because no matter how many things I find to do, nothing is going to be like this.”
No more big finals, potentially. No more nights like this, raw and glorious for his nation. And so, long before the celebrations, he cried. You could understand it.
(Top photos: Juan Mabromata; Buda Mendez; Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images; design: Ray Orr)