The Barcelona maestro has been in top form in the Copa América, but his country’s pool of young talent is drying up
The ball comes to Lionel Messi in midfield. He returns it with a disdainful flick of the foot that says: I can’t do anything with this. I don’t want it. Take it back. And then he sighs and walks off in the opposite direction. Surprised, and a little abashed, Guido Rodríguez gathers the ball and looks around for somebody else to pass it to.
Perhaps it’s because Messi gives so few interviews – and tends to say so little in the interviews he gives – that over time you start to delude yourself, in a weird anthropomorphic way, that you can glimpse some sort of profound human insight in his football. That on some level, his actions on a pitch are his way of talking to us. That misplaced pass was actually a form of oblique protest towards the Barcelona board over his continuing contract stand-off. That fist-pump celebration was actually an act of solidarity with striking Rosario dock workers. That attempted through ball is his way of telling us that life is precious but hope is fragile. And so on.
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