CHARLIE CHRISTIE - Messi without doubt is the greatest of all time
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After the dust settles and we all have time to reflect there will be no question that the Qatar World Cup will be deemed a roaring success.
Last Sunday’s showpiece final itself was one full of incident and controversy throughout but I was delighted to eventually see Argentina’s Gonzalo Montiel send French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris the wrong way to clinch their third World crown.
After their shock opening group match defeat to Saudi Arabia the Argentines got their act together and slowly but surely began to look like potential winners. They also had that one thing that most nations can only dream of – a true genius in their ranks.
Lionel Messi is quite simply the best I’ve ever seen and when the pre-final TV coverage included footage of Messi as a young kid playing in his hometown of Rosario, I wanted him to be a World Cup winner even more. Here was a young lad brought up in a working-class family environment who struggled physically due to a growth hormone disorder but, with the help of hormone injections paid
for by Barcelona, turned into a 172-cap world cup winning captain – the stuff of true legends!
Whilst Messi rightly received much of the credit another Lionel also played a huge part in the South Americans’ success story.
Lionel Scaloni was certainly not the first choice of the Argentinian Football Association when they went looking for a new national coach in 2018.
After back-to-back Copa America and World cup successes for the first time in their history few will be questioning the appointment now!
Scaloni’s 4-3-3 formation and player selection caused the French untold problems with his front three of Angel Di Maria, Messi and Julian Alvarez unsettling the French from the off.
Indeed, it was only after a tiring Di Maria went off after 65 minutes that the French gained any sort of foothold in the game and their own world class talisman Kylian Mbappe showed his pedigree when needed to score twice and take the match into extra time.
Whilst it would have been fitting for Messi’s second goal in the first half of extra time to be the winner Mbappe had other plans and his second expertly taken spot kick gave us the third ever World Cup final penalty decider and Montiel’s winner.
I’ve been lucky enough to see Maradona, Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi in live action whilst also being enthralled when watching substantial television highlights of Pele and Johan Cruyff.
Whilst there is an easy argument made for each one of those superstars, it’s the little man from Rosario who gets the nod from me as the greatest ever footballer.
