Messi

[Sorry, you would have had this well before now but there's a lot of football to watch. I was up at 6:30 this morning and now it's 13:11 and I'm just finishing off Austria versus Jordan. Before that it was Iraq v Norway,  before that it was Argentina v Algeria. Which gave us the subject of this post, but I couldn't look things up until I'd finished all the games in case of spoilers.]

A few years ago the BBC did a documentary about Argentina, England and the Hand of God. They got Gary Lineker to present it, and he interviewed Gazza and Maradona in their home environments. To provide a wider context he interviewed Messi as well.

It was clear from the interviews that the four of them could be split into two types. If Messi or Lineker hadn't been footballers, they would have lived out respectable if unremarkable lives as middle managers for provincial manufacturing firms. They would have occasionally visited the theatre, but not as often as they took the family to a carvery. Their politics would have been centrist dad, and rarely expressed. They had the kind of rapport that comes easy when you have stuff in common.

Gazza and Maradona would have been the guys who are always welcome at the community centre as long as they keep to their behavioural agreements. Without Robson or Menotti to exercise a restraining hand their unhealthy relationships with cocaine and kebabs respectively would have been more debilitating, and escalated earlier in their lives. Their politics would have been a mixture of machismo, nationalism and class rage, depending on who they'd been talking to in the pub the night before.

Lineker did very well with both of them. They all had football in common, and if there is one thing in the world that helps you with personality clashes it's football. I don't suppose he made future plans for the theatre with either of them.

Gazza and Maradona's playing careers fizzled out in their thirties, when they might still have cut a dash if it wasn't for their refuelling habits. Lineker looked after himself, but still played his last England game at 32. Messi is playing at this World Cup at 38. Last night he and Argentina played Algeria at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, a venue which has seen starring roles for Patrick Mahomes and Taylor Swift, but never anything quite like Messi.

He scored a great goal after 8 minutes which was chalked off for offside, then in the 17th he scored an even better one, which stood. On 60 minutes he did it again, and again on 76. The third goal, and the best, was his 16th in World Cups, putting him on a par with the previous record holder Miroslav Klose with the whole tournament still to come. They took him off after 80 minutes, presumably keeping the old man fresh for future games. No-one wondered if they would need a minder to keep him off the pies.

Talking of players you didn't expect to see in the World Cup again, Ronaldo is still in the Portuguese squad at 41. He and Messi have played their entire careers in each other's shadows. Messi has the World Cup and two Copa Americas, while Ronaldo has a European Championship win and the world's most punchable face. They have too many Champions Leagues, Super Cups and national titles between them to enumerate. Now they both compete in the World Cup for what must surely be the last time.

We will have to see if Ronaldo starts tonight, and how he performs if he does. There are routes that could pit Argentina against Portugal in the round of 16 or the quarter finals. It would only be right.

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