Messi reaches another landmark

Argentina’s round of 16 match against Australia in the 2022 World Cup marked a personal milestone for captain Lionel Messi, who played his 1000th game for club and country.

And he marked the occasion in typical style. Scoring the first goal and producing a performance that had many fans and pundits drooling.

The goal was the first he had ever scored in a World Cup knock-out game, and took him past Diego Maradona’s World Cup record.

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He is now third on the all-time list, with 94 for his country, with just Cristiano Ronaldo (with 118 for Portugal), and the now retired Ali Daei of Iran, with 109 to his name, ahead of him.

Now his team face a quarter-final with the Netherlands with renewed hope that they could yet be lifting the trophy on December 18^th, despite making the worst possible start to the tournament with a shock defeat at the hands of Saudi Arabia.

For most of his career, Messi looked like he was destined never to win a major international tournament with Argentina, having finished four times on the losing side in major finals: three times in the Copa América, and once in the World Cup final itself, in 2014, when he was half-fit as they went down to Germany by an extra time goal in Brazil.

All that changed in the final of the Copa América in 2021, when they beat Brazil, and they went on to defeat Italy at Wembley in the ‘2022 Finalissima’ between the champions of the “Copa America” and “Eurocup.”

Messi has not always found it easy to shoulder the burden of carrying the hopes of a nation. He retired from international football in 2016, before he was persuaded to change his mind.

And, because he has never played his club football in Argentina, he has never achieved the same degree of reverence that attaches to the late Maradona.

Meanwhile, his domestic future remains unclear. Forced to leave his beloved Barcelona when their financial difficulties rendered them to pay the new contract they had agreed with him, he joined PSG, and is 18 months into a two year deal with them.

He has rarely shown the same form for the Ligue 1 side as he did for the Catalans, and it has been reported that neither he nor his family enjoy living in Paris, and would prefer a return to Spain.

Barcelona have spoken about bringing him back to the club next summer, although it is not clear how they could afford to do this. There have also been suggestions that he has already agreed on a deal to move to the MLS and join Inter Miami, the club partly owned by David Beckham.

In the meantime, his immediate focus is Argentina, and his quest to shed the tag of one of the finest players never to win a World Cup.

That will be on the line when they meet the Netherlands in their quarter-final.