It was over two hours after full-time when Lionel Messi finally emerged from the Lusail Stadium dressing room, his face a very different picture than the last time he exited the same ground. There was only, in his own words, “a great joy”.
Messi stopped to talk to everyone, carrying that excitement that comes when a great relief settles in. There had also been a release.
In the moments after Messi let fly for that exquisite strike to beat Mexico, he had evidently let go. He could be seen wiping away tears after a moment of communion with the Argentine fans.
It would be pat to say this is what it meant to him. We know what it means. This trophy is all that’s left, and what he has always wanted above anything.
It was why this goal was celebrated as if it was indeed the World Cup itself. It pretty much was, in the sense that if Argentina are actually going to do this they badly needed that moment here.
“We needed to win and we knew it,” Messi told a media scrum after the game.
That came across in a dressing room that was described as “mayhem”. Nicolas Otamendi helpfully took a video, but the scenes went on for about an hour longer than those few seconds.
In the middle of it all was Messi, top off and occasionally twirled, before he gave another speech. They are already becoming a feature of this World Cup, in the way they never before.
The reality is that they have almost made Messi become co-manager, and not in an intrusive way. Lionel Scaloni just isn’t that sort of character. Messi has become that, though. He is now the emotional leader as well as the best player and captain, in a way that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago.
It was his team talk at half-time that started to have an effect, and there had been a pick-up even if it would be an exaggeration to say the goal was coming. Argentina were at least playing with a bit more conviction and shape. Scaloni, to give him his due, had made substitutions that pushed Argentina up.
It still required divine intervention, though. It sent Argentina into raptures.
The one great question, after Messi had found an answer, is whether such profound emotional responses are actually healthy for a team; whether they are conducive to victory.
Argentina went from a dressing room described as suffering from an “emotional bomb” after Saudi Arabia to one that was now enjoying an “explosion” of joy.
You can instantly see the effects of it on their play. It was like something immediately “switched” after the goal, in the words of one source. Hesitation and doubt became high-octane conviction again. Hence Enzo Fernandez later trying what he did for his own brilliant goal.
Argentina have now offered two of the goals of the tournament. Future generations looking back at old footage will see a team expressing themselves.
And that’s where all of this comes to a head. Will these moments end up as just fine goals, or will they be something more?
Will these celebrations actually spark the momentum Argentina require, or will Robert Lewandowski immediately halt it?
Everything still comes down to Poland. It could make all of this look very premature or, as Messi said before the game, the real start of something.
