Ten other people took the field in Argentina shirts, nine the Albiceleste, one a green goalkeeping kit. Ten other people charged with not ruining the final chapter of one of the great footballing lives. Ten other people demoted to the ranks of the supporting cast in the biggest game of their lives.
Now 10 other people will start the World Cup final. Each can seem an afterthought, a footnote amid a global fixation. Win and they make be captured in the background of a picture of Lionel Messi celebrating. Lose and they have the potential to be scapegoats.
That Messi’s 16-year quest to win the World Cup reaches the end game owes something to the 10 other people. To Emi Martinez, for his penalty saves against the Netherlands. To Julian Alvarez who exerted a decisive, destructive impact with a double to defeat the obdurate Croatians. To Enzo Fernandez, the other breakout star of their tournament, whose ball from deep released Alvarez to win the penalty for Messi’s opener. It was nevertheless Messi who converted it, producing a spot kick that even Dominik Livakovic could not save.
Yet the reason Croatia, the team who always come back, could not come back was that Alvarez, galloping away like a runaway horse charging through flimsy fencing, bundled past Josip Juranovic and Borna Sosa and increased Argentina’s lead. A place in the final was sealed when Messi, with more sleight of foot and subtlety, weaved his way through to set up Alvarez. A player who came to the World Cup with just three international goals had two in a semi-final. Perhaps, in the autumn of his career, Messi has belatedly found the Jorge Valdano to his Diego Maradona.
Rewind a few months and Fernandez and Alvarez were River Plate teammates. Now the 10 other people include players from Brighton and Benfica, Lyon and Aston Villa. Messi’s Argentina teammates may have less pedigree than at any other World Cup in his career which, as his club days have been spent at Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, could make them, on paper, the most undistinguished group he has played in. Yet they are a side with one defeat in 43 games and are 90 minutes from the greatest prize of all.
If it is testament to Messi’s extraordinary influence, it also reflects the importance of the collective. Argentina were undermined in 2010 by hideously bad management by Maradona. Amid the chaos of 2018, Jorge Sampaoli was scarcely much better. In 2022, Lionel Scaloni has found a better balance, partly because he did not gorge on attackers.
He had just two, the king of walking football and the hyperactive Alvarez, who played behind Messi, in front of him and around him. Messi’s generation featured more garlanded striking talents, in Gonzalo Higuain, Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevez. They scored more than 1,000 goals in club football. For Argentina managers, however, the questions of chemistry and the correct combinations proved awkward. Now Lautaro Martinez and Paulo Dybala came to Qatar with greater track records than Alvarez. One has lost his place after being wasteful, the other went unused until the 74th minute of the sixth game and, in the eager Alvarez, Scaloni has found the antidote to Messi.
In Fernandez, he has unearthed a prompter par excellence. Compared to 2010, when Javier Mascherano was isolated behind five attack-minded players, there is a structure. This time, Scaloni fielded four midfielders with defensive instincts, a narrow quartet designed to subdue, stifle and surround Luka Modric. They had a minority share of the ball but, like a Serie A side in the 1980s, there was a strict division of responsibilities: nine players were there to keep goals out, the other two to try and score them.
Argentina could be forgiven for revisiting that decade. In 1986, Carlos Bilardo fielded a 3-5-Maradona-1 formation. Now Scaloni chose a 4-4-1-Messi system. With a two-goal lead, he switched to 5-3-1-Messi. Each was built around one man, for one man, because the one man represented the hope. Talent is not democratically distributed around sides, but certainly not around international teams. Messi spent much of his Barcelona career alongside Xavi and Iniesta; he has never played alongside a passer of Modric’s calibre in an Argentina shirt. Yet he could prosper as a sole creator, as the mesmeric dribble for Argentina’s third goal indicated.
And there is a proud history of 10 other people in Argentina football. In 1986, perhaps the closest anyone has come to winning the World Cup on their own, three of the others – Jose Luis Brown, Jorge Valdano and Jorge Burruchaga – actually scored the goals in the final, even if Maradona assisted the winner and struck twice in both the semi-final and the quarter-final. There is a case for saying Argentina had a stronger pool of players in the late 1990s and early 2000s than in the 1980s or now, but with no Messi or Maradona. Yet they were quarter-finalists in 1998, group-stage underachievers in 2002.
Now they are finalists. It helps that Emi Martinez may be the best Argentina goalkeeper of Messi’s career. A defence who had shown frailties in the final minutes against Australia and the Netherlands kept a clean sheet with fewer alarms. And by the end, Messi had five goals and three assists this World Cup. Maradona scored five and set up five more in 1986 and if he is the constant comparison, they could soon be bracketed together as World Cup winners. Each with the aid of 10 other people.
