DOHA: Lionel Messi is in a place we all want to be in but know we just can't. He's always that half foot ahead of you, your insides turning as he twists this way and that providing needle-eye passes for kids on his team 10 years younger, to fire.
Ask Josko Gvardiol. By far the best defender at this World Cup, but the morning after you realise you've lost your kidney, spleen and much of your insides the night before, and there's not an incision to show for it. Not a foot wrong, nary a wrong tackle, but nowhere near Messi for the assist in the final goal after the master's one-for-the-ages takedown of Luka Modric's excellent Croatian side in the semifinal.
