A forlsket to the GOAT 🐐
There are footballers.
There are legends.
And then there is Lionel Messi.
Because how do you explain a man who turned football commentary into poetry?
How do you explain a player whose highlights sound as beautiful as they look?
For most players, commentary follows the moment.
For Messi, commentary becomes part of the moment.
You hear:
“Away from one, two, three, four… wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!”
And instantly, you know who they’re talking about.
You hear:
“Encara Messi, encara Messi, encara Messi…”
And before the goal even arrives, your heart starts racing.
The commentator isn’t describing football anymore.
He’s witnessing something he wasn’t prepared for.
That’s what Messi did to people.
He made professional broadcasters sound like children seeing magic for the first time.
He made grown men abandon neutrality.
He made language feel inadequate.
Because what words truly exist for a player who could receive a ball surrounded by defenders and somehow emerge from the crowd untouched?
What vocabulary exists for impossibility?
I wasn’t there when football belonged to Pelé.
I wasn’t there when Maradona carried Argentina on his back.
I wasn’t there when Cruyff reinvented the game.
But I was there for Messi.
And perhaps that is enough.
Because Messi wasn’t simply great.
He was familiar.
He became part of life.
Part of weekends.
Part of conversations.
Part of childhood.
For an entire generation, football and Messi became almost impossible to separate.
There were goals.
Then there were Messi goals.
The kind that began forty yards away from danger.
The kind where defenders looked organised at the start and humiliated at the end.
The kind where one opponent became two.
Then three.
Then four.
Then a commentator lost control of his emotions.
Again.
And honestly, who could blame them?
Football was supposed to make sense.
Messi spent his entire career making it look like it didn’t.
He made defenders question careers.
He made coaches redesign systems.
He made entire teams dedicate ninety minutes to stopping him.
And still, somehow, he found a way.
Not through strength.
Not through size.
Not through speed alone.
But through something much rarer.
Vision.
Balance.
Timing.
Genius.
There was something almost unfair about watching him play.
The ball seemed attached to him.
Like it trusted him more than anyone else.
Like it knew where it belonged.
And every time he touched it, you felt possibility.
Not probability.
Possibility.
The feeling that absolutely anything could happen.
And more often than not, it did.
Then came 2022.
The World Cup.
The one thing they said he needed.
The one thing they held over his head.
The one trophy that somehow became bigger than everything else he had already achieved.
Then came Lusail Stadium.
December 18th.
Argentina. France.
History.
The greatest final football has ever produced.
And at the centre of it all stood Lionel Messi.
Not the future anymore.
Not the wonderkid anymore.
Just a man carrying the weight of a nation, a generation, and a legacy.
Then Gonzalo Montiel stepped forward.
The whistle blew.
The net rippled.
And Peter Drury gave football the words it had been searching for.
“Argentina, champions of the world! And a nation will tango all night long.”
As teammates collapsed to the floor and a country erupted thousands of miles away, another line followed:
“For Lionel Messi, this is heaven.”
And then the one that would live forever:
“Lionel Messi has shaken hands with paradise.”
Because what else do you call it?
What else do you call a boy from Rosario who spent nearly two decades carrying impossible expectations, only to end his journey with the trophy everybody said defined greatness?
Drury wasn’t describing a football match anymore.
He was narrating the final chapter of a legend.
“The little boy from Rosario, Santa Fe, has just pitched up in heaven.”
And for a moment, even those who supported other teams, other countries, other players, simply watched.
Because they knew.
They were witnessing something that would be spoken about long after the boots were hung up.
The funny thing about Messi is that statistics somehow fail him.
Not because he doesn’t have enough.
But because there are too many.
At some point, the numbers stop helping.
Hundreds of goals.
Countless assists.
Trophies.
Records.
Ballon d’Ors.
The numbers become so absurd that they stop feeling human.
So people stopped counting.
Instead, they remembered moments.
The dribble against Getafe.
The header against Manchester United.
The impossible free kicks.
The World Cup run.
The tears.
The celebrations.
The memories.
Because Messi was never measured in numbers.
He was measured in moments.
One day, he will retire.
The boots will be hung up.
The stadiums will move on.
Another wonderkid will emerge.
Another superstar will dominate headlines.
Football will continue.
It always does.
But something will be missing.
Because players come and go.
Generations don’t.
And Messi was a generation.
Messi was not part of an era, Messi was THE era
A shared experience.
A reference point.
A reminder of what happens when talent meets discipline, pressure, longevity, and destiny.
Years from now, someone will ask:
“Was Lionel Messi really that good?”
And those of us who watched him will smile.
Because we know that question has no satisfying answer.
Not really.
How do you explain colours to someone who has never seen them?
How do you explain music to someone who has never heard it?
How do you explain Messi to someone who never watched him?
You can’t.
You can only tell them that once upon a time, there was a little boy from Rosario.
And somehow, every time the ball reached his feet, the world stopped for a second.
Then somewhere in the distance, like an old memory refusing to fade, you’ll hear it again:
“Encara Messi… Encara Messi… Encara Messi…”
And for a moment, you’ll remember exactly where you were when football felt like magic. ⚽🐐❤️
