Even if you are not a football fan, you must watch this final because it is cinematic as fuck. You’re not just watching some sports game but the series finale of a ruthless HBO or Netflix drama.
In my video, I told you a story of a tormented genius who dragged himself through the mud to finally achieve his dream.
It was a show of primal desperation clashing with the primal desire to be the first.
You know, the clash between Messi and Mbappe reminds me of the final scene of Squid Game.
You have two men, mercilessly cutting and biting each other, knowing fully well that only one of them will walk away breathing… and only one of them will take the ultimate prize.
But this final is different. Messi is not the hero. He is now a greedy emperor who refuses to retire and is ready to scourge the earth to cement his immortality.
And the only challenger left is Lamine Yamal. A young prodigy who was also trained at La Masia academy and, strangely, was bathed by Messi when he was a baby.
Before we go there, though, let’s rewind the tape to the day Messi’s empire almost crumbled.
The Ruthless Prince
For years, Messi was fighting to offload the suffocating weight of Maradona.
Since he was a young player, Argentinians have told him that ‘Yes, you are great, but you’re not Maradona. You have never won the World Cup”.
And here we are in the 2022 final.
Messi is one step away from achieving his life mission.
But standing in his way is Mbappé – a ruthless prince at the height of his power.
The internet calls him a dictator; I call him Freddie Krugger.
I say this because Argentina was winning comfortably. They were leading by two goals and were just 10 minutes away from victory.
But what was supposed to be a beautiful ending turned into a literal nightmare.
Mbappé scores two amazing goals, tying the game and reminding Messi that the world stage shows no mercy for the old.
To say he was lethal is an understatement; In the span of that single game, he posed a more serious threat to Messi’s legacy than Ronaldo ever managed across their lifelong rivalry.
However, Argentina bled on the field, and honestly, they also had a lot of luck. It’s as if the Gods of football wanted Messi to win.
Maybe they were helping their son.
Sorry, sorry, let’s not get blasphemous.
Now in politics, at some point, you will need to forge your own path, and in order to do so, you need to kill your political father. The same thing must happen in football and any other field.
By lifting that trophy, our tormented genius fulfilled his life’s mission and finally surpassed Maradona.
More crucially, you can argue all day long, but statistically speaking, he’s the GOAT.
He closed football.
Period.
The Undisputed Emperor
One year later, Messi retired from professional football and went on to play in the MLS.
They even brought in Jordi Alba, Suarez, and Busquets to form a mini-Barcelona in Miami.
The public believed he was going to sit back and chill, staring out with the serene look of Thanos after the snap. And given the league’s level, he could easily have played until the age of 45.
But apparently, he didn’t want to retire without securing the Triple Crown, and it was clear that he was not alone in this quest…
His disciples maintained the same insatiable hunger for titles, bound together by a quasi-religious, almost cultish devotion to their captain.
So it’s 2024, and they are playing Colombia in the Copa América final.
By the middle of the game, Messi suffers a nasty ankle injury. There’s no way he can continue. He’s so devastated that he’s sobbing on the bench.
Later, Scaloni explained that Messi broke down because he felt like he had abandoned his teammates in the middle of the war.
You would think that losing the captain, the spiritual leader, would weaken the squad, but NO… They fought with even more ferocity.
Lautaro Martinez closed the game by scoring in the 112th minute. He celebrated by running to the bench to hug Messi.
So now they have the Triple Crown: the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 World Cup, and the 2024 Copa América.
There is only one other team that has achieved this insane level of excellence… Spain. They won the Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup, and Euro 2012.
Now the biggest star of Spain is, without a doubt, Lamine Yamal.
But sometimes history plays some cruel jokes.
When Yamal was a baby, his family won a raffle to have a photo taken with a Barcelona player. Out of pure coincidence, they were paired with a 19-year-old Messi.
And here we are, 19 years later…
Yamal will face Messi in the final, and as we said earlier, if he wants to forge a new path for himself, he must kill his football father. On the other hand, Messi will show no mercy. He’s after immortality, and if needed, he’s going to step onto this young cub.
And this brings us to…
Destiny or Destruction
The mountain Yamal has to climb is as big as they come. Will he be able to stop Messi, or will he become just another rival that got consumed by the Argentinian Kronos?
As we explained, in the last final, Messi was the hero.
We all wanted him to win for the sake of football… or if you are a fan, for the sake of our sanity.
But this time Messi is no hero. He’s no Batman crawling out of a pit. He’s no Simba trying to regain his kingdom. He’s actually Scar.
Just hear me out and remember that I fell in love with football because of Messi.
Yamal is the literal representation of the newborn prince. Just like Messi, he was trained at La Masia and is the new prodigy, the new superstar of Barcelona.
If he wins tomorrow, he will automatically overthrow the emperor and start his own reign.
He will then have to face the likes of Mbappé, Vinícius, and Bellingham while striving to break Messi’s crazy records.
So we will see the old generation retiring while the new generation continues the fight for who’s the best. It’s the circle of life, right?
However, since he was a kid, Messi has shown that there’s nothing ordinary about him, so why would he accept an ordinary transfer of power?
And since life is not a Disney movie where the hero always wins, this raises the uncomfortable question…
What if Messi wins tomorrow?
Because here’s where we stand. Right now he has these crazy stats:
- 46 Trophies
- 8 Ballon D’Ors [record]
- 91 Goals for a single year [record]
- 418 Assists [record]
- 1 World Cup
If he wins tomorrow, then we would have 2 World Cups back-to-back, which in itself is an insane achievement. And when we add those other records, then he would essentially set an impossible standard to reach.
Sure, future generations of players will fight for fame and glory, but the best they can achieve is second place. No one will be able to surpass him.
That’s why I don’t see Messi as a hero.
I see him as a mad emperor who will fight till the last breath to not only keep his throne, but also scourge the earth so nothing ever grows after him.
Considering all of this, I’m still rooting for him.
Now, eventually, they are going to make a movie based on his life. But what do you think? Wouldn’t this be a great movie?
In the first part, you have the wounded genius achieving his goal in the most dramatic way possible.
In the second part, we see our hero transform into an insatiable behemoth.
The only challenger left is the young prodigy… Lamine Yamal, who is trained at the same academy and who has met Messi before he could even speak. We can safely say that he grew up idolizing him.
So regardless of the outcome tomorrow, the final is going to be cinematic as fuck.
