Lionel Messi at 30: Where to now for football's greatest artist?

The clock read 43:35 when Deco took a free kick from around about the center line and swung it all the way across to the other flank. You must, of course, remember that the TV producers who presented La Liga to the world at the time refused to accept that the second half entailed starting the clock at 45:00 instead of 00:00, so this was in fact, the 89th minute of the game.

By the time the game entered it’s final minute the ball had reached the feet of the undisputed king of Barcelona - after having been routed through Andres Iniesta and Juliano Belletti. As ever, the moment that buck-toothed magician touched the ball and started accelerating with it, ponytail flailing hither and thither with a wild freedom that befitted its keeper, the decibel volumes in Nou Camp went up a notch.

He brushed past a couple of defenders with arrogant ease before lifting his head and jinking jinking the most delightful ball onto the path of the young man who had just come on in place of the inimitable Samuel Eto’o. The young man, all of 17 years old, killed the ball dead with his first touch and lobbed the onrushing goalkeeper, Raúl Valbuena, but there was no celebration, the referee had ruled it offside... incorrectly as it turned out, but the call was the call.

Albacete’s veteran keeper gave the young lad’s air a fatherly tousle that almost said “next time, champ”, while the man who had provided the sublime pass just grinned that easy smile of his... a rueful smile that seemed to echo Valbuena's... “Next time, champ”. Neither of them would have thought, though, that “next time” would be less than a minute away.

It was that little Portuguese imp, Deco, who started it all off again as he splayed a pin-point ball a good forty yards onto the Beatle-haired noggin’ of the boy who wore number 30 for the Blaugrana. As he ran after what seemed like an unintentional bounce (off his head), the crowd let out a collective sigh - recognising a lost cause when they saw one - but he surprised them by displaying remarkable strength to hold off his much bigger marker and laying the ball off to the master.

Without even looking up, he in turn jinked the ball in behind the defence, just as he had done not a minute previously, and watched as the mop-haired lad waited for it to bounce, waited for the defender’s desperate lunge at him, waited for the goalkeeper’s charge... before lifting the ball over both of them with a waft of his left boot. There was no linesman’s call to ruin the moment this time.

As he ran to the corner pumping his fists and grinning ear-to-ear in the manner of a child who knows he’s done well, Ronaldinho went up to him and gave him a piggy back ride... the master’s way of showing off his favourite apprentice to the whole world.

"I enjoyed it a lot," he said after the game and you could see the joy in every fibre of his being.

After all, the lad had done it... the lad who had flown out of Rosario in search of a football team that could afford to pay for the monthly growth hormone injections he would need to battle what would otherwise have been a debilitating illness while e continued to do the one thing he loved above all else... the lad who had found a home away from home in a little farmhouse on the outskirts of the vastness of Barcelona... the lad who had represented the city’s club at every level through the youth system... that lad had got his first goal for his senior team, that lad had made his mark.

As the infographic on the television helpfully pointed out – 30. BAR. 1 goals en La Liga. Messi.

That was 12 years, 1 month, and 24 days ago. Today, as the wide-eyed 17-year-old boy turns into a worldly-wise 30-year-old man, that statistic stands at 10. BAR. 349 goals en La Liga. Messi.

Lionel Andres Messi has made his mark... and then some.

The Great Artist – Where to now?

Ernest Hemingway once wrote - “The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.”

The inimitable American had written this in 1932 in ‘Death in the Afternoon’, his love letter to the art of bullfighting, but he might as well have been writing about Messi.

When he first came onto the stage, he was just the most naturally gifted footballer we’d seen, a man who appeared to have been born with the skill to run past people with a football by his side better than anyone before him, a man who could do whatever he damned well pleased with that little round thing... but he didn’t stop there.

We all know what he has done – Along his journey, he has earned himself 701 caps for both club and country, has scored a remarkable 565 goals along the way (including 41 hat tricks against teams big and small), he has fed 281 assists to his teammates while helping his team lift 30 trophies and in the process winning himself 5 of the sport’s greatest individual honour – the Ballon d’Or. He is his nation’s highest ever goal scorer, as he is for club and league. He has yet to come across a record he hasn’t been able to break.

We all know this... but we must not make the mistake of trapping him in a cell made of mathematics.

For he has gone beyond what has been done or known... and he has made something of his own. It’s not the numbers that make the man, but the man that does it to the numbers. The statistics are indicative of a consistency that has rarely been seen in any discipline, and it is that consistency which serves to burnish the sheer uniqueness of the way he performs his art.

Put simply, no one has played football quite like this unassuming little man. For an entire generation, the sport, nay the art, of football will be divided into three specific timeframes – Before Messi, During Messi, and After Messi.

He can’t keep at this forever, and he will slow down, but that time isn’ t now – in the last year of his third decade on the planet, Messi had one of his best individual seasons – dragging a below-average Barcelona to withing punching distance of Real Madrid, putting in match-winning performance after match-winning performance for both club and country despite being struck by injuries aplenty.

When he debuted for Argentina and Barcelona all those moons ago, he played as a nominal winger as he adjusted his role to fit the team – that is no longer the case now and we’ve seen Messi drop deeper and deeper in order to influence the game better while seeing his teams adjust accordingly. He does have, after all, the one abiding vice of the truly great footballer – the need to have his team structured around him.

He is a luxury player – the very best kind – and his teams will always be all about him... regardless of who else plays in it.

It’s highly likely that within the next year, Messi would become a midfielder (at least by name, characterising him as a dot on a chart is utterly facetious) and Barcelona will adapt to that. And will arguably be the better for it. He’ll take over the Xavi role, and probably the Iniesta one as well – becoming their chief fount of passing, and dribbling, creativity. He’ll still be Messi, though, so he will probably finish off most of those chances he creates himself.

His new manager at Argentina, Jorge Sampaoli (who once said – on the day Messi tore apart the Sevilla side he was managing – “sometimes he lets you stop him. Sometimes, he doesn't") will mould La Albicelste around her captain like never before, most likely playing him as the free-roaming 1, or playmaker, in the Bielsa-homage 3-3-1-3 formation he is often inclined towards.

It looks likely that he will play on for half-a-decade or more, as long as that love for the game that keeps him going still sends the fire up his ageing legs motivating him to go on and on despite having achieved nearly everything there is to achieve... and he will redefine the way we look at midfielders. By the end, we will be thinking, “how on Earth does he does this?” and wondering why the thousands of midfielders who have come and gone in our lifetime couldn’t play like this.

After all, isn’t that what all great artists do... create something that is truly, inimitably, their own?