I posted earlier about how unexpectedly bad I felt after the final. After reading the comments, I kept thinking about why it affected me so much.
I don’t think it was only because Messi lost.
Before the World Cup, I wasn’t expecting much from Argentina. I followed them because of Messi, but I also supported Spain. He had already won a World Cup. For once, I thought we could simply watch without begging the football gods to give him the one trophy that would finally end every debate around him.
Then Messi started playing.
Watching him compete at 39, produce decisive moments and carry Argentina through another World Cup brought back a feeling I hadn’t experienced in years. For a few weeks, it felt like watching the Messi of Guardiola’s Barça again.
That team belonged to an important period of my life. Guardiola, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, Busquets, Messi... they were not only footballers I admired. They were part of the years when I was younger, building my adult life and feeling that almost everything was still ahead of me.
The strange thing is that you rarely notice an era ending while it happens.
Puyol retires, and it feels normal. Piqué retires, and you think it was simply his time. Then Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets and almost everyone else from your generation slowly disappear from the highest level.
It doesn’t happen as one dramatic ending. It happens quietly, one player at a time, while your own life is passing just as quickly.
And then, somehow, Messi is still there.
You can see the years in his face and in the way he moves. You recognize some of that aging in yourself. But he is still competing against players who grew up watching him, still deciding World Cup matches, still producing moments that seem impossible at his age.
He became the last active connection to that period. As long as Messi was still out there doing extraordinary things, it felt like our generation had not completely left the stage.
For a few weeks, he made me feel young again.
Not young in the way we were twenty years ago, but not finished either. He made it feel possible to enter a world increasingly occupied by younger people and still matter. To adapt, compete and prove that many important things may still be ahead of us.
I think that is why I became so invested as Argentina kept advancing.
I genuinely did not need Messi to win the final. I thought Spain were the better team and would probably win. I went to watch the match wearing a Barça shirt rather than either national team’s shirt because I believed I could accept either ending.
What hurt was not that he lost.
It was that, in what may have been his last World Cup match, Argentina never gave him the chance to show what he had spent the rest of the tournament proving he could still be.
He was not suddenly incapable. We had just watched him decide matches and carry responsibility at 39. But in the final he was isolated, surrounded and starved of any real way to influence the game. The team could not compete well enough to let him express himself.
I kept waiting for one moment: an impossible pass, a run, anything that would allow us to recognize the Messi we had watched throughout the tournament. It never came.
And when Argentina could no longer compete through football, some players lost control. The unnecessary fouls, the sending-off and the ugly scenes after the final whistle made the ending feel unworthy of the occasion.
Messi deserved a team capable of giving him one last fight. If Spain were better, Argentina could lose, congratulate them and allow the final image to be one of respect for what he had achieved at 39.
Instead, his last and most important match became the one game in which he could not show what he still was, followed by teammates who could not lose with dignity.
Even Messi’s moment with Cucurella bothered me. It felt low and unusual for him. But I don’t expect him to be perfect. It was probably his final World Cup match, his team was struggling and the pressure must have been overwhelming. Under those circumstances, perhaps I would have reacted the same way or worse.
It simply removed the last possibility of a clean and dignified farewell.
Then, almost immediately, that one ugly night became another excuse online to reduce his career to accusations, conspiracy theories and the behavior of people around him. Some criticism of the final was deserved. But twenty years of resilience, extraordinary football and generally honorable conduct should not be flattened into the worst images of one night.
For a few weeks, Messi had made the past feel present again.
He made me feel that the person I was during those Barça years was still somewhere inside me. That people our age still belonged in the middle of the story, rather than only remembering it.
Then the final ended, and I understood something I had not been prepared to feel.
That era was not slowly ending anymore.
It had already ended. The kids half my age are the new world champions.
Messi had simply allowed me not to notice for a little longer.
