FIFA World Cup: That ill-tempered, unforgettable night of Messi madness and Messi magic

The moment that defined Lionel Messi in the fractious, ill-tempered quarterfinal against the Netherlands came not when he conjured that immaculate dream of a pass, or when he raucously celebrated at the end of the game.
Or even when he uncharacterically shouted at Dutch forward Wout Weghorst: “What are you looking at? Go ahead, stupid.”
The moment came when he stood over the penalty amidst the rioting Dutch players in the 73rd minute. His eyes seething with rage, his face drawn in anger, his frame trembling with a rare frenzy. Then, as the referee blew the whle, he gathered himself, puffed a breath of air, wrapped a sound-proof bubble around his head and, with a two-step strut, stroked the ball into the top left corner.
In the maddest, meanest of matches, wherein the referee brandished 16 yellow cards, Messi himself slapped one for dissent, Messi’s yogic calmness in the critical moments of this game — which Argentina won 4-3 on penalties after the game was tied at 2-2 — defined not only the match but the man himself.
A match where he showed sparks of footballing divinity as well as his volcanic rage and vindictiveness. There is a footballing god in him – and there’s a human, too. Yet none encroached into the other.
Argentina’s Lionel Messi celebrates with teammates after Nahuel Molina scores their first goal REUTERS
Seldom have magic and madness dwelled so harmoniously as though it was all deliberate as if he knew exactly when he had to be magical and when mad. If you feared that the shadows of Zinedine Zidane from the 2006 final lurked, reshaping a fairy-tale ending into a nightmare, you were maken.
For Messi does not let his emotions rule him. After all, he has played an entire career with people trying to provoke, make him snap, do something silly or stupid, make him retaliate. Imagine, if he were to get incensed at every kick, trip or shove he has received. In his 1033 competitive games for clubs and country. It’s a reflection of his character that he has received all of three red cards in his entire career.
That’s also the reason why the moments he loses his temper stick in our mind. No one would forget his rant at the Valencia crowd after he scored a last-minute penalty, when he shouted unprintable expletives. But even if Messi gets emotional, his game does not.
A few minutes before the pass for ages that orchestrated Nahuel Molina’s opening goal Friday night, Messi flared up with Virgil van Dijk and nearly pushed away Denzel Dumfries.

But when he got the ball on his feet, he transformed — from man to god, finding the target through all the obstacles, wrapping the shrapnel of pass in velvet. The more you watch the pass, the simpler it seems. As though it was no genius trick except that it was — a conception of a pure genius. It was pure maths, too, in that Messi knew someone was always waiting for him, somewhere, at the end of the pass.
It was a moment of maddening magic, when Messi jinked infield 35 yards out from goal, galloped, left Nathan Ake in the wake with a tw of the hip, like a samba dancer, and threaded a glorious ball between Danny Blind and Virgil van Dijk.
A prine Messi moment, when his technique, intelligence and vision combined to produce a pass that could embellish his own collection of passes. It was an ass more precious than a goal, and one that Molina would have committed suicide had he not scored, as Gonzalo Higuain felt that 2014 night at Maracana when he failed to convert that sumptuous Messi pass.
Until the Messi moment, it seemed that the size of the pitch had shrunk, the paths and alleys narrow, as both teams seemed to eat into each other’s space, kill space, pass time. But then Messi shows that for players of his extreme reach and scale, there is space yet, there is time yet. And Messi elevated an ordinary, rather attritional fare into an epic game.

The moment of madness raged on; there were more Messi-maddening moments than magical ones. He would preen and snigger, push and shove, he handled the ball once and escaped without a card; copped a card for showing dissent; he would kick the turf in anger; admonish his teammates, cuss and berate them. Even after the game ended, his fury remained undiminished.
He would ridicule the referee’s competency, mock at Louis van Gaal’s tactics. “Van Gaal says that they play good football, but what he did was put tall people and hit long balls’’. And had he not been stopped his colleagues, he would have gone for Weghorst’s neck. Such was the desperation of man in frantic pursuit of his last dream, a World Cup win.
Anything that comes between him and his dream risks his wrath. He’s just two steps away, his dream might yet remain unfulfilled, but not before he sheds every drop of his sweat, stretches every sinew, exhausts every layer of his intelligence, travels every space of his imagination. And in such a mood as this, there will be madness – and there will be magic.