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The respect that Messi generate -
his team-mates
create these moments of magic.
Fernandez.
Oh, what a hit!
Alvarez!
Argentina and
Lionel Messi's
dream of emulating
Diego Maradona of 36 years ago
is still alive.
After that win against Mexico,
then Poland,
I think the team were growing,
you know, like, in confidence.
It seems like now
I see the Argentina thing
that I saw before the World Cup.
I don't know if I can explain
what happened with this team.
I think that sometimes magical
things happen, you know,
about people that are there.
And I think that Scaloni
was one of the most important keys
of this team. He understand
that it was very important,
the human part, the family spirit
that he create.
I think for all Argentinian people,
if you have mate, truco,
and beautiful barbecue,
you're so happy you don't need more.
You don't need more in life.
And I think these three things
is something that, for us,
is like a religion.
We used to love the barbecues.
There was much press coverage
on the amazing amounts
of Argentinian meat
that were flown over.
2,000 kilograms of meat.
We'd six, seven barbecues.
In 1986, Diego Maradona's dad making
the asados is a kind of crucial,
emblematic part of the family mood
of the squad.
When Messi did join the Argentina
squad that Scaloni had built,
the younger players, who were
a little bit in awe of Messi,
said, "Would it be all right
to just knock on his bedroom door
"and say, 'Do you want to drink
some mate and play truco?'"
And that's how the ice was broken.
And there are moments
that are for the players,
only for the players.
There is where the magic begin.
We always said we're not the most
talented national team.
We were watching different nations.
They had better players
and a better squad than us.
But the togetherness that we had,
no-one had it.
So Argentina expects,
Australia dreams...
We're now at the business end
of the tournament.
And it's a different competition.
The stakes are much higher.
The jeopardy is much greater.
The pressure builds.
But that's when the great
players come to the fore.
That's when you find out
who's world-class,
who's going to stand up.
Australia was one of those games,
like a bit similar
like with Saudi Arabia.
We know that we are better
than them,
we have better players,
but be careful,
because they don't
have nothing to lose.
Mac Allister.
Messi!
It had to be!
Just when his country
needed him.
And the two-time winners
are into the quarterfinals.
In a country
with 140% inflation a year,
we bring 70,000 people to Qatar.
I don't know how, but everybody
gets to the World Cups.
People mortgage houses,
sell assets, get loans.
All sorts of things to be there.
Generally speaking, in Argentina,
there is a climate of hardship,
hyperinflation,
there is economic instability.
Just before the World Cup
kicked off, my brother and his mates
did this kind of ad hoc poll,
asking random people in the street
what would they prefer, economic
stability or winning the World Cup?
And people were saying,
"Well, economic stability,
"how long does that last?
But the World Cup is forever."
I see this with this team.
We were all together
with the same energy.
And we want something, all together.
We don't expect football to change
anything about the reality.
But we all want just this little
bit of joy, for a bit.
For the Global South,
this was the first World Cup
ever to take place in summer.
So the mood of the squad in Qatar
and the people in Argentina
was completely in sync throughout
the whole tournament.
And that's a really
odd thing to have happened,
but it genuinely did happen.
The sense of belonging
with our shirt is very important.
And that relationship was repaired,
from all those years of sadness,
losing Copa America finals,
Messi's tears.
Done and dusted. Put in the past.
And Messi and the team,
and Scaloni and the fans,
felt that, I think, we were kind
of ready at the right time.
The country, the fans, the players,
went on this emotional journey.
And against the Netherlands,
which was a quarterfinals,
it was a huge release of pent-up
anxiety, hope, dreams.
They've got this history
with the Netherlands,
going back to the '74 World Cup,
where the Dutch beat them
and really humiliated them in '74.
But in '78, that final, there's
a period when the Dutch are left
on the pitch alone.
So they've got the whole
stadium going at them
just to intimidate them.
And that sort of lingered
all the way through.
The brilliant quarterfinal in '98,
when there was the two red cards.
And then in 2014 when van Gaal,
as coach, had had de Jong man-mark
Messi,
and he marked him out of the
game.
So, yeah, there was a lot of
reasons for Argentina
to particularly
want to win that game.
The Dutch said things,
they provoked.
Van Gaal said that they were
confident to go into penalties,
underestimating Emiliano.
And the worst thing you can say
to Leo is when Argentina defends,
they defend with ten players.
Argentina is a country that loves
to find a slight that it can get
itself worked up about.
To feel the bronca,
as they would call it,
the inner fury. And they used that.
It fired me up. It certainly did.
Even to Messi as well.
And Leo answered on the pitch.
Messi.
A lovely drop of the shoulders,
given half a yard of space.
Back it goes to Molina!
I think you saw in the quarterfinal
the difference
between the Messi of 2022
and 2014.
In 2014, you could mark him
out of the game,
because he played
a much more orthodox role.
By 2022,
he was barely involved.
He was this sort of sprite,
existing on the periphery.
You can mark a man.
You can't mark a ghost.
It's two!
It's his tournament!
Is it written in the stars?
He celebrates a goal
with this gesture,
which is a very symbolic
goal celebration.
He played the ears to van Gaal,
you know?
"I can't hear you. What were
you saying? Say it again."
In Argentina, we recognise it
as being first manifested
by Riquelme.
There is an edge to Messi.
Leo speaks to Riquelme a lot,
and Riquelme still felt badly
treated by Louis van Gaal
in his time at Barcelona.
That was not forgotten.
All that is playing in the mind
of Lionel Messi.
It just kind of grew the whole net
of footballing references
that were being suddenly
evoked on that one game.
It looked like it was going
to be a mundane kind of 2-0 victory.
And then in the last
few minutes, it just turned.
That's a good ball in, and a very,
very good header,
and the Dutch are back in it.
They panicked a little bit,
Argentina.
Do or die now
for the Netherlands.
It all comes down to this.
The last free kick,
I was next to Ferdinand.
I was so nervous because
last free kick, you know,
let's not concede it.
And I will never forget Ferdinand
filming that free kick!
Oh, my God!
Whoooo!
I couldn't believe it.
Sorry, man. I'm sorry.
I didn't know what to do.
I just went to the toilet!
And then it got really intense,
didn't it?
There was so much aggression
out there.
Paredes just kicking the ball
to the bench of Holland.
I think we like a bit of that.
As long as it doesn't go too far,
which I don't think it did.
It goes to penalties.
And obviously, you know,
the Argentinian goalkeeper
is quite a character and one you
absolutely want on your side
when you're in a penalty
shoot-out, that's for sure!
We had Emiliano, which is our ace.
Emi!
It's very difficult to explain
what the people feel with him.
You know? Goalkeepers,
they have their own personality.
They're different to the rest.
He learned straight in Stoke
on a Wednesday night,
like they say in England,
because it's true.
Emiliano was sent on loan
everywhere and he became an icon.
He can take the pressure,
and enjoy it.
Oh, it's saved again!
It's an amazing
piece of goalkeeping!
Oh, still having goose bumps.
For me, that was a brilliant moment.
And, yeah, it was his moment.
It was all about him.
The stadium erupts. And Argentina
are in the semifinals!
No, I was dead on the floor there!
Someone hugged me
and they said,
"Oh, I can't believe you've just
done it again. You saved us again."
And then when I looked up,
it was Leo.
Now it's just, that picture
I always will have in my heart.
For people that will know Messi
from a long time, we all know
that he's the leader.
Of course, then,
because he's a bit quiet,
people think,
"No, he's not a proper leader."
But no, they're wrong.
And I think Messi,
in that World Cup especially,
he was more than that.
What we haven't seen before from
Messi is those kind
of maybe reactions on the pitch.
He was always a bit angry.
Messi was showing signs
of being quite confrontational.
There's a lot of this,
people talking.
He goes and talks to van Gaal
and Davids saying,
"You've been talking too much.
You've been talking too much."
It's like, I'm looking at him and
I know all the people close to him,
it's like, "Wow, Leo." You know?
And you can't stay on the level
that long that Leo has,
without being incredibly
competitive.
He's a winner. He's a winner.
And then in the tunnel on the way
to the changing rooms
where he's doing
his Argentinian TV post-match,
the number 19, as he calls him,
walks by and Messi interrupts
the live bit to say,
"Anda pa' alla, bobo."
Que miras, bobo. Que miras, bobo.
"You go away, you fool." You know.
"Go away, Bobo!"
Anda pa' alla, Bobo. Anda pa' alla.
Tranquilo. Leo.
Rosario boy-style!
Within hours, there were T-shirts,
mugs, fridge magnets.
Suddenly, everyone among the press
there, were texting and writing,
"Has Messi been taken over
by the spirit of Maradona?"
"At last, finally,
Maradona speaks through Messi."
And my epiphany was to think,
"No! Maradona would have invented
"an especially obscene and offensive
insult specifically
"for the number 19."
It's very mild, "bobo".
It's the kind of thing someone's
grandmother might say.
But for Argentina that was a sign.
That thing that was missing,
why they couldn't fully
fall in love with Messi,
by seeing that, it was like,
"Yeah, he's one of ours."
We are more aggressive
probably than the team
that he had before
in the national team.
So he probably becoming a little bit
like us, you know, that bad boy.
By the time the Qatar World Cup
kicked off,
Messi was incredibly comfortable
being Messi.
For many years, there was enormous
pressure on him to perform
or be or behave to the expectations
of some nebulous demand,
to be more Argentinian,
to be more passionate,
to be more like Maradona.
But he broke free.
Whether it's Maradona dying or him
being able to leave Barcelona
and see that the world
didn't stop,
something shifted
that liberated him.
You can be the best player
in the world, but unless you link
somehow to your kid,
to the dreams that he had,
it just doesn't fully work.
And what Messi has managed to do
is to reconnect with that guy
that had a dream
that was a long time ago.
He said it, "I want to win
the World Cup."
That's the Messi that we saw
in Qatar, too.
KIDS SHOUT "MESSI!"
He must have
realised that the clock's ticking.
He must have known that, actually,
"If I'm going to do this, I've got
to do it."
And that was the thing about
watching Messi at this World Cup.
Every game I saw him, I'm thinking,
"Is this last time I see him?"
In football, in this thing
that we've invested so much time,
so much emotional energy, so much
intellectual energy in following,
he's the best we've seen
at this thing you've cared
about for so long.
And to know that that might
be ending,
this might be the last
time you see him,
that, for me, for fans,
for journalists,
that was a huge thing.
So what it must be for him, I think,
that's almost unimaginable.
Leo, for a while now, has understood
that he's a player of moments,
but the best moments
in the World Cup
were the ones
in which he was involved.
Messi.
Gvardiol's got back at him.
Will he be able to stay with him?
No! Messi gets through!
And Argentina have three!
Alvarez has got his second.
Made by the master!
He's knows he's not going
to beat him on pace, but how can he?
Well, by just creating mini battles
on the way to the last pass.
Genius.
And it will be Argentina to return
here on Sunday in a bid
to be crowned world champions.
Amazing. It was like magic.
The World Cup, football,
he said, so big passion
since I was a child.
And to have the opportunity
to be next to him
in that special moment before
the final of a World Cup,
I just want to say to him
that it was enough.
It's going to be an amazing
story without winning, too.
He already did something
for our country so powerful.
So powerful. He's like an example
for all the child in Argentina.
It's wonderful to see that career
panned out over two decades.
So wonderful to the point I think
most of the world wanted Messi
to win the World Cup.
It wasn't Argentina favourites,
it was just Messi.
We want Messi to win it.
We all knew that's the World Cup
for Messi.
It's destiny.
It's only one more step
to make the dream reality.
Messi had found the perfect
mental state to win a World Cup.
Many players said it
before the World Cup,
we want to win it because of him.
I went into the game
super confident.
You know, we were dancing
and singing on the bus
on the way to the stadium.
I think with international football,
games can become much more
about one individual
against another individual.
And so obviously
this was Messi v Mbappe.
The sorcerer and the apprentice!
And...that's exactly what we got.
And the beauty of it all
is that there are many stories
that could be told, but we don't
know which one will be written.
And what a game that was.
You know, it's the greatest
World Cup final there's ever been.
The best game I've ever seen.
Greatest international game
I think I've witnessed.
In a football game, you talk about
drama, action, emotion.
It was everything that you could
expect for a football game.
Argentina were, by a massive margin,
the better side in the first half.
Down goes Di Maria.
Penalty, Argentina.
Messi scores!
Argentina were all over them,
all over the pitch.
Totally one-sided.
Messi. Turns it out to Alvarez,
who gets it through.
And that's Mac Allister
looking at Di Maria!
And you thought that was it.
And then...
Ten minutes to go.
Breakaway, penalty.
It all changed.
After Messi has given the ball away.
Messi's been robbed by Coman.
Mbappe, gets the return!
Incroyable!
You're thinking then, Messi's
blown his own World Cup Final.
2-2. But again...
..you could see the players' faces.
And then the extra time, I think,
was the best extra time
I've ever seen.
It was just...it was just madness.
Here's Messi.
Messi wants it again!
Lloris in the way!
Well, the referee has pointed
to the middle and said, "Goal"!
And then you thought,
"That MUST be it now."
There is another change around here,
a France penalty.
More drama to come
and another penalty.
Mbappe...
..is the man!
A hattrick!
In the biggest game of all!
And then even after that,
it could have been won.
It was like one end...
Kolo Muani is in!
Martinez with the save.
Oh, my God, he was free.
That's a good one.
And they went straight down
the other end.
Here they go again!
Martinez waits in the middle.
That had to be.
It was one of the most exciting,
thrilling, tremendous games
I've ever seen.
And there's more to come,
because the 22nd World Cup Final
has gone to penalties.
In many ways, the most impressive
thing about Argentina
at the World Cup
was they had the mental resilience
to keep coming back.
So they did it in the quarterfinal,
and the same thing
in the final, twice.
You know, it was the famous
Alf Ramsey line
after 90 minutes,
with the '66 final.
"You've won it once,
now go out there and win it again."
Well this was, "You've won it twice,
now go out there and win it again."
When it came down to penalties,
we had Emiliano Martinez,
who...
He's got that skill...
..um, in a penalty shoot-out.
You know, it's like
arm wrestling.
Emiliano will put the team ahead.
So the pressure was on them
all the time.
The first one,
I didn't do anything.
Like, nothing. Just good luck,
and that's it.
Mbappe will go first for France.
And Mbappe will score for France!
Three times on the spot.
"Whatever you can do,
I will endeavour to do as well,"
is Lionel Messi's message.
And he rolls it in!
Well, that's stylish!
That's incredible!
At this time, this occasion.
The next one is the one, you know.
Saved by Martinez!
The first cheers
are Argentina's.
I think that he enjoyed penalties.
Such a strange personality
that he says, like,
"Here I am, now is my moment,
penalties are my time."
The third one is a pressure pen.
That's the one that I need to,
I need to do something, you know?
Martinez has just thrown
the ball away.
He's done that before.
This is all part
of his penalty routine.
Make them work. Unbelievable.
Wide!
People were saying,
"Oh, do you practise that dance?"
No. I never danced the way I danced
after the second penalty missed.
Never in my life.
You know, that's me.
Sometimes I'm a child on the pitch.
I don't see what's going
to happen next, you know?
He became like a specialist
penalty saver.
Like he did against Holland,
he saved the first ones
against the French,
and that put the pressure
on the French.
They miss, we score.
They miss, we score.
And it came down to Gonzalo Montiel,
you know, to deliver that last kick.
This for the World Cup.
It's Argentina!
I cried a little bit.
It was mad.
I've never thought about living
a moment like this.
I was only one-year-old
when Argentina won in '86.
At the age of 38, I can say that
I saw Argentina win the World Cup.
In the streets, in the homes,
in the hearts,
it was absolutely fantastic.
We were waiting for this moment
that Messi has that trophy
in his hands.
Finished! Finished!
We were talking to each other,
drinking mate,
drinking champagne,
singing all the way to Argentina.
It was just happiness, you know?
And everyone enjoyed it.
Five million people filled
the streets of Buenos Aires.
The Argentinian society
became divided, you know?
And I think this World Cup kind
of brought everybody together.
Because of the happiness.
Everybody was happy. Everybody.
When the things that happen
in your life, in your country,
with what?
In my country, with the World Cup.
Everyone is happy.
It's like that. I swear.
You're sitting in front
and you see like ants, you know.
White-and-blue ants!
And you can see people
on top of the trees.
Just lovely. Lovely.
We are crazy about football.
So imagine a celebration
like that in Buenos Aires.
It's been real chaos!
Argentina's never had a moment
like that.
The third star is there.
These lads are part of history.
This bunch, led by Messi,
they are so different,
and influential,
of the way Argentina
plays international football.
That group of players, that group
of people, they are all special.
It's not just about winning
the World Cup,
it's what we done
in the process.
You know, beating the champions
in the Copa America after 28 years,
beating the champions of Europe
at Wembley in a good style
of football, and beating
the World Cup champions in Qatar
after losing the first game.
It will be down to one
of the best World Cups ever.
It's mad to think
that I'm a World Cup champion,
that I won the World Cup
alongside Messi.
The light shone on him
just performing.
Whatever had happened in that final
or even in the tournament,
for me, Messi's now indisputable.
Messi's legacy would be to be
as big as Maradona in the pantheon
of the football gods.
He has to be up there as
the number one, and then the rest.
He's won absolutely everything
now in the game.
Messi has won so much for 15 years.
Nobody in the world ever
has done that.
You get to your fifth World Cup
and finally,
after all the misfortune,
all the pratfalls,
everything that has gone wrong,
finally, you win it.
It's the perfect ending.
There's nobody that
compares with Lionel Messi.
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