Lionel Messi the best ever? It's been argued and asserted after his remarkable five goals against Bayern Leverkusen. Messi simply strolled through their defence as though it wasn't there. He scored his goals with a dazzling variety of shots, chips and lobs. Emphasising, in the process, what a gloriously democratic game soccer is, in physical terms.

For Messi is small, yet his boyish build is no handicap to him; he is still too quick, skilled and adroit for the most powerful defenders.

But the best-ever perhaps not for what are the criteria? Surely, comparisons are subjective. What role, for instance, should a World Cup play? Messi appeared for Argentina in South Africa and was somewhat disappointing, lively enough in their earlier games, but unable to save his team from a thrashing by Germany.

Afterwards, Messi insisted that he was satisfied with his form and would not condemn Diego Maradona, a refulgent World Cup star for Argentina in the Mexican World Cup of 1986, but an erratic and explosive team manager, blamed in some quarters for keeping Messi out on the wing rather than giving him his head as Barcelona so profitably do. Was there an element of envy in such tactics. One can only surmise.

World Cup: the criterion?

But then, should the World Cup be the ultimate criterion just as the Olympics are said to be in athletics? In that case, what of that other great Argentinian, Alfredo Di Stefano, who never appeared in one? This was the centre who with Real Madrid — whom he led and inspired to the first five ever European Cups — was playing Total Football long before anyone had thought of it, tirelessly influential from box to box. By the time Argentina in 1958 deigned to return to a World Cup, Di Stefano had been long in Spain with Real. Eventually naturalised, Spain took him to the 1962 World Cup in Chile but he didn't play; or wouldn't play? He was confronted by an ego as big as his in flamboyant manager Helenio Herrera.

No match for Pele

Pele did, and how! I was fortunate enough to see him excel in two World Cups, 1958 in Sweden as a prolific and precocious 17-year-old and again in Mexico in 1970, each time inspiring Brazil to success. The two goals he got against Sweden in the 1958 Final in Stockholm were marvels of flair, technique and courage. Power, sublime skill, invention; who could match him?

Not even Maradona, for all that amazing solo burst against England and then against Belgium in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City in the 1986 World Cup.

So, let us content ourselves with saying that Messi, at this moment, is the finest footballer on the planet. Let us note that three of those top four players were or are Argentinians: Di Stefano, Maradona and now Messi. Even if two of them have excelled, not in Argentina, but in Spain.

 

The author is an expert on football based in England