Is it the end for Messi?

 Dad’s death could be the final whistle for lost and lonely Messi.

They say sports stars experience two deaths: the first being the end of a career that has brought them a gilded life.

Lionel Messi might be looking at three.

The death of his father, Jorge, at 68, who was also his agent, has hit him harder than any loss he’s suffered in football.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” he wrote on Instagram. “I don’t know how to move forward.”

We have seen “Messi to quit” headlines before. And he did actually retire from international football in 2016 after the heartbreak of losing three major finals in a row.

They were the World Cup in 2014 and the Copa America in 2015 and 2016.

To cap it all, he blazed a vital penalty over the bar in the last one and blamed himself for the other failures too.

But he would be back inside two months.

It took Argentines a while to warm to him, the kid who had left the country at 13, spoke with a Spanish accent and had rarely excelled in the national jersey.

He could have played for Spain, but his father made sure he didn’t.

But for all this and his natural diffidence, he was not given the level of adulation that Diego Maradona was.

After he finally won the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, retirement thoughts loomed again.

He’d achieved his main goal in the game and his 39th birthday would fall in the middle of this year’s tournament.

But like on almost all previous occasions, he was doing no more than asking for reassurance that he could still do the business on the field.

That he could still deliver a pin-point pass or rifle home from an impossible angle at an age when most of his peers had retired.

He’s been in his thirties for almost a decade.

The reason his latest comment may be no idle threat is its plaintive tone.

“I only played football and now I have quite a few doubts about whether I’m going to keep doing it for much longer.”

He already sounds lonely and a bit lost.

In the opening game of the recent World Cup, he burst into tears after scoring when thinking of his dad, who was already close to death.

Yup, playing football is all he’s ever done from the age of four, when he nurtured a symbiotic relationship between his left foot and any loose item in the house.

On the field, he was already dominating at four; and between 6 and 12, he scored over 500 goals for Newell’s Old Boys’ youth team.

His dad, who had been a decent amateur player, realised that he was looking at a genius. But one with a growth hormone deficiency.

So he worked like a dog at a steel factory to earn the US$900 a month to meet his son’s health needs.

When the local Rosario club couldn’t help with the cost, Jorge tried Barcelona, aware of their celebrated La Masia academy.

He sent a VHS video of his son, then 13, to impress them, and father and son were invited.

After some dithering about investing in a foreign child who needed supplements to grow, a special trial match was arranged.

It took La Masia’s Carles Rexach only two minutes to sign him up on a napkin. The single sheet of paper sold for €895,000 at a London auction last year.

The rest is one of history’s greatest and most unlikely football careers, but just where does the kid from Rosario place among the immortals?

It may be time for serious discussion now that retirement may be nigh.

Another World Cup is unrealistic, although another Copa might appeal.

Meantime, he has an easy ride in the MLS with Inter Miami, where he enjoys life in a luxury penthouse with his wife and three sons.

Without his father’s guidance, he’ll have no shortage of “advisors”, but may well decide to bide his time before considering the future.

Life may begin at 40 for some, but football is all he’s ever known and he doesn’t look the type to be a manager.

Top players seldom are, but he’s a natural introvert, which makes even punditry a challenge.

Rich enough to buy a club in Argentina, he may take that route to stay in the game.

In the United States, he appeared to enhance his reputation to be the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) until the final.

And he seemed to put a bit more distance between himself and Cristiano Ronaldo before disappearing against Spain.

But being the GOAT is about more than endurance. And more than just playing in the World Cup, although it’s hard to be in the argument if you didn’t.

Equally, it’s hard to ignore someone who has won the trophy three times.

Pele stands alone on the podium, with three wins in 1958, 1962 and 1970. It could and should have been more.

He was blatantly kicked out of the 1966 finals by premeditated tactics from Bulgaria and Portugal, and he retired in 1970 even though he was just 33 when the 1974 finals came around.

Like Messi, Maradona won it just once (1986), and it is this trio that I would place on the GOAT podium with Pele at the top.

For what it’s worth, I’d put the Brazilian Ronaldo (R9) above his Portuguese namesake. And Alfredo di Stefano and George Best, even though neither graced the top show, are high on the list.

But as we recall some of Messi’s most thrilling moments – if there’s a single must-see highlight on YouTube, it’s probably his goal against Getafe in 2007 – we must be grateful to the extraordinary assists from his dad. Jorge Messi RIP. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.