If Argentina become the first team to successfully defend their World Cup title since 1962, and only the third in history, it is almost certain that Lionel Messi will be at the center of the story.
The 38-year-old is preparing for his sixth World Cup, which will equal the record held by Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Mexico’s Guillermo Ochoa. However, it will be a very different Messi to the one who debuted for Barcelona in 2003.
Most players decline. The elite find ways to adapt. Ronaldo reinvented himself as a predator in the penalty area when he lost speed.
Messi has not adapted to the decline. He adapted to continue dominating and staying ahead of a game that was always chasing him.
Since that 16-year-old boy debuted for Barcelona in a friendly against José Mourinho’s Porto, playing on the right, dribbling and cutting inside frequently, Messi has reinvented himself at least five times to become the player he is today for Argentina and Inter Miami.
When Ronaldinho, then the best and most recognizable player in the world, saw him train for the first time, he said that “he will be the best”.
Two years later, in August 2005, Messi introduced himself to the world in the Joan Gamper Cup against Juventus. Juventus coach Fabio Capello was so impressed with the 18-year-old that he reportedly tried to sign him.
When Messi turned 21, with Ronaldinho in decline and the baton being passed on, then-Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard was clear about what the team needed from him.
“Right in the center of the action,” said Rijkaard. “The more he touches the ball, the better for the team.”
In Pep Guardiola’s first months in charge, in 2008, the right side of the field was the Argentine’s particular corridor towards goal.
The first time Guardiola decided to take Messi off the wing it was for defensive reasons.
He didn’t come back to score and the full-back suffered. But the Catalan coach knew that Messi would always end up at the center of operations.
And the team would be built around its new position, for the biggest stages and the biggest moments.
The false 9 and the birth of a systems breaker
The date: May 2, 2009. The location: Santiago Bernabéu stadium, in Madrid. La Liga game.
Guardiola made a decision. He removed Messi from the right wing and placed him at the tip of the offensive formation, but without the traditional center forward role.
Samuel Eto’o went to the right, Thierry Henry to the left, and Messi received the order: fall, receive, decide. In the end, the score was 6-2. The false 9 was reborn.
It wasn’t something new. Gusztav Sebes’s Hungary had dismantled England in their own backyard in 1953, when, in a 6-3 victory, they repeatedly dropped Nandor Hidegkuti into midfield, displacing the defenders from position and creating space for Ferenc Puskas and Sandor Kocsis.
Johann Cruyff, first under Rinus Michels, played as a roving striker within the Dutch Total Football philosophy.
At first, Messi became an unsolvable problem. When he fell between the lines, Real Madrid’s defenders had to decide: follow him and leave a hole, or stay and give him a lot of space.
None of the options worked. Messi crossed space unchallenged. With Xavi, Andrés Iniesta and Yaya Touré behind him and Henry and Eto’o opening up the defense on the flanks, every opposition decision was wrong.
Guardiola repeated the experiment weeks later in the Champions League final against Manchester United. Messi scored with a header 20 minutes from time.
Between 2011 and 2013, Messi scored 96 goals in 69 La Liga games.
The Ballon d’Or he received in 2009 has become almost permanent. He also won it in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2019, and would accumulate eight in total. The first came at 22 years old. The most recent, at 36.
“I didn’t pay much attention to tactics,” Messi told journalist Juan Pablo Varsky in 2024.
“But with Guardiola I learned a huge amount. I started to understand spaces, ball retention, how the game really works.”
Transition: the weight of a team
When Xavi left Barcelona in 2015, and Iniesta three years later, something changed. Messi had always been the decisive player, now he was being asked to be the driving force.
The midfield that had been his safety net, the men who kept the ball moving and created the spaces where he shined, was gone. For a while, they expected Messi to be Xavi, Iniesta and a goalscorer at the same time. It was too much to ask of anyone.
He dealt with this by evolving once again. The goalscorer and number 10, or false 9, became the ‘enganche’ (the hook). Stepping back further, he was now the organizer, the man who started and often finished.
Goal passes began to rival goals in their statistics. In the 2019-20 season, he recorded 22 assists and 25 goals in 33 La Liga games.
He returned to his goalscoring best in his final season at Barcelona (2020-21), with 30 goals and 11 assists in 35 La Liga games.
But his first season at Paris Saint-Germain confirmed the change conclusively: 11 goals and 15 assists in 34 games in all competitions, more assists than goals for the first time in his career at club level.
“A goalscorer who became an Iniesta”, as an Argentine analyst described it.
The weight of the clamp and the release
The tactical evolution ran parallel to a story that took even longer to resolve: who Messi was for Argentina.
He became captain in August 2011. The defeats came. The 2014 World Cup final, lost to Germany in extra time at Maracanã. The 2015 Copa América final, lost on penalties to Chile. The 2016 Copa América final, lost on penalties to Chile again.
Three finals in three years, all lost, and each one tightening the knot of public expectation around him.
After the last one, he gave up, something he had considered twice before. It returned. But it was different.
At the 2019 Copa América, controversially eliminated by host Brazil in the semi-final, Messi entered a press conference and harshly criticized the South American Football Confederation.
He was no longer the player who seemed to retreat into silence when Argentina’s weight became too great. He was a leader who decided to stop being defined by what he hadn’t achieved.
The 2021 Copa América was liberation. Argentina beat Brazil in the final at Maracanã and ended a 28-year drought for a major title. The pre-game speech that Messi gave moved the dressing room to tears.
The Messi of the 2022 World Cup was something completely different, a synthesis of everything that came before.
There was the sprint past Josko Gvardiol in the semi-final against Croatia, the 2009 winger reappearing for an extraordinary moment.
There was the quarterback’s precision in the final against France, the pass to Nahuel Molina, the phantom infiltration that forced the rebound for Argentina’s third goal, the penalties converted when everything was at stake.
“Football has changed a lot,” he told Zinedine Zidane in a 2023 interview. “The way of playing, the systems. Today’s game is much more tactical and physical than before. Before, it found more spaces.”
He said it with the matter-of-fact tone of someone who played in three distinct tactical eras of the modern game, that of the physical midfielders of Porto and Chelsea, the positional and passing peak, the post-Guardiola tactical arms race with quick transitions, and he came out on top of them all.
‘The last Messi is always the best Messi’
At Inter Miami and throughout the 2024 Copa América, Messi walks more than he runs.
Critics have already used this against him. Now it sounds like mastery. He reads the game, conserves energy for the moments that matter.
“The last Messi is always the best Messi,” Pablo Aimar, his childhood idol, once said. You’re probably still right.
What Messi has achieved over two decades is not just an accumulation of trophies and numbers. It’s a reimagining of what a football player can be at every stage of their career.
The teenage winger who dazzled Capello. The false 9 that redesigned the tactical map of European football. The hook that learned to make others great.
The captain who finally became what his country needed, the quarterback of a world champion team. And now the veteran who barely runs and still sees everything first.
The preparation for the World Cup will generate many superlatives about Messi. Most will miss the point. The point is not how good he is, but how many times he has had to become someone completely new.
