Here’s the regular check-in list for Argentina’s ride through this World Cup.
Pretournament – Still good, but perhaps not good enough.
After Game 1 – Whatever Messi’s on, I am going to get some, and I don’t care if it’s approved by Health Canada.
Game 2 – This is going to be too easy.
Game 3 – May never be beaten again.
R32 – Remember what everyone said about not good enough? Right all along.
R16 – FIFA fixed it for them.
QF – Maybe Trump fixed it for them?
SF – God fixed it for them.
It’s debatable whether the arc of history bends toward justice, but it will pull a U-ey for a great story. This is why Argentina will win the World Cup on Sunday. Because while Spain winning instead may be more just, it would definitely be more boring.
Counterpoint: Why Spain will win the World Cup
Spain is pretty close to a perfect soccer team. The big ones to the rear, the fast ones up front, everybody understanding what they should be doing – mostly, passing the ball back and forth like they are paid on a per-kick basis.
Spain is that person you know who does everything well and, let’s be honest, you hate that person. Blah blah blah I renovated my own bathroom. Blah blah blah I beat the market by 10 points again this year.
Nobody likes a show-off. Now that it’s been unmasked, Scooby-Doo-style, as the actual favourite all along, Spain has crept into annoying territory. It hasn’t done anything wrong. It is just too good.
Meanwhile, the Argentines play like they learned their trade in the house league of a minimum security work camp.
There are almost no stars on their team. A bunch of them got their day jobs working for another Argentine, and one of those guys is playing for his dad. You go up and down the Argentine roster and it’s like, “Oh yeah, the one with the weird hair,” and, “Which five-foot-tall ball of rage is this one?”
A team of agitators with one megastar, Argentina rallies around Lionel Messi, who leads all World Cup scorers with 21 career goals and counting.Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
These players are purpose built to play Argentine soccer, which is not like the other soccer. They have the powerful levers of someone intent on snapping both your ankles at once, and the supple hips of men who spend a lot of time rolling around the ground pretending to cry.
All the things you love and hate about the game, Argentina is simultaneously and exaggeratedly.
Then there’s the sheer Argentineanness of them. I’ve never been, but if these people are any guide, it must be a wild experience. Every time you see these players talking to anyone, all bulgy eyes and frantic hands, you expect the next move to be either a fist fight or a French kiss.
Where iconoclasm was once the trend in global football, every team these days is a Band of Brothers. Well, to hear them tell it, at least. They go on and on.
I guess it doesn’t occur to them that everybody everywhere is on a team of one sort or another, which means everyone has experience with locker-room politics. Therefore, most of these stories of uncomplicated clubhouse love-ins minus any friction are hard to credit.
But with Argentina, it feels real. The X factor may be Lionel Messi. Whenever Messi is knocked down, all of his teammates rush forward to pick a fight on his behalf, and then to dust him off. There’s no jousting in this group. Everyone is looking to the unquestioned, beneficent leader.
At the end of the winning efforts, the Argentines aren’t just happy. They look like they’ve just been released from prison. They are nearly hysterical. They did it for Messi.
Argentina isn’t a team. It’s a well recompensed cult.
When they ran around the field after the semis with a banner goading England over the Falklands, two things occurred to you – “Maybe this isn’t the right place,” and, “I wish I could stick it to someone like that.” Something about Argentina’s heedless, emotionally unregulated approach reminds you of the innocent hooliganism of your teenage years.
What you need to know about the final
Remember when whatever was happening to you right this moment felt like the most important thing in the world? That your life would be over if you didn’t get permission to go or she didn’t call you back? That’s what Argentina brings to its football.
And that’s all before we consider Messi. Coming into this thing, he was already the greatest player of all time. Over the last five weeks, he’s pushed himself up into Muhammad Ali territory – a legend, even to those coming generations who will never have seen him perform.
Right now, Messi may be the representative entertainment industry figure of the 21st century – a preposterously talented cipher who is everything to everyone everywhere.
If Argentina wins on Sunday, he is that without a doubt. How can a bunch of nice Spanish guys get in the way of that kind of history? It would be bad manners.
As good as Spain is, the occasion will bend its players. If it doesn’t, a few Argentine midfielders will bend them in a more urgently medical sense. And if that doesn’t work, Messi will Uri Geller them like human spoons in the last 10 minutes of the match.
Argentina will win, and not because it is the better team. It will win because it is by far the better yarn.