I’ve been lucky enough to watch Lionel Messi play 42 times – and it still doesn’t feel enough | OneFootball

When David Beckham got his first chance to watch Lionel Messi train at Inter Miami, he was giddy with excitement. The club co-owner was then duly amazed, although for one reason he didn’t expect. Messi didn’t seem to move outside a 10m square radius. And yet even within that he was still doing things that would fill most players’ career highlights. Beckham, perhaps the most famous person in the world, was blown away by the precision alone.

Messi is going to have to move a bit more for the Club World Cup’s opening match against Egypt’s Al Ahly on Sunday, given that the Hard Rock Stadium is 16 miles outside Miami and takes a bit to get to. The cavalcade ferrying him to the game will at least herald his grandeur, even if the distance appears to reflect a certain disconnect with this tournament on the ground. Many of the stadiums are far outside urban centres, and not exactly serviced by much public transport for the fans that managed to travel. At least it’s not at Inter Miami’s own Chase Stadium, which is 30 miles away from the city.

The club don’t have too many concerns about this since it’s all a chance to promote their more central Miami Freedom Park, opening next year. The literature describes the arena “as a symbol of Messi’s transformative impact on the club and his lasting legacy in Miami”.

Fifa will hope it goes much further than this. Rules were already massaged so Inter Miami could play in the tournament. They were afforded the host nation slot after winning the league phase of Major League Soccer, even though the US champions are decided not by the league but by the play-offs that follow. Such manoeuvres ensured Messi is now the face of the tournament; still here; still the great draw.

Even for his career, that’s remarkable longevity. His presence will be all the more pronounced since River Plate and other clubs failed in bids to sign Cristiano Ronaldo ahead of the tournament. Their final duel might have to wait until next year’s World Cup. Messi is already established as the face of American soccer, mind, and Fifa obviously saw the initial impact from his 2023 arrival.

Messi has continued his career in Major League Soccer with Davi Beckham’s Inter Miami (AP)

People in the league excitingly talk of old-fashioned “Messi fever”. His first season brought an all-time attendance record for the entire MLS, as Apple TV immediately added 300,000 new subscribers to the competition’s “season pass” in his debut month.

Even the Messi effect, however, isn’t indefinite. You might have seen the reports that some student tickets for the opening game of the Club World Cup are going for only $20, with the promise of up to four complimentary tickets. Although perhaps that says more about certain unglamorous fixtures than it does about Messi.

Those who know the 37-year-old insist “his hunger is still crazy”. He still has the same drive, even if he is fully aware Inter Miami aren’t the same level of team he’s played for in such competitions in the past. There is a huge gap to the top Brazilian clubs, let alone the top European sides. The aim is still to compete and get something out of this.

Messi, of course, is famously adept at creating something out of nothing. The very image of him conjuring a previously unseen pass also fosters a more emotional resonance, far more important than flow charts or financial figures.

Some football purists will doubtless find the availability of such tickets for a Messi match almost sacrilegious, since this is a chance to witness greatness; to witness history. It might not be what it was, but it’s still like nothing else, akin to seeing a Beatle play.

The realisation of that also provokes a different emotion when you catch one of the many Messi clips on social media. There’s a poignancy. You’re usually watching a player do something that didn’t seem possible, and probably won’t be for anyone else.

We lived through greatness, and now it’s gone, at least in the form that will become immortal in memory.

For those of us of a certain age, you can still remember the first reports and the first glimpses: the leap into Ronaldinho’s arms after his lofted first goal, the terrorising of Chelsea. That has now passed in what feels the flick of a foot. Twenty years and one of the most storied careers, gone like that.

Messi’s astonishing career has passed in a flash (Getty)

It’s possible that this is now an article on the ageing process rather than one of history’s great players, but that is partly what sport is about. The image of Messi’s left foot guiding the ball into the bottom corner of a net was as sweet as any madeleine, football’s own remembrance of things past.

And if you’ll forgive a further indulgence beyond such pretension and into the first person, I did – as a football journalist – attempt to recognise this as it was happening. I tried to make sure I covered as many Messi games as I could, and counted every one. The current number is 42, having watched him in three Champions League finals, most of his games in the 2014 World Cup and all of the 2022 World Cup.

Yet it still doesn’t feel enough. It still feels like I should have watched more, like every minute of his 1,137 professional games should have been appointment viewing – even if it was Barcelona eviscerating Levante or Numancia.

Messi’s genius worked against him in that sense. As Beckham immediately saw, there was such a constant stream of brilliance – of content, if you want to go there – that it almost felt routine. You might have heard of one divine Messi chip last week, that you now had to seek out, but there was very quickly another.

That perhaps partly explains why he picked his header in the 2009 Champions League final against Manchester United as his favourite goal. It wasn’t just the importance, but that the manner of it was so rare for him.

Messi’s favourite goal was this header in the 2009 Champions League final (Getty Images)

None of this is to say there was a total purity to Messi’s career. He’s been an ambassador for Saudi Arabia and played for Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain, all after Barcelona’s indulgence of him reached such bloated levels that it almost bankrupted the club.

Yet there was still a purity to his football. We are now seeing the last grains of it. That sense of finality fires this classic last act, that is about making money as much as it is about making history.

His career now feels like it is primarily measured in financial figures rather than all of those goals and assists. There’s the way in which Inter Miami’s valuation rose 103 per cent after he arrived, or that the club’s revenue tripled to $200m, with average ticket prices soaring by 1,700 per cent, at which point it brings to mind the line about dancing to architecture.

Messi might not move like he used to. He still moves us like no one else in football.