Out-of-this-world Messi is peaking perfectly ahead of World Cup defence | OneFootball

You can neatly split Lionel Messi‘s career into two distinct parts.

The first part was all about his club. Four Champions Leagues with Barcelona. All kinds of records broken. Six Ballon d’Or. A level of footballer we might never see again.

It wasn’t that Messi didn’t care about Argentina, but his repeated heartbreaks on the international stage stood in stark contrast to the glory of his club career.

Mario Gotze in the 2014 World Cup final. Back-to-back Copa America penalty shootout defeats to Chile. A tearful retirement announcement, swiftly reneged upon. Messi looking like he was nursing a migraine ahead of Jorge Sampaoli’s disastrously dysfunctional Argentina getting tonked by Croatia in 2018.

Just as it looked as though Messi was destined to never taste glory on the international stage, something changed. A new team emerged, and the long-serving captain began to embrace being a leader.

Argentina lost to Brazil in the semi-finals of the 2019 Copa America, but this new-look team had something about it. Suddenly, there was hope that something might happen.

“I don’t know what it will be like, but I felt very good with this group,” Messi said after their elimination.

“If I have to help in any way, I will. It’s a wonderful group. If I can help and support them, yes (I’ll stay).”

That’s exactly what happened. And so began the second phase of Messi’s career, defined by him stepping up on the international stage.

“Our group started emerging in 2019 Copa America, during the game against Brazil,” he later reminisced.

“The group realised that day we were in for great things, because we had a great match and we ended with the anger.”

Messi’s Argentina got their revenge over Brazil with a hard-fought 1-0 victory in the 2021 Copa America final. The World Cup followed. Then a glittering victory over the European champions Italy in the Finalissima. Then another Copa America.

The veteran has continued to dazzle and win trophies in his club career, but in his twilight years all of the iconic, legacy-defining moments have been with his country.

And this is no coincidence. It’s all by design.

Messi’s biographer Guillem Balague revealed that he’d been taking English lessons and had a four-hour chat with Pep Guardiola about potentially moving to Manchester City. But he ended moving to PSG instead.

He’s never admitted as much, but that decision was surely at least partly informed by his international ambitions. Avoiding the intensity of the Premier League and going to the relatively serene Ligue 1 ultimately allowed him to reach Qatar in peak condition.

And it looks as though history is repeating itself ahead of the 2026 World Cup. He’s spent three years getting acclimatised. He’s already lifted the Copa America trophy on American soil.

Unlike all the other world-class stars who will be arriving at the tournament off the back of a gruelling European campaign, Messi will be arriving mid-season, just as he did last time. That went alright, didn’t it?

Messi looks as fit and ready as he could conceivably be in a summer in which he turns 39.

Don’t believe us? Just watch him.

“The rest of the world better beware, while he’s been publicly indifferent on the World Cup, if you’ve watched anything over the past three or four weeks, he’s ready. And the world’s ready, for the greatest of all time to defend his World Cup title.”

That’s how the commentator narrated the outrageous technical ability of his latest assist for Inter Miami.

It would be easy to write that off as histrionic American hyperbole, but you watch him with the ball at his feet and you’re reminded of how it felt watching him in 2009. Or 2015. Or 2022.

Messi has scored and assisted in each of his last four appearances for Inter Miami. It’s seven goals and five assists in his last nine appearances since the last international break.

Of course, the usual MLS caveats apply.

Still, we defy you to watch this man and try telling us he’s not cooking up something special for us.