I saw Lionel Messi walking by the World Cup trophy and looking at it in the most poignant way possible. I had watched the best player in the world walk up to receive a Golden Ball trophy he did not want, in a stadium that was celebrating without him, and I had seen on his face something I recognised but could not yet name.

I know what it is now. It is the face of someone who gave everything, and it still was not enough.

I was at an age where that felt like information. Like the world was telling me something about how things work.

The years that followed were strange to live through as a fan. Every Copa America final, every tournament exit, every headline about whether he truly loved the national team, I absorbed all of it personally in the way teenagers absorb things, which is completely and without the buffer of perspective. I had no framework yet for understanding that a person could keep failing publicly and still be okay. That failure was not a verdict. I did not know that yet. I was still learning what kind of world this was. When you love someone so much, sometimes you create your own realities where that person wins. I did that.

And Messi kept losing. He lost in 2015. He lost in 2016. He retired for three days and then came back. Nobody asked him to. He just did.

I think that is the moment he actually got to me. Not any goal. The coming back. The decision to return to something that had only ever hurt him in front of the entire world, with no promise that it would ever be different. There was no logic to it. It was just: this is the thing I do, so I will keep doing it. That was all.

I was not doing well in those years in the way that teenagers are often not doing well, uncertain about everything, carrying a loneliness I didn’t have words for, unsure whether the things I cared about were worth caring about. I am not saying Messi fixed any of that. I am saying that watching him helped me stay inside it without running. There is a difference.

Then 2021 happened. Then 2022 happened.

I will not pretend I was neutral about it. When Argentina won the Copa America, I felt something shift in me that had been stuck for a long time. And when the World Cup trophy went into his hands, I cried in a way that had nothing to do with football and everything to do with the seventeen-year-old who had watched him lose and quietly decided the world was a place where things don’t work out. That kid got an answer in 2022. It took eight years, but it came. I thought it never would.

His winning felt like my winning because it was. Not equally, he earned his in ways I cannot imagine. But emotionally, something in me that had been waiting alongside him finally exhaled.

He is 38 now, almost 39. A World Cup is happening. I am watching differently this time, not with dread, not with the old protective numbness. Just with gratitude. For what he showed me about going again. About not explaining yourself. About staying inside the thing you love even when it keeps breaking your heart.

Football has been a big part of me growing up. Watching football made me understand life better. But Lionel Messi is beyond that. He just knows how to do it. Isn’t that the most beautiful thing ever? A world full of chaos, discomfort, discontent, and when you see him, you get this sense of certainty.

I like to believe that whenever you are having a bad day, don’t worry too much. Messi will just score and make your life a feel-good movie. It breaks my heart that I won’t get to believe in it much longer, but it was worth every bit of the journey.