He is a four time Ballon d’Or winner. He has seven Spanish La Liga titles and four UEFA Champions League crowns under his belt. He is an ESPY Winner, Olympic Gold Medalist, World Cup finalist, EA sports cover man and a living legend for one of the, if not the, biggest clubs in all of world football. But in the 10th minute of the September 26th game at the Camp Nou against Las Palmas, all Lionel Messi became was a giant talent crater that the rest of the football world had to try to fill.
The ferocious Messi is known for not going down easily, absorbing heavy contact on many a run over the course of his storied career. That is what made his body writhing in pain on the goal line of the Las Palmas goal that much more of a troubling sight. Messi looked to have landed awkwardly as Las Palmas’ Pedro Bigas put in a challenge to stop the Argentine’s attempt on goal. But everybody expected him to just get up. We all just expected the best player in the world to shake off the little knock and continue on. Alas, when he finally got up, it was just to walk off the field in obvious discomfort and an with an even more obvious reservation to the fact that he was really hurt. The sad truth would be revealed in scans following the match showing an MCL tear that would put him on the shelf for two months.
Major players in major sports going down with serious injuries is nothing new. Michael Jordan missed 64 games in his second year in the NBA with a broken foot. Surefire Hall of Fame NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have lost entire seasons to injuries. But even at their peaks those gentlemen don’t mean as much to their club and country as Lionel Messi does to both Barcelona and the Argentina Men’s National Team.
It is hard to pity a team like Barcelona who still can trot out two of the world’s most domineering scorers in world football in Neymar and Luis Suarez. But even the untrained eye could see the effect that their talisman’s absence had in their last two games sans Messi. The first game came in the UEFA Champions League against a battle tested Bayer Leverkusen side. Bayer would have been a tough game even with their #10, but Barcelona had the pressure ramped up on them to 11 in the early stages of the first half. That would eventually lead to them conceding a goal off a corner in the 22nd minute. A normal Barcelona side would shake off such a setback, and it would most likely be Messi getting the equalizer to right the Blaugrana ship. Instead it took a goalmouth scramble goal from Sergi Roberto and a stroke of genius from Luis Suarez to capture all three home points.
The results were not as rosy in their first match domestically as they traveled to Sevilla’s Sanchez Pizjuan. The Catalan giants were not only missing Messi, but Andres Iniesta as well. They had strokes of bad luck, but were vastly outworked by a just as depleted Sevilla side and fell 2-1. That is something one would never say about a team with Lionel Messi entrenched in it. A team, even as talented as Barcelona, can get complacent with the thoughts that a star player like Messi would always be there to bail them out when they needed it the most. So far all they’ve done is show that Messi means more to the team than just their goals. He is the head at the top of the team’s spine. His movement is like the tides bringing the crashing waves of Suarez and Neymar to shore. Take away that spark, that impetus to be constantly outstanding and you are left with a team that must rely on fortuitousness to win instead of the fact that they are just flat out better.
Unlike the aforementioned stars from sports in this country, Messi has more than one obligation to the football community. International duty for Argentina is a charge that seemingly has no end. Some may even say that the recent lack of success from La Albiceleste is the one black mark on the otherwise glittering career of Lionel Messi. Even though he dragged the South American superpowers all the way to the 2014 World Cup Finals, winning the tournament’s best player honors in the process, the eventual loss to Germany was viewed as further proof that Messi couldn’t win the big one in the sky blue and white. Argentina, like Barcelona, has a bevy of talent throughout the pitch. Teams would kill to have Sergio Aguero, Carlos Tevez, and Angel Di Maria at their disposal. CONMEBOL World Cup Qualifying is the toughest in the world and any argument to the contrary is just straight up invalid. Just take a look at their first game during the Great Messi Depression against Ecuador.
Argentina possessed the ball for 67% of the game, a normal figure against a side of Ecuador’s stature. That possession was so empty though. It lacked a cutting edge that Messi provided. His drawing of double and triple teams would allow the masterful feet of Aguero, Tevez, and Di Maria to get more than five shots on goal, or at least more than one decent effort. Instead, Argentina’s goal well ran dry and two goals in a little over a minute were conceded late on dooming Argentina to the worst of starts to qualification for Russia 2018.
There are still two months to see whether or not both of these clubs will be able to survive without their best player. The schedule doesn’t get any easier though. Barca has three Champions League games schedule during the next two months as well as vital league affairs with current leaders Villarreal and Real Madrid in the latest El Clasico. Argentina’s docket is even more stacked. They host Paraguay, fresh off a win over Venezuela, next week. In November, they travel to Brazil and host Colombia, two quarterfinalists from the last World Cup. While Messi rehabilitates his left knee, both teams will have to rehabilitate their images of what they were before the then floppy haired Argentine came into their lives. Both were world powers before and will surely be after, but in the interim they are both going to struggle in filling the Lionel Messi sized hole on their squads.