Kieran Shannon: Sport doesn't get bigger and rarely gets better than Messi's World Cup

Football itself has had a stab, with multiple commentators instantly proclaiming it as possibly the best final the sport has known and there being unanimous consensus that it was the best World Cup final ever, but even that hardly does justice to what took place in Lusail last Sunday.

The first sporting event I can remember watching live happened to be another World Cup final won by Argentina, Mario Kempes hot-stepping through all that tickertape and those Dutch defenders in 1978. I’ve watched a lot of sport since then, quite a share of it, fortunately, in person, but like you and everyone else, much of it from the vantage point of a couch. 

It’s where we saw Houghton put the ball in the English net; Packie deny Timofte; Alan McLoughlin silence Windsor Park; Harrington finally land a major for himself and his country; O’Gara’s winning kicks in Cardiff; Katie win gold; Limerick land their first All Ireland in 45 years. All those events had us on the edge of that aforementioned couch, and when the outcome was known, leaping out of it. But last Sunday belonged in a sphere of its own.

With all those other sporting occasions, we had a dog in the fight. Jack’s Army, our golfers, Katie and Kellie, they were all representing Ireland while Limerick in 2018 were representative of another great Irish sporting tradition, that of a county having all neutrals wishing for its famine to end and see and enjoy the promised land.

Last Sunday, for all the talk of the the Mac Allisters and Donabate, there was no Irish interest in that final, no skin had we in that game. Except we had.

Lionel Messi is my 11-year-old’s idol, has been for five years now. Maybe it’s because he too is left-footed and quite light and small for his age and used to sport a bush of long hair. Whatever Santa gets him in a few days’ time will never eclipse his present of three years ago when he was gifted a couple of plane and match tickets for Barcelona where he would catch Messi score four goals in his penultimate game before a crowd in the Camp Nou. Much to his father’s admiration, Barcelona, not PSG, remain his favourite team but Robert Lewandowski is by a distance only his second-favourite player.

He was up out of his seat when Messi scored that opening goal and again when Di Maria made it 2-0 just 35 minutes in. Yet it would be an understatement to say that whatever sense of joy or happiness he had at any point on Sunday was significantly less than the level of distress he underwent and exhibited upon Mbappé scoring those two goals in less than two minutes. Suddenly he was like a child of Limerick back in ’94; bad enough to lose if the other side were the frontrunners throughout, but the idea of your side having had it basically in the bag, then let it slip, blow it, choke, was excruciating.

He was an emotional wreck for the rest of normal time, which meant so were the rest of us as Lloris tipped Messi’s shot over, and Mbappé seemed certain to carve out another shot just before he was blocked and the whistle went for normal time. Eventually he composed himself, a bit like the team he supported, but the game continued to be a rollercoaster. Over the past fortnight we’ve heard some calls for a game to go straight to penalties if it’s still a draw upon the end of 90 minutes. Last Sunday underlined the folly that would be. Without extra time France-Argentina is only half the drama and game it ended up being.

Technically other finals in other sports this year were more complete contests in the strictest sense of the term. It took France almost 80 minutes to literally fire a shot in anger and for the game to become a proper contest; in both the Munster and All-Ireland final Limerick were pushed from start to finish in pulsating, relentless encounters against Clare and Kilkenny. But what France-Argentina lacked in the first 80 minutes, it more than compensated with what followed. Messi’s second goal, Mbappé’s third, Martinez’s save, the best or at least the most important we’ve ever seen.

In short, it’s the greatest sport we’ve ever seen on television, in large part because sport can’t get bigger.

My living room, my son, was not almost every house in Ireland last Sunday but across the world. We’ve all rooted for a special athlete to have their moment in time. Katie in London. Canavan getting his hands on Sam. LeBron and Jordan finally winning their first NBA title. Tiger coming back to win that 15th major. But Messi and Argentina is all that and more wrapped into one.

America remains the most professionalised sports country in the world, so much so it’s basically a continent, and there’s a rationale to any of their baseball, football or NBA teams being heralded world champions; there’s no team better on the planet in their respective sports. Yet as magical and romantic as it was when LeBron proclaimed in 2016, ‘Cleveland, this is for you!’, it was still just for Cleveland. Most of my uncles wouldn’t have known a thing about it, just like most people in Cleveland know nothing about the liberation Limerick experienced in 2018. But they all know of Messi, and how this was one was for him and for Diego (to both honour and banish that ghost) and for Argentina.

It’s not like he was playing for Germany, a country who usually win or at least expect to, and remain relatively even-keeled when they do so. It was for one of the most fervent support bases in the world, triggering an outburst that no other sport or event could.

The Olympics is like Netflix; we might all watch it, but not the same thing at the same time; the 100m once had that cache and command but not now. The World Cup final, as corrupt as its sport now is, is still a bit of a throw-back to the days of free-to-air two channel-land, only when it’s on there’s only channel you’re watching.

Last year’s Superbowl was watched by over 140 million people worldwide. More than seven times that tuned in to last Sunday’s final. Never have more eyes been on a sporting event, and on one man, and never were the stakes of a sporting legacy so much on the line: lose that penalty shootout and ultimately that loss would be categorised in the same bracket as 2014: so near, so, so far.

Football has always been the global game, and for a long time Messi has been its king. And now thankfully after last Sunday he’s indisputably the king of the world.