By Mark Namanya, The Citizen Correspondent
Kampala. The sea of Lionel Messi apologists is bigger than the Mediterranean. When they are not accusing his national team coach of failing to play to his strengths, they will see no shame in reminding anyone who cares to listen that the World Cup has ceased to be the highest echelon of the beautiful game.

That Messi is the best player in the world is indisputable – he has been for the last three years. He is a joy to behold; watching him at his finest is poetry in motion.

“Unfair” is the word teammate Xavi used to dismiss comparisons with Messi. The Argentine is at a level that contemporary footballers can only dream of.

Yet, when Messi went home with a third straight Ballon d’Or award on Monday evening, it was right on cue that questions about his national team failures resurfaced. Messi’s poor shows with Argentina are not rocket science.
At Barcelona, he is surrounded by one of the greatest ever midfields in the history of the game. His country has no Xavi, Iniesta or Busquets, three players whose unique intelligence and telepathy afford him the service to wreak havoc.

Contrast that with when Argentina played out to a shock 1-1 World Cup qualification draw with Bolivia two months ago, their midfield comprised Javier Macherano, Fernando Gago, Ricardo Alvarez and Javier Pastore.

As Juan Roman Riquelme controversially remarked recently, Messi should have played for Spain. The 24-year-old would be excused for feeling Spanish seeing that he has lived half his life there.

He was indeed granted Spanish citizenship in 2005. Messi’s club career is on course to be best there ever was.
There is hardly anything left for him to accomplish. With Barcelona, he has dominated world club football in a manner not seen since the legendary Real Madrid superstar Alfredo di Stefano.

It is the enigma of his international career that will never die away until he inspires Argentina to World Cup glory.
Messi’s World Cup career reads two quarterfinal exits and just one goal to his name. To put things in perspective, he has scored less World Cup goals than Asamoah Gyan.

Diego Maradona, the legend routinely compared with ‘The Flea’ as Messi is commonly known, earned his iconic status by inspiring a lumbering side to World Cup success in 1986.

Such is Maradona’s legacy that Fufa once appointed a national team coach on the strength of him having been a teammate of football’s most famous no.10 in 1986.

Maradona was a leader of men, a scorer, passer, genius and team player. Before Maradona was Pele, the man with whom he shared the Fifa Player of the Century award in 2000. 

Pele’s achievement of inspiring three Brazil World Cup winning teams is a feat that will stand for ages. It defined his impeccable greatness many years ago, and still does today.  That Messi can be spoken about in relation to the two speaks volumes of his magical skills. But he will never be bracketed alongside Maradona and Pele if he fails to win the World Cup with Argentina.

Michel Platini, like Messi a three-time Ballon d’Or winner who never won the World Cup, put it succinctly: “Messi will always be great with or without (winning) a World Cup – but the World Cup, it’s something special.” He couldn’t have put it better.  

Thankfully for the player, age is firmly on his side. The 2014 World Cup in Brazil could be the perfect moment for Messi to seize his chance – nothing would be better than Argentina lifting a first World Cup in 28 years in Rio de Janeiro – and confound critics once and for all.

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