On The Wings Of Angel

Messi pays his debt to argentina with copa america title as Di Maria scores the winner

- Saumyajit Basu

The whistle blew and all of Argentina, and those in the blue and white stripes present at the Maracana, converged on Lionel Messi. Literally and in imagination.

His comrades in arms jumped alongside him, laughing, trying to grasp the immensity of their achievement. They wanted to seize a moment that took 28 years to come. Reeling in joy, they threw Messi, the greatest of his generation, up in the night sky over Rio de Janeiro, as if to consecrate him in the firmament as the brightest star.

Rodrigo de Paul wasn’t even born when Argentina last won a continental title. Messi was barely six years old then.

Neymar, Messi’s friend, found a corner of the famed Maracana pitch and cried, just like a six-year-old. Both hands over his face, more to cover up the tears than to hide the frustration of coming second best in the Copa America final, a trophy that he will have to still wait for. However, the long, arduous, tortuous, debilitating wait has come to an end for Messi, all of 34 now and finally at peace with himself.

It could not have been a more sacramental sight on a football pitch. The master of the game finally got his hands on the biggest prize in South America, exorcising the ghosts, the tribulations, the detractors and doubters who chased him all along his sparkling career, diverting all conversation towards the one missing link for Argentina. The thorn of unease won’t burden his crown anymore.