Magician Messi will be out Ron his own with World Cup success

SHOULD Lionel Messi’s Argentina win the World Cup inside the gleaming golden bowl of the Lusail Stadium today the debate is over.

- Neil Squires

Those of us who lean Messi-wards would already argue it should be done anyway but a World Cup winners’ medal for the little master would finish this once and for all.

Should he lead Argentina to their promised land even the most loyal of Ronaldo-worshippers will surely have to see the light.

Messi was still a twinkle in the eyes of his parents Jorge and Celia in the Rosario suburbs when Argentina last won the World Cup in 1986.

The following year little Leo, their fourth child, arrived to complete the family.

In a small backyard behind the modest two-bedroomed home that Jorge, a builder, had constructed, Messi first learned to kick a ball with his brothers.

He liked the feeling so much he slept with the football at his feet every night.

Two hundred metres away, on a rough patch of grassland, those in-house games turned into neighbourhood football.

‘La Pulga’ – or ‘The Flea’, as Messi was known because of his stature – dribbled past much bigger kids with the ball seemingly attached to his left foot. His swerve and acceleration left them hacking at thin air.

In this ordinary, working-class community an extraordinary talent revealed itself. A natural genius yet also a product of the soil he grew on.