It might seem like the “Last Dance” for Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo on the World Cup stage, but don’t think they’re going to go out quietly.
It’s not a “Last Dance.” Neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Lionel Messi has announced their retirement, and neither man has already won the biggest prize in football, the World Cup, which is what the next five weeks are all about.
It’s not a “Changing of the Guard,” either. Sure, they have heirs apparent, but of the two obvious ones — Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe — one will be watching Qatar 2022 on TV because Norway failed to qualify, while the other is surrounded by so much talent on a France team that are already World Champions that it’s hard to see him standing out and needing to carry them the way Cristiano and Leo did regularly for club and country. (About Haaland: One nice side-effect of the 2026 tournament in the U.S., Mexico and Canada being “super-sized” by 50% to include 48 teams means it’s far less likely for superstars to miss out.)
More simply, it’s two of the best who ever competed, in any sport, squeezing out the final ounces of guile, grit and genius out of their battle-weary bodies before Father Time sends the last grains of sand tumbling down the hourglass.
There’s a World Cup final to be played at Doha’s Lusail Stadium on Dec. 18. Both are striving to be there because when the next one rolls around in July 2026, Ronaldo will be 41 and Messi 39. While they’re made of sterner stuff and the definition of impossible isn’t “not possible” but rather “not yet achieved” to folks like them, the rest of us live in the real world, the one governed by laws of physics and nature.
Indeed, that’s the cruelty of this sport. The long-held (and puerile) mantra that you can only be among the G.O.A.Ts if you’ve won a championship — the idea that dogged legends like Charles Barkley and Ted Williams — becomes especially silly in this sport. Your team is determined by birth and bloodline: you don’t get to join a contender at the end of your career.
