Lionel Messi makes football look easy, far easier than almost anyone to ever play the sport. Yet he still finds ways to push further.
Here are three sentences whose words do no justice to the majesty of their content: In the depths of a molecular cloud, a star is born. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Lionel Messi chipped Pau Lopez in Barcelona’s 4-1 win at Real Betis on Sunday.
All three of the above sentences represent events that are noteworthy on an intergalactic scale. They all mark moments where aliens, sitting peacefully in their suburban homes, looked up to the skies from their Sunday papers and said: «Things done changed.»
Though I am not in possession of a telescope of sufficient strength, I comfortably assert that wherever the football gods were when watching Messi score his third goal last night against Real Betis, they each fell off their chairs. Those same football gods will forever tease that friend of theirs who, with the game won in the 85th minute, popped out briefly and missed seeing that in real time.
Messi is interstellar. That chip against Betis, one of three goals he scored on Sunday, is already travelling out to the edges of our known universe, shared feverishly in WhatsApp groups by different members of a crew as their ships travel at warp speed. Somewhere out there, on distant windswept worlds whose inhabitants have settled in to watch their favourite evening soap operas, a small broadcast about Messi’s chip has just begun. «I am sorry,» says the broadcaster, their voice suddenly so small and unusually hesitant. «In an interruption to scheduled programming…»
Messi chipped Pau Lopez and we need to talk about what that means.
First of all, the chip itself does not belong in professional football. Professional football is a fast, furiously athletic sport. It is war and thunder, storm and fury. It is rage and hurricane. A chip is none of that. A chip is a ball that floats through the skies with the same gentleness as a couple taking a midsummer walk along the waterfront.
