Where is Messi's extraordinary gift for hope?

There is a big, yet barely noticed, generational divide among football fans. Namely, the gap between adults whose biggest dreams had to do with lifting the World Cup, and teenagers and children currently sighing for Champions League and Ballon d'Or glory.

Born in 1987, Lionel Messi stands at the crossroads between the past and the future. The many hailing him as the best footballer of history are, basically, those who didn't have contact with his predecessors, and those grown-up pundits whose most profitable subject is everyday's European club football. Cristiano Ronaldo, in stark contrast to Messi, already lives comfortably in the future. His is not an historical debate (Eusébio achieved little with Portugal) and quite possibly his fellow countrymen know exactly what the current Real Madrid star can achieve internationally.

But Messi comes from Argentina. Had he been born in Northern Ireland or Wales, the historical debates surrounding him would be reduced into historical regrets: George Best and Ryan Giggs were authentic legends whose national teams did them no favors. Indeed, there are voices inside and outside Argentina trying to mute the national debate by imposing this sort of regrets taken from the Messi experience at club level. "Argentines just can't realize that La Albiceleste should imitate FC Barcelona. If not, bad for them; we, the rest of the world, anyway enjoy him in our screens showing the packed Camp Nou".

A parcel of the Argentine people, nonetheless, refuses to nod to this kind of opinions without defending themselves before by invoking their own history, feats and heroes. Maradona, "the most human of Gods", as the late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano called him, is ridiculed with ease around the globe due to well-known addictions, populist political allegiances and, more recently, visible plastic surgeries. Diego, at least inside his fatherland, at least amongst those who are well past their youth, has in his favor the achievement of that something which represented the hope of everyone back in the 20th century: the World Cup trophy.

Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, couldn't fulfill his own dream in spite of walking all the way from poverty to richness in order to make it come true. Yet, he will forever appear as the owner of a "heightened sensitivity to the promises of life... an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again", said of him his friend, Nick Carraway. Maradona represents a Gatsby who finally could make it, who could thus indulge in all the promises of worldly life after historical glory.

Then, where is Messi's own extraordinary gift for hope? As from the last lines of Gatsby, this extraordinary gift for hope means that " tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning." Like Maradona, Messi shall have to run faster, stretch out his arms farther and, furthermore, start doing all that which he never does in Spain: tackles, interceptions, aerial duels, miles and miles backwards at helping his teammates defensively. To stain his face with mud, and perhaps his legs with blood. Whether the hope of the past will keep eluding him or not, that's really no matter.

The compelling matter is the surrender of hope by means of isolating himself in the safe haven of Champions League football and of Ballon d'Or red carpets, where his suits produce more buzz than his goals against Eibar or Granada. That form of isolation would be like getting trapped voluntarily into the past and by the past. A bizarre, cynical version of Jay Gatsby.