IT’S MAGIC MESSI!

Legend takes Argentina through in his 1,000th match —

THE spirit of Pele, the footballing god who made so many of us fall in love with the game and who now lies desperately ill at the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, is everywhere at this World Cup. It is here in the messages of support and love from players and ex-players. It is here in the minds of every one of us for whom Pele is the symbol of the beauty and the joy of the sport.

But nowhere has it been more alive and more vivid than it was at the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium last night where Pele’s spiritual successor, Lionel Messi, a player who may not grace the great stages of football for much longer, gave us a few more precious glimpses of his genius and reminded us yet again of the power the very greatest players have to paint masterpiece after masterpiece on a patch of grass.

Football has a kind of lineal championship, like heavyweight boxing does, and it passed from Pele to Johan Cruyff to Diego Maradona to Zinedine Zidane and for the best part of the last 20 years it has been held by Messi. We know that the flame is about to be passed, perhaps as soon as this World Cup ends, and the news that Pele is lying stricken in a hospital has only quickened our appreciation of the time we have left to appreciate Messi while he plays.

He commanded the stage again last night on the occasion of his 1,000th match. He scored Argentina’s opening goal, a lovely left-foot curling shot, and rolled back the years with some bewitching dribbles. And those of us lucky enough to be in the stands told ourselves to savour every moment because this will not last forever. So long as we breathe, we will remember nights like this.

Savour every moment, every shot, every goal, every back heel, every touch, every lay off, every time the crowd chanted his name and sent the sound of it echoing round this stadium on the edge of the desert. Savour all of it and tell ourselves that it will never fade and that we will remember seeing

Messi until we are old, too, and that we will tell people we saw him and revel in our boast and thank our lucky stars that we saw him play just as others now are overcome with gratitude that once they saw Pele play.

Messi was brilliant last night but there was, sadly, more evidence that he still does not have the supporting cast to help him win the World Cup at his final attempt. Argentina progressed to a quarterfinal clash against Holland but they were far from convincing and Australia nearly snatched an equaliser in the closing seconds.

Argentina are still far too reliant on their ageing superstar to dig them out of trouble. They were brimful of the finest footballing stock and the Australian defence tasked with keeping the world’s greatest player quiet was drawn from Columbus Crew, Stoke, Heart of Midlothian and Dundee United, rock bottom of the Scottish Premiership.

Messi got his own taste of Scottish football in the seventh minute when St Mirren’s Keanu Baccus, whose last start in a match came in front of 3,589 at Ross County’s Victoria Park ground in Dingwall a month ago, left his foot in and sent Messi tumbling to the ground.

Messi’s style is — and has been for the last couple of years — to conserve his energy and operate in short bursts of genius. Way back in the mists of time, veteran journalists used to tell newcomers that if they stayed in the bar long enough, the story would come to them and that is how Messi works now.

Argentina had offered nothing until the 34th minute. They looked pedestrian and utterly lacking in ideas, their torpor a stark contrast to the bouncing, roaring energy of their fans, whose support was relentless and loud and boisterous and bouncing. Australia must have begun to wonder. They must have begun to dream. But then, ten minutes before half-time, Argentina won a soft free kick on the Australian left, not too far from the corner flag. Messi whipped in a dangerous cross to the near post but it was cleared and it seemed briefly as though the danger had passed. But then Messi drifted into the area and Argentina came alive.

Alexis Mac Allister drilled the ball into the feet of Nicolas Otamendi and his touch fell to Messi, who had anticipated, as he so often does, exactly where he

needed to be. He was on it in a second. He took it early on his left foot without hesitation and hit it so cleanly and with just enough curl that it arrowed past the right hand of Mat Ryan and into the net.

This was his 789th goal and his first in the knockout stages of a World Cup. Australia were the 129th team he had scored against and he celebrated with all the gusto that he might have reserved for his first victims.

Released from their nerves, Argentina began the second half

with more freedom and capital

ised on a dreadful mistake by Ryan just before the hour had elapsed to go further ahead. Ryan controlled a back pass but, under pressure from Rodrigo de Paul, he tried to dribble his way out of trouble. He got past De Paul but Julian Alvarez was waiting to pounce and he turned the ball expertly back past Ryan and into the empty net.

Argentina seemed to be coasting and Messi began to go through his repertoire. But then, 13 minutes from the end, Australia scored out of nowhere. Aziz Behich’s cross was headed out to Craig Goodwin and his wild shot from 25 yards was heading into touch until it Enzo Fernandez, wrong-footed Emi Martinez in the Argentina goal and flew into the bottom corner.

Five minutes later, Australia nearly drew level with what would have been one of the goals of the tournament. Behich, the Dundee United left back, burst forward from midfield and slalomed past three Argentina defenders until he just had Martinez to beat. He got his shot away but he was denied by a brilliant intervention by Lisandro Martinez. Messi went on one more run. He danced through and around the Aussie defence until the goal seemed at his mercy but then, instead of shooting, he played the most simple of passes to Lautaro Martinez because he was better placed to score. It was what Pele would have done. It was what Pele did do, famously when he rolled a short pass to Carlos Alberto in the 1970 World Cup Final.

There was still time for one more echo from the past. In the final seconds, the ball broke loose in the Argentina box and Australia substitute Garang Kuol, who has never started a senior game for his club Central Coast Mariners, or his country and is the child of refugees, found the goal briefly at his mercy and history beckoning.

Kuol is only 18 years and 79 days old, which makes him the youngest player ever to play in the knockout stages of the World Cup, beating the record held by Pele. Martinez saved Kuol’s shot but the symbolism was hard to ignore. Time passes, old idols leave us and new legends are born.