The night Lionel Messi became everyone’s “god”.

Two months after his coronation in Qatar, the whole world looks at it as if it belongs in another galaxy. Someone who has gone where no one has gone before: feeling wrapped in a blanket of universal celebration, an endless caravan admiring and adoring him in a way almost never seen before, within a proportion that spans generations to the very end of the lives of others are united. that parishioner who transformed him, Lionel Messi, into a mythological being inside and outside the stadiums. Someone who, despite a certain celestial stature, reflects our life even in the most domestic and personal needs.

The birthdays of children, teenagers and adults, even the most veterans, for example, have incorporated together with the third star of the Selection, the cake and the candles, the celebratory rite of trotting, step by step, with the transparent black and gold tunic put on it by the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, before raising the World Cup and its countless reruns to Heaven. A new way to evoke the beatitudes of every occasion. That tunic, whose simulations have grown exponentially on the market, is the bist classic of Arab and Muslim cultures, used for more than two thousand years. Messi made that fabric unknown in the West a multicultural spell with the authority of a prophet that no longer belongs only to Argentines: If Messi conquered the world in the Qatar Cup, the world appropriated Messi in those burning desert lands of Qatar.

In this sense, two allegories have earned immortality thanks to Leo’s talent and ability to ignite souls wherever he goes. One is by British journalist Peter Drurywho thus recounted the decisive sanction: “A long lonely walk for Gonzalo Montiel. He didn’t start the match, he can finish it … Montiel … Argentina again world champion, finally! And a nation will dance the night away. Thirty-six years from Maradona and Mexico, finally here is the new group of immortals of the nation. Scaloni will be predestined, Messi will be sanctified… Leo Messi has conquered the final summit, he has shaken hands with Paradise. The little boy from Rosario, Santa Fe has just blasted off to heaven: He ascends into a galaxy of his own and now he has his climax… He was always the point of difference. Incomparable… the debate could go on if you guys will, but as he falls in love with the object of the world that he so dearly desired… it is hard to escape the assumption that he has established himself as the greatest of all times…”

The other metaphorical piece was by Argentine journalist Sofía Martínezwho, after beating Croatia 3-0 and reaching the Cup final, met Messi in the mixed zone and said this to him: “Even if we all want to win the Cup, I want to tell you that beyond the result there is something that nobody will take away from you… You have gone through each of the Argentines, I really tell you. There’s no child who doesn’t have your shirt, whether it’s the original one, the trout one or the invented one, the imaginary one… you marked everyone’s life and this for me is bigger than any World Cup… It’s a thank you for such a great moment of happiness that you have given to so many people, that I hope you take it into your heart because it is more important than a World Cup and you already have it, no one will take it away from you. So thank you Captain.”

An English journalist and an Argentinian have made their own the feelings and words of millions of people around the world. This time it wasn’t there “The Hand of God”, but the racing heartbeat of a legend. In each of his phantasmagoric bullfights and gambetas, in that delightful trickster art he reveals when he tries his grazing outrages, surrounded by rivals he spreads, Messi summarizes the best and most beautiful that football has. Make happy and sow wonder in the lives of others. Make even the most newbies jump off the couch and touch the sky in this game that links childhood with adult life, once and for all.

A bit of everything that happened two months ago in the lands of Qatar. Leo was already on the threshold of that imaginary territory, exclusive to a few, which he democratized for everyonethat unforgettable day when he walked through that door and dressed up as a legend. If you like, he took on what he already was: a hero, a mixture of gods and mortals according to Greek mythology. It may not be an example, but it is a model. Not a small thing in a society like ours, which venerates a certain barrabrava gene, that ancestral reflex that drives us to follow arrogant leaders rather than copying silent talents, made in the forge of humility and hard work. A country where someone can say “what a son of a bitch!” is a compliment. There was a reason if there were those who honored Messi’s “Maradonian” outbursts on angry hearts day in the stormy afternoon against the Netherlands. Messi didn’t go to eternity for his lousy rebuke to Wout Weghorst, defeated recipient of the “go there, stupid.” He had already fallen in love with his own art.

At 35, when almost all the cracks become memories or shadows of yesterday, in this celebration recreated as someone who drags a load and reaches the top to start again, Messi has overcome the myth of Sisyphus, condemned several times to resign himself to the abyss of the rock. His resilience won the most crucial battle, that of life: he lifted all the trophies he didn’t have (the Copa América, the Finalissima and the World Cup in a year and a half) and the rock never fell again. At the top, Leo will forever raise his arms to all galaxies again and again. And his gesture is reproduced in family reunions as a home homage to his epic story: like a modern Prometheus, another famous myth, Messi stole the sacred fire from the gods and brought it closer to the people in every show of footballing glory. He survived even those who ate his liver every night, in comments that today sound ridiculous and that he has never rejected. In silence, the artist continues to sculpt his work, while listening in the distance to the prayers that ring out in the world to delay the hour of farewell.