Messi alone cannot: the lesson that PSG have not learned is to fix the national team in time

On the day his 800th goal was expected, what was a real possibility Lionel Messi: He psg was eliminated from the Champions League League. The 0-1 in the first leg made it impossible to overcome the rematch even for a team that has Leo, mbappe, several stars of the football planet and promising young people. On the other side there was a team that was more in Paris and Munich, Bayern. Another slap with a German seal for the aspirations of 10 of the Argentina national team. And now? Now another story begins.

The Champions League is “an obsession” for the French and millions of Qataris claim it year after year. That’s why they came to pay more than 200 million for Neymar and then ended up booing him. That’s why they gave Mbappé the keys so that he didn’t go to Real Madrid and today they saw that the number 7 didn’t even touch the ball. That’s why they bet on Messi as soon as they saw him cry in Barcelona, ​​and two years after his arrival they seem ready to say goodbye.

In short, it is football and its magic that ends up deciding everything. PSG were second in the group to Benfica on goal difference and the draw saw how the Portuguese had to face Bruges in the round of 16 (they knocked them out 7-1 on aggregate) and face Bayern, perhaps the most fearsome side on the continent after Real. “Crying at church”, or as they say in French.

Pochettino suffered it and it will be Christophe Galtier’s turn, the DT who came to put out the fire, imposed discipline and was able to contain his numbers. We’ll find out at any moment that he’s been fired. The first half of the season, up to the World Cup, he won almost everything (he lacked that extra touch with Otamendi and Enzo’s Benfica) and achieved the most important thing: he gave us a phenomenal Messi that we were able to enjoy in Qatar .

With that club sometimes with no other impetus than success at all costs, he has to sit down to negotiate a renewal George MessiLeo’s dad. The Argentine star will turn 36 and although he is happy with his life in Paris, he knows he is in an institution governed by its own rules and urgencies. They speak different languages, not just at the time of the interviews.

Leo had to go through something similar in his time with the Argentina national team. The DTs have passed, the leaders in the AFA have changed, the players have been tested and the schemes have been changed but the result has always been the same: Messi against everyone. And Messi alone cannot. Less now that he has been at the top of football for 18 years.

Once Scaloni surrounded him with young people and put together a reliable squad, Messi (this Messi, the one PSG were looking for) managed to shine. Something that doesn’t happen in Mbappé’s club, where one day a 16-year-old boy plays, another they buy a Portuguese about whom little or nothing is known, tomorrow they bring Sergio Ramos, and then they bet on the last figure in Italian football.

Now another story is brewing in France, with Messi’s future as constant news and all eyes set on Barcelona. The club that saw him born is now the one that takes a seat in the chair, looks at his cards and waits for his turn to play. Consummated the elimination of PSG, he can afford to dream of the return of the prodigal son. A necessary return: since their departure they have only collected frustrations in Europe, two seasons with four consecutive eliminations, first in the Champions League and then in the Europa League. On both sides the edges are stretching, and the occasion has become more possible since the ghost of Bayern began to haunt the Parco dei Principi.

MLS is the other player that always gets named in Messi’s future, with Inter Miami and David Beckham pushing him to take him to a league that is preparing to receive the next Copa America and World Cup, no less. A project, and in an ideal city for Leo and family. Of course, it will be a farewell to high competition, something that the captain of the Argentina national team does not seem to want to give up in his aspirations to continue leading the team led by Lionel Scaloni.

So, all this upcoming telenovela will be important for Argentines. It will be turbulent weeks in Paris but with the consolation that at the end of the month Leo will go home to play for the national team, the only and greatest certainty of what is to come.