Messi forces you to write differently. When it was more than certain that in a cold Buenos Aires of eleven degrees the newsrooms were about to close looking for the perfect adjective for a tight, boring and even disappointing match, Moisés Caicedo, the most expensive Ecuadorian of all time, it occurred to him to kick slightly to Lautaro Martínez on the edge of the area so that, twenty meters away, Hernán Galíndez felt justified fear.

And of course it was. Messi exercised the only justified dictatorship and grabbed the ball to kick a free kick as beautiful as so many others we have already seen and to fix the script of a match that seemed condemned to the deepest of oblivion. The ’10’, about whom even now it is difficult to write because everything that had to be said about him has probably already been said, “sent it away” with even more naturalness than the one with which many of us do procedures. Surely they will be more complicated for us.

The summary of the match could be finished in a paragraph and a half, because Argentina started the first half fighting against itself. Despite the great strategic merit and Ecuadorian physical power, Scaloni’s men needed to overcome that damning barrier that some call “champion syndrome.”

More than a mantra or a journalistic vice – father of commonplaces, master, lord and owner of cognitive processes – this syndrome has a lot of astrological situation: no one knows if it is true, but when it happens you can point your finger. When it happens to you, you almost never have the shame to call it destiny.

The most experienced explain it as that psychological pressure that those who reached the top have and then cannot find another. And what has reached the top can only fall, the determinists would say. However, that invisible gap, more connected to fiction than to pragmatism, tends to pull more towards the side of the defeated than the winners unless the break comes. One that is easier with Messi on your side.

Of course, and do not misunderstand these words, this factor is not conclusive. Even with the best in the world and of the century in your ranks, you can fail. What to do then? Something different. Very different and not like what you were doing.

Argentina after Qatar was an eternal party and a constant liminality. The team had also become accustomed to not playing badly and to being a carnival of confidence and accurate passing. Although he did not have very demanding rivals, the idyll seemed endless. The question was always how to make the next blow not so strong.

The first forty-five minutes, De Paul was fighting not to fall, Lautaro Martínez was looking for justifications for leaving Julián Álvarez on the bench and Messi realized that Ecuadorians do not play in the MLS. “Dibu” Martínez, patient as a bison, watched everything from behind, without drama, perhaps wondering if it would be one of those matches whose result ends up on the front page with an accompanying statement saying “Surprise!”

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Of course it didn’t happen. The confusion was in contrast to the apparent eternity of the party, the dance and the cotillion. One that was impossible to find in a new Monumental de River – now approved with Wembley or the Bernabéu – whose gras was not humiliated by that very nineties and South American imperfection of getting muddy.

Ricardo Piglia said that a story always tells two stories: the one that one reads and the one behind it. In this match, although the second half was much better for the Argentines with some income and with a tactical foresight more in line with what has been proposed for several years, we could be left with the genius of a man who makes everything easy, or with the imprecision of the ruffles that seemed to carry cement blocks at one time and cherub wings at the other. But, of course, behind the scenes and why the world champion team has passed one of its most difficult obstacles is what should not be lost sight of.

Without fear of excessive references, after writing “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, García Márquez had one fear left – at least one of public confession – and that was not to repeat himself, to be able to distance himself and get rid of what had led him to the most height of literature and had made him known worldwide. For this reason, the Colombian decided to write “The Autumn of the Patriarch”, a novel in which he explored the mythology of the figure of Latin American dictators and which, according to the same author, was the one that cost him the most to write and perhaps the one that was least understood. sold. Many critics and readers concluded that he would never write anything as good as this again. In 1982 he won the Nobel Prize. Although he returned to Macondo many times, he was able to overcome the highest point of all.

On Tuesday, September 12, Argentina must visit La Paz to face a Bolivian team that is excited about the six and a half places while having a match on its side. The albiceleste, of course, is no longer the same. And that’s fine.

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