Lionel Messi returns for Argentina but can his dreams finally be realised?

The Barcelona forward will play for his country again on Friday but can he lead this squad, which is less gifted than in the past, to glory in the Copa América?

Last weekend, Lionel Messi hit a high even in the context of his ridiculous career, his name chanted by opposing fans after another astonishing hat-trick. This week, it’s back to an environment that has never been so happy for him, back to the one area of his career in which there is a sense still of something missing: Argentina.

Debates about who is or was the greatest are futile. There are too many different variables at play. But to someone who had never seen them, who looked only at the numbers, the comparison between Messi and Diego Maradona would seem absurd. One of them has played consistently as a genius for 14 years, the other produced perhaps four seasons of genius across his career. But the mind seems to struggle with consistency, to privilege the peaks and troughs of Maradona’s story over the relentless brilliance of Messi’s. The memory deals in moments and with Messi it’s almost as though there have been too many to process. And, vitally, one of Maradona’s moments involved lifting the World Cup.

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