The greatest triumphs sometimes follow the greatest lows. Ten years ago, a young man of 29 years Lionel Messi – with eight La Liga titles, four Champions Leagues and five of his eight Ballon d’Or awards in his bag at the time while playing for Barcelona – he decided enough was enough for him to live with the pain.“It’s over me, that’s it. I tried so hard, but it just didn’t work,” Messi, dejected and his psyche shattered, announced as the “end” came with his missed penalty in a defeat to Chile in the final of the Copa America in New Jersey, extending his personal misery to four finals lost with the national team – at the World Cup 20104 and three in Germany (201047). and now 2016). “It hurts not to be champion with Argentina,” he made his frustration known to everyone, his face betraying the melancholy of a tormented soul.The world received the news with shock and awe, some calling it “Mexit” and many urging him to stay, as social media was immediately flooded with the hashtags #NoTeVayasMessi and #QuedateMessi. Diego Maradona he also came in support of his protégé, urging him to “fight against all those who abandoned him”.When La Albiceleste met two months later for World Cup qualifiers against Uruguay and Venezuela, he was back in the mix, saying he loved Argentina “too much” to stay away from the team. The rest, as they say, is history. Finally, he reached the tradition of the World Cup in 2022 – a coronation with his peace of mind in the colors of La Albiceleste – between two Copa America titles (in 2021 and 2024), and the legend of Messi was thus born in his native Rosario, elsewhere in Argentina and throughout the world.However, the weight of being Messi on the Argentine psyche has always been complicated and nuanced. His fate was intertwined with Maradona, since the boy from Rosario had decided to move away from Argentina and carve his legacy as a Barcelona player. What came out of it is a rich portrait of a connection between two World Cup-winning captains, who always revolve around the axis of their inherent fragility. As England return to the horizon of Argentina in the World Cup, the question remains: How can Messi and his legacy of Maradona?Four decades ago, when the two nations met, it resulted in seismic waves in world football as the game, national identity and the lingering shadow of a war converged in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup at the Azteca stadium. This was a match in which Maradona’s magnum opus was played with every bit of Argentine magic and mischief. The ‘Hand of God’ goal was entwined with deception, leading to the rivalry and distrust prevalent between the two teams four years after the Falklands War. Maradona’s second came as a moment of catharsis.However, the 1986 quarter-final might not have been as wild and emotionally turbulent as what Messi, born three years after the Falklands War, would have been willing to endure on the way to his destiny in Lusail, 2022.Messi’s march towards being the master of his legacy is essentially devoid of Maradona’s paradox and that is why he could be more at ease in rebuilding the second part of Aztec magic of his mentor.It is true that the second semi-final at the Atlanta Stadium now is not taken up around any tangible concept of Malvinas, but it comes with its own palpable psychological space. It’s a “special” one for Messi because it’s his first against England, giving us a glimpse of how an entire generation hasn’t seen La Albiceleste cross swords with the Three Lions since 1986.For an Argentine, Maradona will always be a rebel and a redeemer. An unknown and accidental manager, Lionel Scaloni, inherited a team in a state of evolution after the 2018 World Cup and made Messi get rid of the “savior” complex and released a new group of players with hunger and a predominant mentality to play for Messi. The other day, Leandro Parades said: “We still played for him, because we don’t want the day to come when this is his last game with us.“Pablo Aimar, Scaloni’s assistant, has also been hailed as the next great No.They suffered together and came back big for Argentina. Maybe in a bit of a Maradona way.