A projected 1.8 billion people around the world will be watching Sunday’s World Cup final, and some 80,000 will attend in person at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Most of them will be watching to see whether Argentina or Spain emerge as the world champion.
Instead, I will be paying attention to the convergence of two historic transitions: the possible closing chapter of Argentine legend Lionel Messi’s storied football career and the unmistakable arrival of the United States and American fandom as major, enduring factors for the world’s game.
These moments have become dramatically intertwined through Messi’s move to Inter Miami in 2023, where he’s likely to end his club career, and then his emergence this year as the undisputed star of the World Cup, where Sunday could mark his final match at the game’s highest global level.
Messi’s genius
Every generation is granted a small number of figures whose greatness escapes the boundaries of their profession. They come to define their time on the stage, and they can inspire a generation. For me, that has included Willie Mays in baseball, Muhammad Ali in boxing, Michael Jordan in basketball, and Simone Biles in gymnastics. Others will have their own lists.
For much of this century, the international football world has lived in the age of Messi. (Though I am American, I will go with football rather than soccer in this space, having witnessed a lighthearted debate this past September at the Atlantic Council Global Citizen Awards, where American football legend Tom Brady conceded to FIFA President Gianni Infantino that he had only kicked the football three times in his career.)
“Hasn’t everyone seen enough?” asked my favorite sportswriter, Jason Gay, in The Wall Street Journal. “Messi’s the goaty-goat goat, hooves down, blow the whistle, game over. Argentina’s mega upcoming showdown versus Spain—Messi’s former home, academy and cathedral—is nothing less than a goat’s destiny.”
Gay goes on: “When you watch Messi on Sunday, watch him with the ball, but especially watch him without the ball. Watch him walk his famous walk—shoulders over, head down, like Linus looking for his blanket. Don’t be deceived. He isn’t checked out. He is waiting to strike. Watch his economy of motion, his one-touch passes, the way he can dribble in every direction as if possessed by a joystick.”
At thirty-nine, and four years after lifting the World Cup trophy in Qatar, Messi has brought his country to the brink of becoming the first repeat World Cup champion since Pelé’s Brazil in 1962. Yet even if Argentina loses, Messi has won as the World Cup’s all-time leader in goals and all-time leader in goals plus assists. “He isn’t in the World Cup conversation,” writes Gay. “He is the conversation.”
Messi doesn’t need victory on Sunday to validate his greatness, though it would be one of the more dramatic moments in sports history. His triumph in Qatar four years ago settled the most persistent argument against him: that his brilliance playing for Barcelona had never fully translated into national glory for Argentina. Messi took some reputational risk in coming back this year to play again, but he’s only built upon his legend.
Against England in the semifinal, Messi did not score. He did something more illuminating. Conserving his movement, choosing his moments, he created both late goals with assists in Argentina’s dramatic 2-1 comeback. It was the performance of an aging master who no longer dominates every minute but can still decide the ones that matter most.
In an era shaped by spectacle, branding, and self-promotion, Messi’s reputation emerges from performance. The young Messi overwhelmed opponents with speed and invention. The older Messi’s genius has migrated from the muscular to the cerebral. He sees openings before others recognize they exist. His most eloquent statements come from his feet. That restraint has been part of his galvanizing attraction.
He belongs to Argentina, but also to Barcelona and to Miami, where he has played for the past few years. Perhaps most of all, he belongs to the billions of people who have watched him across continents. His life reflects the globalized world football anticipated before geoeconomics caught up. Born in Rosario, formed in Catalonia, crowned in Qatar, and now waiting for the curtain to rise in New Jersey, of all places.
The World Cup’s legacy
The American setting matters. When the United States hosted the World Cup in 1994, soccer was a global passion but an American curiosity, played by most schoolchildren but by few professional athletes. There was no Major League Soccer, no permanent domestic infrastructure to build championship-caliber teams, and little certainty the tournament would leave more than memories.
Three decades later, despite the US team’s disappointing showing in its final game, the United States has become one of the sport’s most important stages. Though the World Cup was co-hosted with Mexico and Canada, the US role was nevertheless the centerpiece. This year’s expanded, forty-eight-team tournament surpassed the 1994 attendance of 3.5 million before the knockout rounds and now has shattered all previous attendance records at more than 6.5 million fans and counting.
In the United States, stadiums built for National Football League teams have been transformed into home grounds for teams visiting from countries throughout the world. Immigrant communities—often discussed here in Washington in political terms—have emerged as a source of cultural energy and connection. The World Cup has provided an image of the United States worth building upon: not isolated from the world but magnetically gathering it and embracing its myriad ethnicities and cultures.
“Millions of visitors experienced American hospitality, American generosity, and the incredible diversity that makes our nation exceptional,” Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House Task Force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, said at the Atlantic Council this past Thursday. “At the same time, Americans embraced cultures and traditions from around the world. Those human connections, they ultimately become the most important part of this legacy.”
A screaming Wall Street Journal headline, on the cover of its Weekend Review section, puts it this way: “HOW THE U.S. LOST THE WORLD CUP—AND WON OVER THE WORLD.” For many fans visiting the United States, the experience “was different from the xenophobic country they had been led to believe they were coming to,” write reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg. “Here they found that their gameday traditions and rituals weren’t merely celebrated. In many cases, fans were treated better than at games in Europe and South America.”
There’s been controversy, for sure: restrictive immigration policies (including denied entry of a Somalian referee), prohibitive ticket prices, chaotic transportation, and President Donald Trump’s appeal of a red card that had disqualified American star Folarin Balogun. Though FIFA allowed him to play, the controversy faded after Belgium soundly thrashed the United States, 4-1.
Yet the impact on America may be enduring. There have long been doubts that Americans would ever embrace a sport in which the US is not, and may never be, a dominant force. That changed this year. The US team did not advance as far as many Americans had hoped, but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming one of the most powerful fan bases in the world, embracing national teams from around the world as if they were their own. For years, the United States has exported its homegrown sports to the world—basketball, baseball, and American football. Over the past thirty years, the other brand of football has gained a broader domestic following, driven by the popularity of European professional clubs. Never, however, have I witnessed it so clearly making the world’s sport part of American identity, complete with halftime shows and hydration (advertising) breaks.
Messi has been central to that transformation. His move to Inter Miami after the 2022 World Cup at first seemed as though it was going to be a highly compensated semi-retirement. What it did instead is connect the greatest player of his generation to the maturation of American soccer—carrying him, as if scripted, toward one final World Cup appearance in the country he now calls home.
Spain may deny Messi his fairy tale ending. Or Argentina may become the first nation in sixty-four years to retain its title. Messi may score, assist, or simply walk away from the field having given everything to the game he so profoundly represents. However the game ends, Sunday’s meaning will extend beyond the trophy presentation.