Only one team wins a World Cup

 

This may be my last post about this world cup. Maybe not, but what else is there to talk about after this?

The final?

Okay, let's talk about the final right now.

For all my machinations about manipulating the future with my pessimism (which actually worked for once!), we have come to the end of the line. There are no more results to manipulate. Yes, there is another game, but, even understanding myself now as controlling fate, I don't know what to do with it. My magic power has become moot.

Going into this particularly thrilling and enormous World Cup of 48 teams, there were two teams that I loved. Two teams that I desperately wanted to do well. I was happy for some other teams to succeed to a point, and also a few teams I disliked greatly for various reasons that I wished failure upon, but there were only two teams in my heart, all pain and glory and desperate hopes.

There probably should only be one team, but when a person follows a sport with a great and avid interest for many years, and the sport is as sprawling as soccer, things can spread out a little. I have managed to keep to just one team in what is known as club soccer. I like to see other teams do well, but I only live and die on Barcelona. I am crushed when they lose, elated when they win. I love their history, though there is a lot of pain in it, their style of play, nearly all of their players, and, of course, their greatest player of all time, Messi.

But Messi has been gone for years now, and though the spectacle of his time in Miami is great fun, he has been, for maybe five years now, primarily Argentina's Messi. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, their brilliant young team is the backbone of the Spanish national team, with Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsi, Pedri, and Dani Olmo shining particularly bright in this World Cup, but with many other important Barcelona players in the team contributing at various levels. Indeed, Spain feels almost like an extension of my own Barcelona club team.

Argentina, Spain.

Even if you are barely paying attention to this world cup, those teams may be faintly familiar sounding to you about now. They are playing in the final Sunday.

Against each other.

Whispering behind my pessimistic plans and my conviction that all must be hopeless before France, was one insane, almost impossible seeming dream:

Spain vs Argentina.

What if it was Spain vs Argentina? 

Trust me. I didn't think about it. It felt like the faintest light could kill it. But there wasn't a single moment where I could fully keep it quiet.

But I guess I kept it dark enough, because here it is.

And now that I have it, Spain vs Argentina, I, who usually have some kind of an answer to everything, don't have an answer. And so I ask you.

I ask you!

I ask you:

Like the dog who chases cars, I have caught one.

What on earth do I do with this?

Mighty Casey

 

I fully expected France to win The World Cup.

And I can admit now that it is not just the phenomenal talent on the team: Dembele, Olise, Mbappe, etc., but it is also that, and this is important, I didn't want them to win.

I DIDN'T WANT THEM TO WIN!

It is a well known and classic strategy to concede the loss ahead of time in these sorts of situations. If one has already accepted defeat, the theory goes, then if one loses it is a mere continuation of the status quo, and if one wins?

It is the most glorious miracle of all time!

So, it is the most glorious miracle of all time then. 

Spain beat France.

Of course, this strategy only works well if one can make a reasonable case for being the underdog, if the neutral press and the bookies are strongly favoring the other side, and probably if the dread team, in this case France, has sailed with terrifying efficiency and sparkling brilliance through the Cup, while my team here, Spain, has merely... er, steadily improved? 

It should be noted that this method only works if you actually believe it. An eeyorish disposition is also a useful asset.

Because Spain looked like the most brilliant team in world soccer, and so also like a seriously better one than France in this semi final, it is worth remembering that this same Spain team kind of only got it together against Portugal when Portugal's best player, Nuno Mendes, went out injured, and then only really managed a win against Belgium when their best player, Thibaut Courtois, also went out injured. 

But I guess we should also note with the wisdom of hindsight, it might be a more ideal situation to start peaking late in the tournament, to improve, rather than to imperiously crush teams you just weren't going to lose to anyway.

Do you want to see me try this trick again?

Argentina is going to lose to England. 

I think they will. 

I believe they will.

Argentina took the opposite strategy to France, they came within a desperate hair's breadth of losing to all those teams they were "never" going to lose to. Like the proverbial nine lived cat, they have died more times than I can count.

I think they might be out of lives. 

And like a clock ticking down, I have been watching the great Messi's moments shrink. When I started watching him well over a decade ago now, there were 15 minutes of Messi magic a game. Through the years it dropped down to a few minutes a game, still amazing. Now, though they are still magical and brilliant, they can be measured in mere seconds.

It is getting very close to dwindling down to one, super dense molecule of the purest brilliance, and then blinking out all together.

Is this expectation of defeat a trick that magically makes it not happen, like with Spain and France?

Oh, I wish.

In tribute

 

Yesterday I meant to post this as a sort of tribute, but my introduction to it turned into an elegy that instead I let stand on its own.

But it started from watching a bit of Messi magic, and thinking curiously that it would be nice to post the oldest Messi discussion from clerkmanifesto that I could find. And though my wee essay was a little bit more about me, and about clerkmanifesto, than it was about Messi (though it was about us both), I thought it would be nice to share it nevertheless. 

It is more than ten years old, and though it feels like it might not be my very oldest about Messi, it marked the point where I created a subject tag for him, which was perhaps my way of getting serious.

In as much as I get serious.

Which is only kinda.

This is from March of 2016 and was called:

Mellow like Messi

"Just" You ask "What kind of Library Clerk are you?"

"What's that?" I reply. "Have you read my blog clerkmanifesto? Roughly ten percent of my posts are all about what kind of library clerk am I. Twelve hundred posts, ten percent, so that's 120 essays on the sort of Library Clerk I am."

"Yes, I've read them." You say. "What fun! Tell me again please?"

"Okay."




The greatest soccer player who ever lived is Lionel Messi. The teen librarian Marcus, who among the one billion fervent soccer fans in the World is the only one I actually know, might say "How can you really say who is the greatest player of all time?"

To which I might reply "Like this: Messi is the greatest player of all time." But only because, well, sometimes I can get a little like that, which you might have noticed.

And here's how the great Messi plays soccer: 

Economically.

There he is, jogging easily up the side. There he is, studying the game, pacing himself, laying back, only doing just what is needed, a spectator, enjoying the Spanish sun, quietly stalking the game, resting up.

And then he is needed. He is called on. He is essential, and he rises up fluidly from a kind of snooze mode to perform absolute miracles and magic. Practice, training, time on the pitch, and two full games every week, but as for pure, heart stopping soccer, greatest of all time soccer, we get about 15 minutes of it every week.

That's just exactly how I clerk!

I hope that doesn't sound self-aggrandizing. If you think about it at all you will likely come to the shrewd conclusion that it isn't, really, self-aggrandizing at all. After all, clerking is not soccer.

"So," You wonder. "Is that how you write clerkmanifesto as well?"

Oh no. For that I run flat out until I collapse, panting and vomiting in the grass.

Messi near the end

 

It's an old feeling, and one that always made the joy of Messi so special. I can remember many times over the years of watching Messi, thinking, well, maybe not today. Maybe this isn't his day. And then from out of nowhere he would kick a goal in from 175 yards away while being sat on by 14 players from the other team.

That may be an exaggeration, but I hope you'll take my point.

And back then, say ten years ago, I would sort of know in the back of my mind that he would do something magical or amazing even if it was hard to see it happening. It was too much the way it always went in those days. And those little glimmers of lightning infested rainbows flicking off him out of the corner of your eye were... suggestive.

But now he is 39 years old. And, watching it all not working, it really is easier to believe it is over. 

This time, really, surely, it is over. And so it is easier to believe this is the last time because on can look at him and say: he is slower, he is older, he is not the same. 

Because he is older, and slower, and not the same, mostly.

And one day the day will come. It has to. It may even be in the quarter finals, the next game, or the one after, or the one after that, that day where the kicks go wrong, the dribble fails, and the game just... ends. And the magic takes its last sleep.

But it hasn't happened yet.

We got just one more again, one more moment, after a thousand just one mores.

It was fun.

Preparations for the World Cup

 

The World Cup begins in a few weeks, and what better place to follow it than Clerkmanifesto, especially if you are not interested in it. 

But maybe you’re only interested enough to wonder who will win.

I don’t know, but pessimistically speaking, and probably realistically too, stupid France will win, which I say with all due respect and love as a person living in this beautiful country. 

The French are a team positively crammed with talent, and they keep winning or almost winning the World Cup so much that we are all worn out by it!

But having started negatively, let me tell you what I really wish for this World Cup, even if I know what I wish for is beyond my meager abilities in this direction.

 I would like everyone to win, so that, whenever anyone does win, I will rejoice: 

Even France, or England, or the Netherlands, or Portugal, or Germany!

Though I think this nice plan would be a lot easier for me if it were Argentina, Spain, or Brazil who won.

In the past I would run a World Cup betting pool at the library which was fun and a lot of work. I actually miss it. There was something about nudging people into a mild interest in the World Cup that weirdly appealed to me and my Quixotic nature.

Luckily I still have Clerkmanifesto for this kind of endeavor. So pick your team! 

Pick your team!!!!!

Post it in the comments.

I mean it.

 

If your team wins you will receive REDACTED BY THE CLERKMANIFESTO LEGAL TEAM. 

I promise.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but on my life I swear that REDACTED BY THE CLERKMANIFESTO LEGAL TEAM. 

So choose a team in the comments below! Dreams really do come true.

For myself I would delight in seeing our ancient Messi get one more World Cup, but I don't think that lightning will strike twice and though willing, I am also ready to move on. 

Always hostile to the soccer vanity of England in the past, I am suddenly finding my heart softened by my beloved club team, Barcelona, having signed an English player in Anthony Gordon. 

Maybe, dare I say it, England has suffered long enough?

And the same for Brazil.

But in the end, and when choices must be made half the Barcelona team is playing for Spain, so I simply cannot resist them. Plus, I choose Football! This is delightful, intricate yet direct soccer, with some of the most dazzling technical players in the world. 

But don't worry. If you're at loose ends you can pick Spain too!

Or Ecuador.

Japan?

Norway?

Senegal?

Curacao?

Wait, Curacao is in the World Cup?

Ah fuck it. Let's just all adopt Curacao.

I saw Messi, or the more things change, the more they stay the same

 

I saw Messi and it was...

nice.

In the mid-1970s, when I was a child, I became obsessed with a baseball player named Rod Carew. He played for the Minnesota Twins and was eventually traded to a team not far from where I lived—the California Angels. With my parents, I had the chance to go see this legendary hitter in person, someone whose career I had been following closely. I remember bringing along my little Instamatic-style camera and taking a picture of Rod Carew as he walked toward the dugout.

I don’t have that picture anymore, but I’ve recreated a pretty good facsimile of it, and I’m going to show it to you here.

Curiously, something very similar happened decades later when I went to see another athlete I’d become fascinated with—Lionel Messi. Like Carew, I had followed Messi’s career closely. And when I saw him live in the stadium, I found myself—just like every other fan in the crowd—pulling out my phone and taking picture after picture of him. This is not a facsimile, but an unaltered picture I took of him that day.

The amazing thing is that, looking through those photos later, I realized that the best ones of Messi, as above, looked remarkably like that old picture I once took of Rod Carew nearly 50 years ago, or at least as I remember it. There’s something sweet about that—about not changing, about some thread from my childhood resonating all the way into the present.

I don’t remember whether I saw Rod Carew get a hit that day with the Angels. But I do know I saw Messi score a goal in a stadium in Minnesota—and I was lucky enough to be there because my friend Jim took me to the game.

Both players, I think, were past their peak when I saw them in person. That made the experience a little bittersweet, seeing them after their most brilliant moments had already passed. But it also felt like a kind of acknowledgment, a completion of something, to witness them with my own eyes. And for that, I’m grateful.

The sport I follow

 

For many years the main sport we followed here at clerkmanifesto was soccer. And though I tried to keep my soccer commentary on a back channel, one inclined to the research (it's never happened before, but it's always possible) could surely pull out and read through many dozens of soccer themed posts from my history of essays. 

And it has been irresistible to write about it a little: Soccer is a rich, complicated, beautiful game, flowing in wild narratives, and full of amazing insights into life itself.

Unfortunately, and I say this with real reluctance, soccer is also stupid.

Soccer is so, so, so stupid!

It is like the stupidest thing ever! 

In fact, I think soccer is the stupidest sport outside of professional wrestling, which, as you know, isn't even a sport at all! Wrestling is, well, like soccer with more planning.

And while I can't claim that this analytic conclusion concerning soccer is free of personal bitterness (after all, my heart has been raked over the burning coals of soccer more times than I'd like to admit), it is not completely disconnected from reality. Sure, at least half of all soccer match results are attributable to one team being better than the other, but, and this is super important, a disturbing amount of the remaining games, when teams are at least roughly close-matched, are decided either by insanely bad calls, moments of random luck, or the work of capricious gods who are simply mad at everything.

So I have switched sports.

I now exclusively follow English Amateur Competition Shows. Essentially these are The Great British Baking Show, Great British Sewing Bee, Great British Pottery Throwdown, and The Great British Flower Show which had only one season and might not have been British, I don't remember, but it was brilliant anyway. These shows have far lower stakes, more admirable participants, and much better judging than soccer could even dream of. And not only are these shows more wholesome, egalitarian, and fair than any professional sport I can think of, I can also watch them on the couch with my darling wife.

I'd say the only real shortcoming to these English Amateur Competition Shows is that they don't really make enough of them. 

So, in a spare moment, every once in awhile I check in on how Messi is doing here in America.

He's doing pretty good. But he's getting close to aging out of the game now.

Maybe he should take up baking.

Messi retires to Florida?

 

Longtime obsession of this blog, Lionel Messi, has retired. Feeling, as I do, that there is one more good year of top flight soccer in him, this is... sad. And though his retirement is commonly being described in other terms across the world, I feel he is retiring. I want to insist he is retiring. I want to demand that all of soccerdom refer to this moment as: Messi retiring. Yes, Lionel Messi, greatest soccer player of all time, a couple weeks before turning 36 years old, has retired to Florida.

Why would anyone in their right mind retire to Florida? Nevertheless, I will grant that retiring to Florida has curiously been done by many other people in the past. One might even say that it's an unhealthy national habit. Come to think of it, has anyone mentioned to Messi and his family that people retiring to Florida tend to sort of go... bad?

On the plus side, to keep fit while in Miami (his Florida city of choice), Messi has resolved to play in the local recreational soccer league there. This is like me ending my writing career on Clerkmanifesto and proceeding to...

I hate that there is no reasonable analogy in this situation!

There totally should be!

One might think that even an aging Messi would dominate a local recreational league. Maybe he will a little, who knows, but one should keep in mind that soccer is so popular, so ubiquitously played by so many millions of people, that the distance between the best team in the world and the thousandth best team in the world isn't as enormous as one might assume. Also, soccer is very much a team sport and Messi's new team... probably isn't in the top thousand.

But if Messi wants to fade away kicking the ball about with Benjamin Cremaschi, and maybe earn a soccer team and a spare one or two hundred million dollars in his dotage, who am I to fault him?

Oh, right. I am a voice on the Internet. 

There is no one we cannot fault.

 

Argentina five days later

 

It feels much longer than five days since Argentina won the World Cup in what amounts to the culmination of my arduous soccer watching career.

This feels like a long time to me, but that may be because of my being sick with Covid that whole time, and so some part of my brain is measuring those days in coughs.

There have been a lot of TV shows watched in that time too.

Many people are calling that final the greatest sporting match ever played.

I fancy a bit of hyperbole myself. 

It was my favorite result from any sporting match ever. I'll readily say that!  And I suppose it was an emblematic game of soccer, full of drama, great moments, heroism, and changes of fortune. It was operatic.

Soccer is the most narrative of sports.

And this World Cup was a great narrative:

The most gifted player of all time lifted the greatest trophy in the sport in the twilight of his career.

But what's a little weird about soccer is that brilliant soccer, and great moments of virtuosity in the game, can easily have almost nothing to do with results.

But I'll admit:

I find it a relief when there's even a rough correlation.

The circle of life

 

There is a strange momentousness to this day, a closing of two circles.

One circle involves how after three years of writing about, thinking about, fending off, and occasionally obsessing over Covid, I finally have it. I first wrote about it here just barely under three years ago, before, apparently, the CDC had even declared it an International Health Concern. Looking at that post, which you can see at this link:

http://www.clerkmanifesto.com/2020/01/your-guide-to-coronavirus.html

I find it an odd mix of rambling and extremely prescient insight. The capturing of the quality and feel of my current symptoms is positively uncanny. 

Let's just say I am coughing a lot.

The other circle involves Lionel Messi and the World Cup. 

Over the years of my intense focus on his feats I have written as few blog posts about him as I could manage to restrain myself, but there are still a fair number. I first saw him in the World Cup eight and a half years ago. He utterly captured my attention as possibly the most magically skilled athlete at his sport, at any sport, that I had ever seen. He lost the World Cup Final that year and I had some harsh words for the Argentina team. I have since learned volumes more about soccer and have watched hundreds and hundreds of games, most of which featured Messi. Nevertheless I did have the gist of the whole thing back then. And everything that was missing from that Argentina team eight years ago was thankfully, joyously there this time as they won the World Cup.

 They did not win by a team spirit that refused to too much elevate Messi, like last time. They instead won through a team spirit that was formed through a love of Messi.

It was very satisfying. 

Maybe even a tiny bit more satisfying than this Covid is dismal.

Orange cognacs with Bob

 

I'm afraid I introduced Bob Dylan to European Soccer. 

These things never go how you expect them to.

We were going through a period of sampling orange cognacs at the time. I like orange cognacs. Bob was willing to be convinced at that point, but wasn't quite...yet. We were getting very close with the Grand Marnier Louis Alexandre. We had a lot of special version Grand Marniers we were working our way through.

Then I tried to show Bob a soccer clip on my phone.

"Is this your Messi fellow again?" He rasped with that touch of irritation he likes to affect.

I ignored it and Messi commenced to do something bewildering. Suddenly Bob got attentive, but not at Messi.

"Who's that?" He asked with interest, pointing to an animated speck on the screen, not much contributing to the play, but bounding about like a puppy.

"That's Riqui Puig" (pronounced "Ricky Pooch") I replied.

After that it was all Riqui Puig all the time with Bob.

"Who is Riqui Puig?" you ask?

He is a young midfielder for the Barcelona team. He very rarely gets to play. The coach doesn't like him. The coach is grumpy, and finds Riqui's exuberance irritating. The fan base is split three ways on Riqui Puig. One group hates him in support of the coach who they feel deserves their devoted respect and protection because he is the coach and so must know what he's doing. One group tries to remain neutral and fails. And one group utterly adores Riqui Puig, devotedly, for his spirit, his passion, his darting runs, and his occasionally daring and brilliant forward passes.

Bob is in the last of these categories. 

"My next album is all about Riqui Puig." Bob told me the other day.

Yes, Bob, now 80 years old, is working on another late masterpiece. And apparently this one will be about Riqui Puig.

"How can that be any good?" I asked.

"No one will know it's about Riqui Puig." Bob said wryly.

"I will!" I exclaimed.

There was a lull in the conversation.

"Let's try the Grand Marnier Cuvee Quintessence." Bob suggested.

"Whoa. That's pretty." I said admiringly of the impressively elegant bottle.

It tasted like oranges, yes, but also of hazelnuts and peaches.

Obscurity

 

As I write, the brilliant Lionel Messi is about to play his significant 767th game for his football club, Barcelona. This will tie him with a great midfielder named Xavi for the most games ever played on this historic team.

Coincidentally I am today working my 7,670th day at my less historic library, which is exactly ten times as many days of work! Also my work days tend to be longer than Messi's games. Although on the plus side they less often leave me covered in bruises.

My 7,670 days are, however, not anywhere close to a record for most days worked by someone at this library.

I have no idea who does hold that record.

Absolutely no one is keeping track.

More Messi and me

As I write this, credible news sources report that the all time greatest soccer player and person whose goals I like to describe here in some of my least popular posts, Leo Messi, has expressed his intention to leave Barcelona, his football club of 20 years. What will happen now is anyone's guess, but the mere possibility of this enormous legend leaving the club he is so magnificently identified with, while still not far over the peak of his considerable powers, is the kind of thing that causes me to reconsider things that I never thought I'd reconsider.

Like Messi I have been with my employer, the library in my case, for decades. Like Messi I am strongly identified with them by the public. and like Messi I always thought I would play out my whole career in this one place.

But like Messi circumstances and staff have damaged the institution I love. Like Messi institutional and management incompetence have hurt my library and squandered my talents and joy. And like Messi this is not the same top notch institution I was once so proud to represent.

While I, possibly yet like Messi, still hold out hope that my institution can find and reclaim itself, and that I can still sail through my final years here in grace and harmony, I too can accept the possibility of dramatic change. I too can see, against all expectation, that something different may be required.

So let it be known to the libraries throughout the World:

I am available.

I am asking for a hundred million euros a year, and I really only want to work for a serious, great, and truly competitive library. I need to make the most of my few remaining library years.

But at this point everything is in the air.

And everything is negotiable.

A messi goal

One might think that Messi, very slowly entering the twilight of his extraordinary soccer career, likely on the way to being the most prolific goal scorer ever, would have already covered every way there is to score a goal. So it was a delight to see him put a new wrinkle on the technique earlier this week.

He took the ball outside the other team's box with half a dozen of the opposition between him and the goal. Having one of those peculiar moments where he decides those are reasonable odds he proceeded to try to dribble through a large, non social distancing cluster of them. Because such a move is entirely impossible the ball ended up banging around in the crowd with Messi falling ignominiously to the ground for his efforts.

"Good enough." Messi seemed to say as he scrambled from the grass to find the ball at his feet almost like he'd planned the whole thing.

He didn't have time to get fully upright, so he just poked the ball forward a bit, started falling down, and made a tiny fake as he did so to open up a soccer ball's width of space between a couple remaining defenders. Then, as he was commencing finally to land hard on his butt, he managed to boot the ball through the tiny space he created, curving it through the air, off the fingertips of the leaping goalie, and into the net. Magical, inimitable, slightly ridiculous, and strangely difficult to work out.

I'm pretty sure it happened.

Even children get older

I have taken much delight in my impassioned following of Lionel Messi, the greatest soccer player ever, and, by complicated extension that you really don't want me to go into, possibly the greatest athlete ever. But he is 32 years old, and for a soccer player that means his days are seriously numbered. Whether he be magically great for another week, or year, or three years cannot be known, but there's way less sand in this top half of that hourglass than there is in the bottom half. Way less.

Will I need to pick another greatest athlete to follow then? Who even is out there? It's looking pretty clear that the gymnast Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast ever. And there is the Olympics to follow her through this Summer. But there are three problems with that. One, I don't like entirely judged sports where a panel of judges' scores determines everything. It's bad enough already in soccer with the referees, at least there are actually goals even if they're increasingly fond of disallowing them for various reasons. Two, I'm not keen on most of the stuff in gymnastics in between the tumbling, where they awkwardly pseudo dance around, and, perhaps most importantly, three, Simone Biles is 22, which, apparently is ancient in gymnastics. She's almost certainly closer to the end of her mastery than Messi is. She is old.

The fact of the matter is that all these performance based jobs have their age limits. Gymnasts, as we see, age out very fast. Sprinters have a last gasp peak at 30. Soccer players generally start to fade in their early thirties. Marathoners peak in the mid thirties. Painters, just to jump into the arts, hit their peak in their mid forties, supposedly. I read that one on the Internet and since the two greatest painters I've ever seen both died in their late thirties I have a lot of questions there. In music I've found that one might take over the world in one's mid and late twenties, but if one is really brilliant they can have a late career masterwork in their mid thirties. Nevertheless it's all a precipitous decline from there.

And what about writers like me? I first looked into this when I was in my early fifties, which was roughly the time of writers' late masterworks, and so I was satisfied. Now I am in my mid fifties and we must face the very real possibility that the greatest of my blog posts will soon be behind me. Yes, the quality here may well start dropping off to the point where you will need, like me with Messi, to consider following another wildly obscure, ridiculous and transcendent library blogger who writes every single day merely for the uniquely wee bit of good it brings to the world.

Good luck with that.

Goat

Goat.

IAA, that is, it's an acronym. If you don't follow any sports you may, by the grace of god and your beautiful innocence, have managed to evade it. You haven't missed much. It means Greatest Of All Time. It's very popular in the chatter surrounding a lot of sports these days. But it's dangerously hyperbolic. 

And kind of silly.

I mean, you don't hear me going on about Caravaggio by constantly calling him "the goat" and putting little goat emojis next to his name every time I mention him. How can one possibly judge a talent against all of time and all of history? One can't. There are always too many variables; limitations of the era, personal tastes, cultural context. That's why when I get really excited while talking about Caravaggio and his painting I keep it more dignified and personal. I merely say: He's objectively the best painter ever, which is a

Wait. We're getting sidetracked.

I wanted to talk about Lionel Messi. Very recently he won his sixth Ballon d'Or. This means "Golden Ball". It's an award for the best soccer player of the year. No one has ever won six of these before. So it has thrown a great deal of fuel on the already burning fire about how Messi is the greatest of all time.

He is very good. Quite good really.

And I do have a bit of a soft spot for him, watching him, as I do, in every single game he ever plays in for years now.

But is he better than Pele? Is he better than Maradona? Or even Ronaldo? Ronaldo? And Ronaldinho? Or the man he nipped to the Ballon d'Or post this year: Virgil Van Dijk? 

I mean, it's just sports. It's not like people have collected any statistics about them. It's not like anyone of note has expressed an opinion on it. 

It's not like we have any footage of these people in action.

So I guess we'll never know.

Soccer visible to the eye

I don't mean for this to be damning with faint praise, but I guess it is a little bit. Nevertheless, I mean no harm.

I watch a lot of soccer, with most of those games featuring Messi, the almost miraculous player from Argentina. Often, sometimes with it going just right, and sometimes with it just barely going wrong, I watch and marvel. "What on Earth just happened!" I cry. Or "How did he do that?" They show it again and I still can't quite work it out. Then, if I'm lucky, they'll have a nice slow motion shot of it. He passes the ball from his left foot to his right foot back to his left foot. This happens all at once without ever touching anything but his feet. The defender's mind is spinning and Messi pops it with the outside of his boot through the guy's legs, between four other players, to anticipate the run of his teammate who, wide open, then kicks the ball clear into the stands. Ah well. It was still quite a thing.

In preparing a modestly elaborate betting pool at work for the Women's World Cup I have had some occasion already to watch some recent highlight videos from women's soccer. It has been a kind of delightful surprise. Sure, it is missing the magic, which is a little problematic, but on the plus side I can see everything as it happens in real time. It is as if the game, unusually, is played in slow motion from the start, in real time.

I know that doesn't sound great, but as a viewer it is a curious pleasure; finally, finally, I can see everything.

Does there have to be a winner?

Recently in this space I was extolling something delightful my local indie alternative rock station was doing. The Current, a public radio station, was running down the best 893 (because their call number is 89.3 FM) songs since the year 2000, as voted by listeners. My point was that democracy made for great radio. And it did, especially when we were in the 500's and then later the 300's.

But I had an inkling that there might be a problem for me going forward. And I was right.

The higher we went on the list the more my sense of competition and judgement crept into it. 

Avant Gardener by Courtney Barnett at 274 is an entertaining and interesting song, and one I just enjoy on its own small and appealing merits. But this song placing at 51, where it actually is, becomes a little irritating. Is it hundreds of songs better than Cat Power's lusciously sad The Greatest?  Could it possibly be a hundred places better than The White Stripe's Ball and Biscuit, the greatest rock guitar masterpiece in 30 years?

No. It's not.

It's a nice song Avant Gardener, but it shows up very poorly against these other two songs. Very, very, very poorly. And down here in the top 100, or even more in the top 50, it gets harder for me to listen without all the context of competition.

This year I faithfully and with much delight watched Messi and The Barcelona team play a season's worth of brilliant soccer. Messi astonished at every turn. I witnessed unworldly, wondrous things. And then late in the most important and contested competition of the season, with a seemingly unassailable first game lead, Barcelona were crushed, stripped of dignity, and summarily tossed out of the competition. I can barely express the devastation I felt. The joy of 40 games of soccer were stripped from my heart in roughly 30 minutes.

As I write the 893 songs count down slowly in the background. Number 42 is playing right now. Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead. I breathe a sigh of relief. With a song like that everything really is in its right place. But it's all on the line now. Will I feel so approving about the next song? It's all in my nature, and in the nature of competition. Less fun, more tension.

I have no solution here. Competition provides focus and clarity. It can filter excellence up, all in good fun. But it never knows when to stop. It's only for the strong. It breaks hearts. It always, always, always gets too serious. 

And it always ends in tears.

Messi for beginners

Over the weekend the greatest soccer player who ever lived played an exceptional game. Lionel Messi scored three goals. This is called, of course, a hat-trick, and while it's an impressive feat by any standard, it is not necessarily a particularly legendary feat. That part is all in how one does it.

Messi was playing with his team, Barcelona, in their opponents' stadium, with 54,000 people on hand cheering on their team Real Betis, and rooting against Barcelona. His first goal was from a free kick, a beautiful blast into an upper left corner of the net. It was a pure and lovely shot, making the perfectly sensible looking defensive set up appear to be 30 yards wide of where they all needed to be. But it was probably not a shot of quality beyond the capabilities of other good players having a great day.

His second goal was from an extraordinary backheeled pass to him from his teammate Luis Suarez, who was dazzlingly going the other way. With no time to collect the pass, or even really kick it, Messi sort of stabbed the ball with his reaching left foot, spearing it at an oblique angle into the net like a doomed fish. I'm not actually sure how many people make that goal, maybe some of the best, on a very, very good day?

But the third goal was different, and it's hard to explain. I was so excited about it I showed it to some non soccer fans and it didn't quite play right. It was like if I showed someone who had never seen golf a professional golfer clubbing a 350 yard drive down a fairway, perfectly straight and pure, touching down and rolling into the hole for a hole-in-one. "How's that!?" I ask, grinning.

"That was nice." They reply. "But isn't that sort of what they're supposed to do?"

Well, yeah, I guess so.

Messi gets the ball above the box. He dribbles out of reach of a couple players and pops it out quickly to a teammate, Rakitic, on the near wing. That person proceeds to drift a rolling ball back in from the side to Messi.

Messi does not have a shot.

So he shoots, at first touch, chipping the ball in a perfectly designed arc, looping just quickly and high enough to escape the leaping goalie, and just soft and spinning enough to drop down, dipping into the top goal bar to make use of every inch of height and bouncing into the goal. Hat-trick.

Isn't that just what you're supposed to do?

Well... yes.

But for those of us who have seen a few thousand goals this one is not familiar. We haven't quite seen one like this before. They don't normally work this way. Across soccerdom everyone spits out their tea. They laugh, delighted, or like "What the fuck." The most loquacious of the announcers can't find any new words for a bit. "Human art." One finally settles on. The reserved, take-no-sides English announcers just give it up. "Well, he's the greatest ever to play the game." They confess, no longer able to resist. The goalie rolls his eyes, defeated, but not feeling too bad about it. No one on earth will be holding him responsible. Some of the players put their heads in their hands. It's a "holy crap" moment for all involved, and something a little more. Winners and losers seems to recede for a moment. Disappointment bleeds out of the stadium. No matter who or where soccer fans are watching something more like wonder rides in. Messi celebrates in his traditional way. The team hugs. And then the crowd of Real Betis fans, all the tens of thousands in Seville in Spain, soccer aficionados all, having whistled at the Barcelona team for 85 minutes, rise to their feet, and cheer.

Day 2,193

I have in the past compared my library clerking to how Messi plays soccer. It was self aggrandizing to compare myself in that manner to the greatest soccer player who has ever, er, kicked a ball. But because the context of working at a library is so wildly different than playing soccer it was also comically self effacing. After all, if one scores one goal and makes seven brilliant passes in a soccer game, one has, in the course of maybe five minutes, contributed enough to the team that one can now spend the other 85 minutes walking around looking faintly interested and still cumulatively be the best player in the game. On the other hand if one has a few deeply helpful interactions with library patrons and then fixes some out of the way shelving errors, one has contributed so much in 30 minutes that if they spend the other seven and a half hours wandering around eating yogurt and offering amusing comments to their co-workers then those comments better be supremely fucking amusing.

Much as I like to dream it, even I can't be that amusing. Nothing is that amusing. 

To have any hope at all I'd better be at something more like a 1:3 work:yogurt eating ratio, and then I still have to be pretty funny or at least pleasantly distracting to keep in the upper tiers of clerking.

But this is just the recap. I am not here to talk about how I am like Messi at work. Rather, I would today like to tell you instead all about what soccer player I write blog posts like. 

I write blog posts like Arturo Vidal plays soccer.

Alas only a tiny percentage of my audience here knows about Arturo Vidal. So I will explain:

In second and third grade all of us kids played soccer in the big lower field at Chaparral Elementary School. There were few rules and little organization. The skill level was quite low as well. Simply put it was two masses of small kids running madly at the ball wherever it happened to be and trying their hardest to kick it.

Arturo Vidal is one of the greatest soccer players, one of the greatest athletes in the world. This above is not really what he does. But it is very much in the spirit of it. He is like the God of second grade soccer players, so good at it that he has risen to near the top of his sport, where he tends to be a little underrated.

I would love to write essays like Messi plays soccer, writing things from out of nowhere that are so dazzling people just read them over and over, ensorcelled. But it is not so. The ball is rolled out into the Internet and like a man possessed I simply go running at it pell-mell, no plan, as fast as I humanly can. And as soon as I get near it I leap for it, sliding in at risk to my life and limb, and I miss, or not. But if I miss I get up and run again, absurd, tireless, convinced. And the moment my foot hits the ball, well...

that's the essay for the day.

Until the next day, for ten thousand days in a row.