Lionel Messi will play his 34th World Cup match on Sunday when Argentina face their final opponents, and the whole football world is holding its breath wondering whether this extraordinary man is about to bow out on the biggest stage of them all.
Think about that number for a second. Thirty-four World Cup games. Most players dream of playing in one tournament, let alone accumulating that many appearances across multiple ones. Messi has treated the World Cup like his personal highlight reel for nearly two decades now, and here he is again, right at the centre of everything.
The question of whether this is his last World Cup is one that nobody really wants to answer honestly. Messi will be 39 by the time the 2026 tournament comes around, and while he is still playing at an exceptional level right now, asking him to maintain that into his late thirties at the very highest intensity of international football is a big ask for anyone, genius or not. Even the greatest players have to stop eventually, as painful as that is to admit.
What makes this story so compelling is that Messi has spent his entire career chasing the one trophy that had eluded him. Club football? He has done everything there is to do. But the World Cup with Argentina has always felt like unfinished business, the thing that critics used to swing at him whenever they wanted to stir things up. Now he is one game away from answering all of that forever.
As a Manchester United fan, it would be easy to get lost in club loyalties and ignore what is happening here, but that would be daft. This is one of the greatest players who has ever lived, possibly the greatest, playing what could be his final chapter in world football. You would have to be made of stone not to appreciate it.
Sunday is not just a football match. It is potentially the closing pages of one of the sport's greatest ever stories, and however it ends, people will be talking about it for a very long time. Let me know your thoughts.