Lionel Messi: The antidote to game’s bloated excesses

Even Fifa gets it right sometimes. In front of the usual Zurich crowd of power brokers, buffet-lurkers, desiccated legends and appallingly-tuxedoed superstars, Lionel Messi has been awarded the Ballon d'Or for 2015. And from a certain angle it is tempting simply to shrug, yawn and wonder what the fuss is about. Let's be honest. This isn't exactly news is it?

Fifa may be keen on casting itself as football's key-masters, overseers and general capo di capos. But anyone with even a passing knowledge of Messi's extraordinary feats between January and June last year knows already he has been, beyond even the tiniest crumb of doubt, the best footballer on the planet.

In London earlier the same day David Cameron had also informed the world – no doubt to the world's huge relief on this matter – that David Bowie was very good at music. In many ways Fifa's annual pawing at the shoulders of greatness feels like it should draw a similar reaction. Okay, then. Thanks for that chaps. Anyway, where were we?

The objections to Fifa’s glitzy, perma-tanned operetta are familiar. There is a certain unease with star worship and swooning over individuals, not least when the major part of Messi’s own success has been the chemistry with that three-man Barca frontline.

Connected to this is the hot sweaty hand of marketing and sponsorship, the corporate opportunism that drives the wider hyperbole. Every single football-playing child in the world covets a pair of Adidas Messi boots (or failing that some Nike Mercurial Superfly CR7s).

Harmless enough perhaps but it is worth remembering who drives the scale and reach of this strain of unceasing, glossily celebrified excitement.

Separate calendar

Plus of course there is the jarring nature of any January award in a sport where the narrative of struggle and triumph runs on a separate calendar.

The story has always been the season, the ability to perform and grow and problem-solve from autumn into winter into spring. This was the real satisfaction of Messi’s sensational 2014-15: a stumbling start, before the sublime, unanswerable lift-off from November to May, all given its greater meaning by those early stutters.

The last six months of 2015 were the start of something else, a separate story half-told. But wait! Here comes Fifa with its golden ball and its glazed smiles and its iron grip on the sleeve. All hail what you’ve already seen ages ago!

Still, though: it is somehow hard to argue this time around. Having railed against, having accepted all of this, the fact remains that there is never a bad moment to celebrate real genius. It is another part of Messi’s peculiarly generous type of brilliance that it is within his scope to redeem even Fifa’s overblown sideshow. And it is even for the award-sceptic, a genuinely significant victory on several fronts

First for Messi to regain his status as the world's best player six years on from his first ballon and three years from his last is a supreme feat of longevity And beyond that, let's face it, he has been sensationally, blissfully good. His performances from the start of January to the Champions League final, during which he scored 34 goals in 34 games and drove a thrilling champion team on to greatness, were relentlessly but also oddly vivid and moving.

Here was a player who had looked physically diminished at the end of the 2014 World Cup, who appeared to have entered a period of adjustment and realignment, to have lost a little of his fearless youthful snap.

Not so, it turn out. Messi didn't just return to his previous level this year, he surpassed it. There were many superlative performances but frankly he deserves that gong simply for the champions league semi-final first leg against Bayern Munich.

In the biggest game of the season, at a moment of history-minting importance, Messi was simply mesmerising. For 80 minutes he tickled and jabbed and lulled a team of world-class footballers into submission. The decisive blow to the point of the chin was a truly wonderful Messi moment as he drifted past Jerome Boateng, who collapsed almost gratefully like a sleepwalker being ushered into an armchair, and then floated the ball over Manuel Neuer and Rafinha, leaving three opponents flat on their backs and an entire defence put to sleep in five perfect strides.

There were plenty of other unforgettable moments.

In February Messi produced a 20-minute spell of dribbling, passing and combination play that was, this observer feels like arguing, the best individual display of attacking football seen in England.

This will no doubt draw guffaws of disagreement but if we accept the speed and intensity of the game keeps rising, and that Messi is among the top two or three players of all time, then why not?

Worthy winner

Ronaldo was a worthy winner of an overblown award last year. This time Messi’s performances add a lustre to the circus itself. Given the all-round nature of his game as passer, dribbler, playmaker, provider of relentless gobbets of brilliance, perhaps the only real question is not whether he’s the best right now, or the best of his era, but whether he’s simply the best.

Comparisons between eras are of course a fruitless business. The demands, the basic tone and texture, change all the time. Even so it is hard, watching Messi this year, to imagine anyone has ever played much better.

There may be reservations about the Barca comfort zone too. The fact is Messi has only ever been constantly brilliant for one team. A team who, for 80 per cent of his time there have been, even without him often, the best on the planet.

Again this too seems a pointless objection given his relentlessly high level. He is what he is: Messi of Barcelona, a humble, steamrollering, endlessly reliable genius. And for the first time this year there is perhaps a sense we should really be squeezing the last drops out of this era of rare individual brilliance while it’s still out there.

Ronaldo will be 31 next month. Messi is 29 in June. The only really valid point of comparison for these two era-defining players will be the hole they leave when they have gone. For now the best policy is perhaps simply to celebrate while we have them: stay glued, drink it in, don’t miss a second. Guardian Service