By: Ikugbadi Oluwasegun
For over 20 years, Messi has been on the global stage of football having won the Ballon d’Or award seven times, the most by any.
Leo Messi started his career in Barcelona and played almost his entire career with the Spanish football club. He featured in 778 games, scoring 672 goals for Barcelona.
He also lifted 35 trophies including four UEFA Champions League.
At the height of these records, there came criticism that Messi can’t perform outside of Barcelona and the Spanish league.
As a matter of fact, a lot of football commentators said he will underperform if he joins another football club.
Messi shocked the football world when he left Barcelona and joined Paris-Saint German in 2021.
Since his move, he has featured in a total of 53 games and has netted 23 goals for the French club.
A lot of football fans around the globe still believe all these achievements is not enough and concluded that Messi is aggregately not the best football player on the planet.
The beginning of the 2022 World Cup saw many twist and turns from football fans to Messi.
It’s clear the people at the light end of the spectrum want Messi to win the world cup, while those at the dark end of the spectrum want him to fail to do so.
At the kick-off of the world tournament, Argentina lost their opening match to Saudi Arabia, which made a lot of wailers throw at Leo Messi.
There were also bants and slanders from people sarcastically asking “Where is Messi?”.
But by 18th of December, 2022, Argentina crossed through all qualifying stage and went head-to-head against the defending World Cup champions, France, in the finals.
Eventually, the La Selección won the World Cup 2022 on a penalty shootout after a hard-fought 90 minutes with France.
From day one, Lionel Messi had single-handedly led the Argentina team in the Qatar World Cup.
He kept up to this performance till the final.
As a result, he emerged Player of the Match four times, and netted 7 goals in total.
Consequently, he equally doubled as the Best Player of the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
By winning all these major trophies in the football world, Lionel Messi has proven himself beyond reasonable doubt that he is the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) in the history of football.
