Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend is a fun look behind the scenes at Messi’s 2022 World Cup win. Featuring never-before-seen footage and interviews with Messi himself, as well as some of his teammates, the documentary does a great job of filling in the blanks of the World Cup that took Messi from the best players of his generation to arguably one of the best players ever, right up there with Maradona and Pele.
The documentary, however, doesn’t come close to examining the mania behind the man – it can’t. No documentary involving Messi ever could. It is not in Messi to understand Messimania, and the people close to him probably can’t understand either. Not even Enzo Fernandez, who years ago, when Messi, tired of defeat, quit the Argentina National team, wrote him a moving letter asking him not to leave, can understand.
Fernandez is, after all, now a teammate of Messi and a star at Chelsea. He was crowned the Best Young Player at the World Cup. He remembers the letter, but he seems a bit embarrassed of it now, even if it might have helped sway Messi to return. Messi did return, and he has said many times that the reason he returned was because he did not want young kids to think giving up was okay.
Lionel Messi did not give up. And after he did not give up, he came back and won absolutely every trophy he had been unable to win with his national team. It seems almost too good to be true.
Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend tries to capture that journey, though in a way, the title is misleading. Messi was already a legend. The World Cup didn’t make him one. If anything, it cemented the status in the eyes of the naysayers, the ones who had always wanted to find a reason to doubt him. For so many people, however, the 2022 World Cup was, however, just karma paying back someone it owed.
The documentary takes us through a journey that feels more mystical than sports-related. The loss against Saudi Arabia? Sure, now everyone says that the 1978 and 1986 World Cup winning teams had also lost their first matches, but no one expected the 2022 team to lose their first match going in. The tough first half against a Mexican team that Argentina seemed unable to break? Messi with that miracle goal that seemed to change the course of not just that Mexico game, but the World Cup?
The documentary features some witches, and at times, it truly does feel like they had something to do with what happened. Mess is good, but this whole thing feels scripted. It’s either the witches or some divine power. Or, perhaps, karma – as I said before. The sports Gods do know that someone is owed, and Messi was owed.
In this respect, Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend sets the stage perfectly, spending very little time on the games with no drama, and just enough on the drama. Almost an entire episode on that Netherlands game? Yes, please. I needed those fifteen minutes of oral history on the “Que miras bobo?” of it all. The semifinal, though? We don’t need more than 3 minutes of that. Give me forty minutes on the final and Mbappe is the perfect antagonist to this story.
A good sports documentary has to do three things: it has to show us something new, it has to make us feel for the subjects and it has to frame things interestingly. Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend does a great job with all of those, even if the framing for the story of Lionel Messi seems quite obvious. The biggest star in the world wins the biggest tournament in the world. What else is there to be said, you’d think.
Well, a lot more. And for Argentina fans, there is no such thing as too much Messi or too much of Argentina winning. They’ll watch this one and probably fifteen others. This just happens to be a pretty enjoyable one.
Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend is available to stream on Apple TV+.