Messi, Mbappé and the race for footballing immortality

{"text":[[{"start":7.85,"text":"One joy of this World Cup has been the riot of goalscoring by great players. Leo Messi has netted five for Argentina even before Saturday’s potentially goal-rich encounter with Jordan. France’s Kylian Mbappé, Brazil’s Vinicius Júnior and Norway’s Erling Haaland have four each, while Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Kane lurk on two. "}],[{"start":28.15,"text":"The greater race, though, is to be the World Cup’s all-time highest scorer. Since the tournament kicked off, Mbappé has equalled the 16 goals of the previous record-holder, Germany’s Miroslav Klose, while Messi has surged into the lead with 18. "}],[{"start":43.25,"text":"Talking about personal stats is taboo in football. The standard line is that only the team matters, especially in the holiest competition, the World Cup. But, in fact, many great players do target personal achievements. More than that, they see these as intertwined with the team’s. A star’s egotistical drive can help win a World Cup."}],[{"start":63.55,"text":"Footballers rarely vocalise individual ambitions. Ronaldo and Messi rarely vocalise anything at all. But Mbappé, a great player who does talk, told me in 2021: “You always compare yourself with the best in your sport. The human being is like that. It’s like the baker comparing himself with the best bakers around him: who makes the best croissant, the best pain au chocolat? Of course I watch the games of other great players to see what they do. I think it pushes players to raise their level. I think other players watch me too: ‘OK, Kylian does that, I can do that too.’”   "}],[{"start":97.8,"text":"Mbappé believes individual competition has helped drive Messi’s greatness. In the 2018/19 club season, when he and Messi (then at Barcelona) were contending for the title of Europe’s highest scorer, he noticed: “I’d score two, he’d score three; I’d score three, he’d score four. It was so crazy that I talked to Ousmane [Dembélé, then Messi’s teammate at Barcelona, and Mbappé’s with France]: ‘It’s not possible! Is he doing it on purpose? Does he check how many goals I score?’” Dembélé replied: “Of course he’s watching you!” Messi still seems to be watching. Hours after Mbappé scored two in France’s opener against Senegal, the Argentine got three against Algeria."}],[{"start":139.6,"text":"Mbappé thinks the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo motivated both men. Before them, he said, “there had never been such a comparison of two players. I think Messi has done Ronaldo good, and Ronaldo has done Messi good . . . one without the other might not have remained the best far ahead of the others for 15 years.” Ronaldo, now 41, won’t engage with the topic. After his two goals against Uzbekistan, a journalist began a question about Messi and Mbappé’s tallies but, before he could finish, Ronaldo had invited another journalist to speak.  "}],[{"start":173.8,"text":"The main contest isn’t to win the Golden Boot for highest scorer of this tournament. That award barely enhances the reputation of proven greats, though it can help players a category below: Gary Lineker earned a transfer to Barcelona after winning it in 1986, and Colombia’s James Rodríguez to Real Madrid in 2014.  "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":193.55,"text":"Much more prestigious are career records, such as all-time highest scorer at World Cups. These are proof that you did not just get to the top, but stayed there. Tennis player Roger Federer marvelled to me in 2019, about what was already then Messi’s improbably long peak: “The consistency level . . . scoring his 600th goal just now. These are unheard of numbers, and we see the same thing happening in basketball now, with all these records being broken. People are just more aware of them and I think they push harder.” Similarly, Kane, who won the Golden Boot in 2018, singles out Messi, Ronaldo and Croatia’s Luka Modric: “Being able to do it for 20-plus years is what truly separates the good players from the great players.”  "}],[{"start":237.60000000000002,"text":"This longevity is new in football. Neither Pelé nor Johan Cruyff played a World Cup match after turning 30, while Diego Maradona managed two in 1994 before getting expelled for taking drugs."}],[{"start":251.10000000000002,"text":"Admittedly, pursuing personal goals can have perverse consequences. Look at Ronaldo, hanging on as Portugal’s centre-forward into middle age, still demanding that almost every attack finishes with him. "}],[{"start":263.35,"text":"However, a team can benefit when a star sets himself long-term personal targets. The tournament’s five highest all-time scorers all won a World Cup at one point."}],[{"start":273.55,"text":"All this is even more relevant in an era when a team’s most gifted footballer — Messi, Haaland, Vinicius or Kane — tends to play as goalscoring target man. (The possible exception is France, whose best player is arguably Michael Olise, not Mbappé.) Roles used to be allotted differently. France’s best player at the 1998 World Cup was playmaker Zinedine Zidane, not the nonscoring centre forward Stéphane Guivarc’h, while the Spanish champions of 2010 sometimes played without a centre forward."}],[{"start":303.7,"text":"This summer, for the first time since Brazil’s Ronaldo in 2002, the same man could win both the Golden Boot and the World Cup."}],[{"start":317.5,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782534509_4855.mp3"}