LUSAIL STADIUM — No human should be able to bear that weight. Not only of a whole nation backing him to win his country a first World Cup in 36 years, but the hundreds of millions – possibly billions – of neutrals, too. Willing him on, urging him to win his first World Cup, in what could be his last World Cup match.

Everyone wanted Lionel Messi to win. Football wanted Messi to win. Even the French, if they dared to search deep within their hearts, would have found an infinitesimal piece that wanted Messi to win.

But no human should be able to withstand the emotional rigours of one of the greatest World Cup finals: Argentina two goals ahead, France level with their first two shots on target in the 80th and 81st minute, Messi putting them in front in extra time, Kylian Mbappe completing a hat trick to equalise once more.

That walk from the half-way line after watching Mbappe score first in the shootout, Messi striding towards what could be his last ever kick of a ball in a World Cup, passing the young pretender – only 23 years old – who had tried so desperately to prevent him ever winning the trophy. Knowing Mbappe would have so many more chances, but that this was likely to be his last.

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How do you deal with that? How was the coolest person in an air-conditioned stadium the guy taking the penalties in what could be his last ever chance to lift that elusive trophy, one so exclusive it was escorted into the Lusail Stadium in a Louis Vuitton box?

Messi completes the set

Victory in the World Cup final completed a remarkable career haul for Lionel Messi, who has now won the highest silverware available at club, country and personal levels.

With Argentina:

• World Cup 2022
• Copa America 2021
• Olympics 2008

With Barcelona:

• Champions League (4) 2005-06, 2008-09, 2010-11, 2014-15
• La Liga (10) 2004-05, 2005-06, 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2012-13, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2017-18, 2018-19

With Paris Saint-Germain:

• Ligue 1 2021-22

Personal honours:

• Ballon d’Or (7) 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021

And not one penalty, but two. To open the scoring in the 22nd minute, then again to score Argentina’s first goal in the shootout. Both times with that stilted run-up, wrong-footing France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris and rolling it in. How?

How did Mbappe score four times and still it wasn’t enough?

It is the trophy that truly defines Messi from his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo. The debate about who is the greatest may never end, but if you love magic and romance, serenity and art, subtlety and nuance, Messi will for ever be the winner.

You can devise no game plan to deal with him, instruct no player to man-mark him, nor several to track him. How do you mark a man who could find space in an atom?

While the ball is passed between team-mates some distance away, opposition players try desperately to keep an eye on Messi and the ball, but Messi watches them. Like a hunter stalking its prey. His head flits left, right, left, right, left, right. He twists and turns and twists again. He doesn’t need to watch what’s going on elsewhere because somehow he can sense it without looking.

The second Argentina goal – the flowing counter-attack one of the great World Cup goals – showed what a team Messi has had around him. But there was Messi, still so crucial in its conception, an outside-of-the-boot hook at the start of a move that was finished by Angel Di Maria.

How do the records keep tumbling at 35 years old? The final was his 26th World Cup appearance, overtaking Lothar Matthaus’s 25. The first player to score in every knockout round of a World Cup, having never scored one before Qatar 2022. In the 23rd minute, he surpassed Paolo Maldini’s 2,216 minutes to have played the most in any World Cup.

His first goal in a World Cup final (one better than Diego Maradona) drawing him level with Pele (who else?), on 12, the second in extra time moving him clear.

Somehow, Messi has been able to live with the pressure of the constant comparisons to Maradona. The pair adorning so many of the Argentina banners unfurled throughout this tournament: Maradona handing Messi the World Cup, Maradona depicted as God in a Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, touching the finger of Messi as Adam.

The comparisons to a footballing god are so hard to escape: Messi almost single-handedly carrying Argentina throughout this World Cup in the same way Maradona did in 1986. But Messi has also wanted to define himself, as his own player, his own man.

He has led in his own way, in his own almost understated style. Not a screamer or shouter, but leading with sublime mastery and control, mesmerising dribbles, crucial goals, unexplainable passing. The no-look pass against the Netherlands one of the great assists.

And his own way of revealing that lava in the belly, such as when he shouted at Wout Weghorst after that fiery quarter-final decided on penalties.

Argentina’s rousing national anthem starts with the words “Listen, mortals, it’s the sound of breaking chains” and somehow Messi has been able to break free from the shackles of expectation, of comparison, of pressure, of mere mortality. Somehow he’s able to do the things that no other mortals can do.

When Mbappe pushed the boundaries of footballing physics with a first men’s World Cup final hat-trick since Sir Geoff Hurst, and pushed Messi to the brink, still he prevailed, where no human should.