Lionel Messi- a world class player but World Cups are not for him.

Lionel Messi - a world class player but World Cups are not for him.

Lionel Messi and World Cups simply don't seem to go together. One of the world's greatest players of the modern era has conquered Barcelona and club football but once he finds himself on the big global stage, something in the rarefied World Cup air seems to overwhelm him. Football can be the cruellest of games at times and when the game conspires against you, it does seem as though the forces of psychology can exact a horrible revenge when you're not looking where you should.

Yesterday in Argentina's opening World Cup group match against Iceland, Messi, although untouchable and mesmeric at times, found himself wandering into the barbed wire defence of a resolute and forbidding Iceland defence. By the end of the game Messi was bowing his head despairingly, staring at the ground and wondering if it was worth all that effort. Clearly, the man was a troubled soul and totally inconsolable, a man who had obviously lost a fiver and couldn't even comfort himself with a pound.

Argentina, of course are renowned for their beef, cattle, the vast, rolling pampases, the palominos in all their stately magnificence, Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, Estudiantes and Boca Juniors, the two leading Argentinian football clubs and the ticker tape confetti that swirled down from the terraces when Caesar Luis Menotti celebrated his Argentine team's World Cup victory exactly 40 years ago in Buenos Aires.

But yesterday was all about Lionel Messi and his singular contribution to a World Cup match. In 1986, his world class predecessor Diego Maradona had stopped the world on its axis when, in a heartbreaking quarter final against Bobby Robson's England, Maradona upset, infuriated and antagonised the whole of England with that famous handball goal that should never have been.

Still, a stocky, bullish and muscular centre forward with illicit thoughts running through his mind flung out a fist to punch the ball past England goalkeeper Peter Shilton in the aerial challenge of all aerial challenges. Maradona was never sorry, apologetic or remorseful for many years convinced that the goal was perfectly legal and England were just being cry babies.

Lionel Messi, for his part, is a completely different football animal. Messi is fair minded, respectable, presentable and without a single bone of deviousness or deception in his body. Messi glides, floats, cuts through defences, waltzing, jinking, shimmying, running at his own pace and with the minimum of effort. There was a time when Iceland had very few answers to the Messi body swerve, the endless drops of the shoulders, the suave and almost dapper air of complete command, the impeccable close ball control, the animal magnetism, the sexy, sinuous, sinewy athleticism and, above all, the natural talent.

But against Iceland yesterday Messi came up against an impenetrable road block, hundreds of cones everywhere, a wall the size of China and white Iceland shirts that were almost locked together with a thousand keys, bolts and shutters. Wherever Messi went Iceland followed him like puppies determined to get their bones. Eventually Messi just seemed to run out of room so formidable had that wall become.

And this seemed to be the recurring pattern of the game for Argentina. You were reminded of those insurmountable obstacles that can never be overcome, brick walls that can never be climbed, white shirts that just kept multiplying in front of Argentina. Every time Argentina had the ball they must have felt like bank robbers trying desperately to find the right number for the safe. There were tiny knots of black Argentine shirts, flickering and fluttering around Iceland like those pieces of ticker tape in 1978.

Finally, after a series of relentless runs, dummy runs, decoy runs, ducking but never diving, Messi's head dropped down in helpless dejection, a man who should have been destined to become the man of the match but instead had to settle for nothing at all. True, Argentina hadn't lost but deep inside the Messi mind there was a very real sense that something had been lost. He'd failed in his mission to become the revolutionary figure who could upstage everybody with the boldest of footballing statements.

So there we were. Lionel Messi has now two more opportunities to emulate his countryman Diego Maradona. There were those who rightly believed that Pele could never be replaced by any player in any succeeding generation. But then there was Johan Cruyff and rather like Messi, Cruyff, although blessed with delectable ball skills, was on the beaten side in that famous World Cup Final of 1974, when English referee Jack Taylor awarded a penalty from which the Dutch scored. But then a striker with the lethal goal scorer's touch called Gerd Muller ruined Holland's day.

Messi, although the complete article, will surely be playing at his last World Cup and the chances are that he may well end up as frustrated as Cruyff. But this World Cup is in its infancy and Zabivaka, the World Cup mascot in Russia, is still limbering up for the days that now face his home nation. Zabivaka means charm and confidence in Russia and if you've got any of those Russian dolls in your cupboard it also means that this World Cup may have a much more distinctive character than ever thought possible and it could be a crackerjack of a World Cup. Hold on tight everybody.