For the good of soccer, Messi must shine in the final

Since the Mineirão massacre commentators have studied the runes (ruins?) of the semi-final to assess everything from the running of the Brazilian game to the defeat’s impact on the national psyche.

But the post-semi post-mortem raises a further question: What result on Sunday would be best for the good of the game? There will be few neutrals as Germany and Argentina represent two different approaches to the game (and life). Neither team exactly matches the stereotypes – German efficiency or Latin flair – but Messi is the most likely candidate to ascend to the pantheon alongside Maradona, Pelé, Cruyff and Garrincha and make Sunday’s game live on brightly in the memory.

Argentina shares many of the ills associated with its neighbor and rival. Violence around the game, a league structure apparently designed to protect the leading, “historic” clubs, players swept off to Europe in their early teens … The Argentine game needs the sort of intrusive check-up/intensive care that Brazil is going through.

In stark contrast the game in Germany is an example even to other European leagues of how to run soccer sensibly. Significant fan involvement in the running of clubs, high attendances in top-class stadiums, sustainable transfer fees and player salaries, most top players still playing at home – it all adds up to a game at ease with itself after the self-doubt of the 1990-2006 drought. If only someone other than Bayern or Dortmund could have a chance of winning the league …

However, the sheer quantity of German goals on Tuesday should not deceive us, any more than the collapse of Spain in their opener should have created the false impression that the mediocre Dutch team was the future of football. In both cases defenses that had gone missing allowed competent forwards to score at will. It was only when David Luiz tried to save the day single-handedly that the steady German start turned into a turkey shoot. For all its jaw-dropping uniqueness, the match was more about Brazilian frailty than German excellence.

Remarkably, the German team on Sunday will probably include eight of those who lined up four years ago to batter Argentina 4-0 in the quarter-final. The most significant difference for Argentina, who may field five survivors from that starting line-up, could be the absence of one of their all-time greats, Carlos Tevez, left at home despite contributing as much as anyone to Juventus’s stroll to the Serie A title.

Germany’s game is wonderfully tidy, hardly a ball shinned or a simple pass ignored, but the only really transcendental moments come via the short-range dinks from the peripheral Mesut Özil’s left foot, along with the inexplicably consistent and wonderfully eccentric Thomas Müller. But have we forgotten the lack of imagination that marked their slog to extra-time victory over Algeria or the labored draw against an ordinary Ghana? In the end this German team impresses us with its refusal to make mistakes rather than for any aspiration to surprise or delight.

Argentina's back five have defended heroically, true, but the key fact is that Argentina’s captain, Leo Messi, although he has so far dazzled only intermittently, is one of only a handful of players who can raise the pulse of any observer. If the other footballers who transcend the mundane, who defy those who would reduce football to doing the basics efficiently – Neymar, Xavi, Robben, James Rodríguez, Pirlo – can’t get their hands on the trophy this time then it has to be Messi. His approach to the game can send a message to the future generations of World Cup players.

It was disturbing therefore to hear that Messi’s father, Jorge, told the Folha de São Paulo newspaper after the semi-final that: “Leo said it was like his legs weighed 100 kilos. He was very tired,” That would explain why the little genius was so static against the Dutch. Lovers of the game can only hope he feels restored to his best for Sunday’s final.

Germany is quite clearly the better team but a Messi-inspired Argentine victory will be better for our future. Football is not about logic and justice; it is, above all, about the players who make us gasp and blink in disbelief and reach for the remote to re-watch until we finally understand what we have just seen. A few moments of Messi breaking loose of the inevitable shackles would make up for the hours of watching perfectly decent midfielders grinding out endless possession minutes. However good he is, Germany’s captain and best player Philipp Lahm is after all just a right-back. (We celebrate Pelé, not right-back Carlos Alberto, even if he is the right-back who scored the goal of 1970!)

We should all rejoice that, 24 years on, we have the decider, the best of three, between these two great footballing nations who embodied two starkly different understandings of football in the 1986 and 1990 finals. As long as we don't have either a 7-1 or a 0-0 we could be in for a final to savour.