🐐—Second-most goals in history (21)
🐐—Most wins in history (23)
🐐—Longest scoring streak (9)
🐐—Oldest hat trick scorer (38)
🐐—Joint-most tournament appearances (6)
🐐—Argentina’s top scorer at World Cup
🐐—Most goals from outside the area (7)
🐐—Most World Cup appearances (34)
🐐—Most appearances as captain (27)
🐐—Most assists in knockout phase (10)
🐐—Only man to score in group stage, Ro16, quarterfinals, semifinals and final (2022)
🐐—World Cup winner 🏆
Lionel Messi says farewell to the 2026 World Cup ��
Football, just like life would mostly favour the protagonists.
The antagonists would get their moments here and there but in the long run, the protagonists reaps his benefits.
Watch Spain at 1-0 last night. That’s courage. That’s bravery. And then watch England at 1-0. What’s the difference?
We are a better team than Argentina, I’ve no doubt in my mind. But we deserved to get beat in the end. In fact, it could have been 4-1.
Bringing on 3 defenders at 1-0 up. What message does that send? I wrote it in my Daily Mail column after the Mexico game. Until we understand that courage and bravery is controlling possession under pressure and not booting / heading it up the field 40 yards then this will always be the end result.
There's a physicist at Stanford named Safi Bahcall who modeled this exact principle and the math is wild.
He calls it "phase transitions in human networks." When you're stationary, your probability of a lucky event is limited to your existing surface area: the people you already know, the places you already go, the ideas you've already been exposed to. Your opportunity window is fixed.
When you move, your collision rate with new nodes in a network increases nonlinearly. Double your movement (new conversations, new cities, new projects) and your probability of a serendipitous encounter doesn't double. It roughly quadruples. Because each new node connects you to their entire network, not just to them.
Richard Wiseman ran a 10-year study at the University of Hertfordshire tracking self-described "lucky" and "unlucky" people. The single biggest differentiator wasn't IQ, education, or family money. Lucky people scored significantly higher on one trait: openness to experience. They talked to strangers more, varied their routines more, and said yes to invitations at nearly twice the rate.
The "unlucky" group followed the same routes, ate at the same restaurants, and talked to the same 5 people. Their networks were closed loops. No new inputs, no new collisions.
Luck isn't random. Luck is surface area. And surface area is a function of movement.
The lobster emoji is doing more work than most people realize. Lobsters grow by shedding their shell when it gets too tight. The growth requires a period of total vulnerability. No protection, no armor, soft body exposed to the ocean.
That's the cost of movement nobody posts about. You have to be uncomfortable first. The new shell only hardens after you've already moved.
This Dembélé Ballon d’Or is an inspiration for many. He left Barcelona as a winger who often lacked elite level decision-making & consistent application. Yamal effectively took his place at Barca & Dembouz looked like one of football’s lost talents.
And then a position change to play false 9. He fills the void left by the great Mbappé and he learns elite decision-making in central areas (when to pass, when to dribble & when to shoot), his pressing becomes intense and he uses his dribbling & ball-striking talent to become a Champions League knockout match-winner and end PSG’s long CL wait.
Never give up.
I think about it a lot. I don't know if anyone else does.
The number of different possible outcomes my life could have been, if I was born somewhere else or to a different parent. Better and worse.
Maybe I could have been the world's greatest badminton player.