What happened at this World Cup, and why Lionel Messi and Argentina suddenly started receiving hate, was simple.
Ronaldo and his fans didn’t expect a 39-year-old Lionel Messi to still turn up at this World Cup. They were genuinely shocked when Messi started scoring goals and providing assists in clutch moments to win games for Argentina. This made the world see the light about Lionel Messi. Messi was getting his deserved accolades, and even some Ronaldo fans started coming out to admit that Messi is the GOAT, even if Ronaldo is their personal GOAT.
During this period, the hate campaigns hadn’t started because, if they had, Ronaldo fans wouldn’t have been publicly declaring Messi as the GOAT. There were still a few “rigged” allegations here and there from the Argentina vs Algeria foul incident, but that was just normal fan match reaction. Nothing extreme. Even though Croatia had a clear goal controversially disallowed, we didn’t see the same reaction from viewers as you would expect if Portugal were Argentina.
Ronaldo scored two goals against Uzbekistan and said, “I’m back.” Those are the comments of someone who’s under pressure to prove a point, someone who’s trying to show that he’s still got it. This came after Messi had scored a hat-trick against Algeria and two goals against Austria, earning 9.3 and 9.6 ratings respectively. After two matches, Messi was already on five goals, while Ronaldo had a 6.3 rating against DR Congo and got the banter of his life. Meanwhile, Messi was being celebrated all over the world. Everyone was in awe of what he was doing at the age of 39. It was as if he was erasing the debate and putting a permanent end to it.
Bingo! That’s when the unexpected happened.
We started seeing American pages that had never talked about football before saying Argentina were rigging games, with zero context. The shocking part wasn’t even that these pages were posting it it was the magnitude at which they were receiving traction. You could tell there was a heavily sponsored campaign going on.
What did Messi do wrong?
He played football better than Ronaldo.
The moment Ronaldo got knocked out by Spain, it tripled. To the point that Messi, who always received praise after his masterclasses, no longer did. Instead, the hate propaganda overshadowed the beautiful football he played.
Messi may not have won his second World Cup, but he’ll retire knowing that, on the biggest stage, in their last World Cup, he was the one who proved why he’s the greatest, while the other guy went out disgracefully, proving why he isn’t.