Messi’s lack of World Cup success has not diminished his stature in the game as one of football’s greatest. And so what if Lionel Messi has not won the chance to qualify for the World Cup this year. This does not mean that the star player cannot have a place amongst the pantheon of football’s greats.

Pele, one of football’s greatest as well, has won three World Cups and Maradonna, another greatest player of all times has won the World Cup once. This does not go to say that Pele is a better player than Maradonna. And none of the Argentinians would either agree with this statement. And so would many others. Both of them are professionals in their fields and have quite a great track record to add to their names. Let’s leave that at that, for now.

The last time Argentina had won the World Cup was in the year 1994 under Maradonna’s performance. Messi was then anointed as Maradonna’s successor and had expected to win the World Cup and claim his place in the football’s Hall of Fame.

But that has not yet happened to date. Four World Cups later, the dream still remains as just that. He had come very close in the year 2014 to winning the world cup, only to have the dream stolen by the Germans in the final. Which is the reason why all the hopes and aspirations were pinned in at 2018. But this time the aging Argentinian was exposed brutally by very talented young Frenchmen.

Messi is not the only hardworking talented soul in the football world who has missed out on the World Cup glory. There have been other many greats who have lost out on this precious moment before. Alfred Di Stefano George Best are of the other legendary football players who were worshipped by their fans during their peaks in their careers, never got a chance to even qualify in the finals.

So a World Cup win is never a true measure of greatness. All maestros in the football kingdom need not be World Cup winners, and conversely, all World Cup winners are also not geniuses. Here is a quick check on some of the soccer magicians who have missed out on the World Cup to name a few are Ferenc Puskas, Eusebio Zico, Socrates, Michel Platini, Stanley Matthews, Lev Yashin.

Football is a game where the team effort is respected more than single individual’s, all though everyone gets their fair share of credit for having put the work in. This goes to say that the team is a greater player than a single individual within the team. However, there are other performance-related reasons as to why the world selectively hand-picked such talent and glorified them. Messi is one of those talents.