Messi, Morocco and the wars of the world

SPORT is often miraculous, and Lionel Messi makes miracle-making commonplace. You must watch Messi’s moves in slow motion to fully comprehend the subtleties of his tricks.

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A small man, 5ft 7in tall and in his 36th year, fools a man towering over him, a 20-year-old hulking 6-footer, with bursts of speed, feints and dummies, with magical skill. The shorter man accelerates and then nearly stops, feints and swivels and turns around, controlling the ball at his feet with beautiful felicity. He drops his right shoulder, indicating his intent to go that way but, instead, spins left and rushes towards the backline, beating the big chaser and drawing the goalkeeper towards him. He then simply jabs the ball into the field to his teammate Julian Alvarez, who, with the goalkeeper out of the way, scores probably his easiest goal in international matches.

This magical moment, created by Messi against Croatia, encapsulates everything that’s amazing about the physical abilities and mental quickness of human beings on a football field. As homo sapiens, unencumbered by notions of nationality, creed, race or beliefs, we all can marvel at the short man as he displays animal speed and ingenuity to outplay the big adversary. But put labels denoting name and nationality on the players, and the sporting contest acquires deep historical, political, social, ethnic, nationalistic and even religious meanings.

The labels on the short man were, of course, ‘No. 10’, ‘Lionel Messi’ and ‘Argentina’; he outsmarted Croatia’s Josko Gvardiol, one of the best defenders in the tournament, in the semifinals. Messi toyed with Gvardiol as if a father with a child, turning and twisting him at will. This was one of the highlights of the knockout stages of the football World Cup, and a factor in Messi being named the Player of the Match.

On Sunday night, Messi will play his final match for one country, Argentina, but half the world — at least the football fanatics of the planet — would be rooting for him as one of their own. Messi is an Argentine of Italian descent, he represents a country that was a horrible dictatorship just decades ago, and where the ‘original people’ of the land have been reduced to just 2.38 per cent of the population; where efforts have been made to suppress its Black or indigenous heritage, using the term morocho (tan-coloured) to denote non-whites. Yet, despite his country’s history marked by conquest, bloodshed and suppression, Messi arouses universal love and admiration. He’s of the world and the world would be rooting for him tonight, just as the world rooted for a morocho, Diego Maradona, in the final 36 years ago. For a true fan of sport, race or colour of skin — black, white, tan — is irrelevant.

The name Morocco, despite a phonetic similarity with morocho, has no colour-related history, but the performances of its team in the World Cup made for a tantalising scenario —Coloniser Europe vs Colonised Coloureds. The Moroccan team was a revelation as it drew with Croatia, then defeated Belgium, Spain and Portugal before losing to France. It became the first African team to reach the semifinals. The joyous celebrations of its players with their hijabi mothers and pride in their religion tugged at the heartstrings of fans worldwide.

But there are stories within stories — the oppressed can be, and often is, the oppressor, too. Colonialism and imperialism are not an invention of the Europeans: The contest for resources — and thus, territory — is older than the homo sapiens, and even now it can be witnessed among our cousins such as chimpanzees — in the four-year Gombe Chimpanzee War in Tanzania in the 1970s, for instance.

When there were kingdoms, not modern nation-states, there were few or no pacifists. It’s just that the record of European imperialism/colonialism is very detailed and exact, the memory so very recent — South Africa was rid of the racist colonial policy of apartheid only in the 1990s, Zimbabwe was freed just four decades ago, Algeria shook off the French yoke less than 60 years ago. What Europeans did to the people of Africa or Asia or Australia or the Americas numbs the soul — in Congo, for instance, the chopped-off hands of the native blacks had become a sort of currency. Australia’s aboriginal people were often hunted like wild animals.

But there existed colonialism/imperialism and brutality before the Europeans — feared as the very devil in colonial Africa — struck out far and wide due to more effective methods based on modern science. The Mongols had overrun half the known world with force and barbarity; the Christian nations had been forged not with love but with brute force and arms, as were the Islamic empires.

The history of homo sapiens, who share 99 per cent of their genes with the chimps, is horrible and brutal — chimps are also horrible and brutal when they go to war. There needs to be a reconciliation among the people of the world, but for that to happen, a very objective reading of human history is necessary. For now, let’s just enjoy Messi taking on the Frenchmen, with the hope that the best man (Messi) would be part of the winning team.