Mates, mate and freedom - how Argentina got the best out of Messi

There was a moment, after Argentina came back from 2-0 down to reach the World Cup quarter-finals, when Lionel Messi simply could not stop crying.

There was a touch of celebration but also something more raw than that. He had already cried once this tournament, after he heard of a complication with his father's health following the opening match.

This time, his tears came from relief. Not from escaping defeat against Egypt, but relief he hadn't let his team-mates down after missing a penalty that, for a while, threatened to end Argentina's tournament.

For Messi right now, the emotions arrive tangled together: relief, pressure, family, the crowd, team-mates who love him and want - more than anything - to see him win again. This may be his last World Cup. Then again, who knows.

But somewhere in the middle of all that rollercoaster there is also enormous happiness for a man who has finally found the perfect context, a football team built to his measure. All for one and one for all.

Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni put it best before the Switzerland quarter-final.

"The best moments of all, by far, are celebrations of the group. I coach for this, not because I like a 4-3-3," he said.

"I like drinking mate [a South American tea] with my friends and players, sharing a barbecue, playing truco [a card game], as we have always done."

It could have been Messi speaking. He is stretching his career out for more of these moments. In doing so he has become, again, something close to the young man who left Rosario - deeply Argentine, surrounded by mates and mate, having rediscovered under Scaloni the pleasure of competing alongside people who think like him.

Make no mistake this Argentina squad is built around Messi. It's built to give the 39-year-old the best chance of winning a second successive World Cup.

Rodrigo de Paul has become, in this Argentina squad, what Jose Manuel Pinto once was at Barcelona, or Luis Suarez later became: the team-mate with whom Messi instantly feels at home.

Their bond was forged on international duty. Until then, the midfielder's only connection to Messi had been asking for a photo after a Valencia–Barcelona match, which he proudly posted on social media.

One afternoon, he noticed Messi leave training alone, looking subdued. Concerned, De Paul waited about 40 minutes before knocking on his door.

"Fancy a mate and a game of truco?"

A friendship began, with its own strict etiquette. Mate, the drink, together every morning in De Paul's room. In order of arrival, Leo first, then other members of the squad. If they got up too early, they have to wait for the moment to get to De Paul's room, nobody can jump the routine.

De Paul sometimes calls Messi 'El Pequeno' (the little one), even though he is the oldest in the room.

He needles him, treats him like a normal guy rather than a monument, because that is what Messi actually more often than not wants: to be Leo, not Messi. De Paul knows him well enough to sense when to leave him alone, too.

Walking out to the pitch, Messi leads, De Paul at his side, the rest of the squad fanning out behind almost in a wedge - like a street gang protecting its leader.

For many of this group Messi was never simply a team-mate first, he was the childhood idol on television, the reason some of them picked up a ball at all.

The whole squad wears the same boots, the Adidas Adistar Messi. For his birthday in June, the players wore a T-shirt printed with a photo of themselves alongside Leo from some point across his years with the national team.

Scaloni has built the context to get the best from Messi - patient, collective football - and the Inter Miami forward has done his part, with months of double sessions with De Paul and obsessive attention to nutrition.

His top speed, a nutritionist close to his camp says, is now about 5% higher than in Qatar. He walks for 47% of a match, and he has only covered 631 metres at maximum speed across the tournament.

He is also the best goalscorer of the World Cup. Only two players in history have 10 or more direct goal involvements across two different World Cups - Messi, with 10 in 2022 and 10 again now, and Mbappe, with 10 and then 11.

The titles clearly back the approach up. Argentina have won their past three semi-finals and lifted four trophies in this cycle - two Copa Americas, a World Cup and a Finalissima.

Ask Messi about Scaloni the team-mate and the answer is warm. He was a character, Messi says, much more serious now, but back then always winding people up, always close to the younger ones.

"I still tease him, he used to kick lumps out of me in training at the 2006 World Cup. It's not true, he tells me. But I remember," said Messi.

When appointed in 2018 Scaloni inherited a squad with a group of exhausted stars forming Argentina's inner circle, under permanent scrutiny and unable to perform at the highest level.

He took the job on an interim basis when nobody else wanted it, started leaving big names out and called up others nobody rated at the time.

He brought harmony off the pitch and logic on it: look after Messi. Messi doesn't search for solutions in a congested game, he finds them, the product of an extraordinary ability to read the play and spot exactly where an opponent is weak.

So Scaloni lets him choose. He moved to the right-hand side of the attack against Egypt. After 38 minutes versus Switzerland, he moved central. And the team adapts.

"No, we did not tell him to do it," Scaloni said. "But the team needs to respond to his decision." That basically means De Paul using the space freed by Messi.

In Argentina, football has been the most important of the least important things.

Underneath it all runs the Diego Maradona-Messi thread. For generations, Argentines have grown up believing their country was destined for more than history delivered - rich in talent, held back repeatedly by instability.

When a Maradona, and later a Messi, reaches the summit of the game, it stops being purely personal. It becomes proof the country still belongs among the very best. Perhaps that is why they are loved with something bordering on the religious.

So after every win, led by De Paul, the squad sings "La Cuarta Estrella" - this World Cup's anthem, dedicated to Messi and settling an old score for Maradona.

"We won the third one with Lionel, we want to be champions again, and 32 years on, La Scaloneta will avenge the cup stolen from the number 10 [a reference to 1990].

"I want to see the fourth star shine on the shirt. Argentine from cradle to grave, for the Falklands, for Diego, for Leo's last outing. Argentina, I want to see you become champions again."

Never before has a player already regarded as a legend been celebrated with a song by his own team-mates while still playing alongside them. But with Messi, we are constantly walking new ground.

Leandro Paredes captured it perfectly. When they saw Messi in tears, they embraced him. Not just to comfort him, but to remind him they were there for him. And that they would leave everything on the pitch to make sure his last game never comes.