Lionel Messi and the unmistakable feeling of an end

First he sank to the bottom and grimaced. The game continued for a couple of seconds, then there was a collective gasp.

Lionel Messi was down. And Lionel Messi isn’t a player who goes down for no reason.

Argentina's playmaker and talisman clutched his right ankle. He had fallen on his own and there was no obvious kick to cause the injury, and he knew his night was over.

He took off his right shoe and stood up fastidiously. The physiotherapists asked him how he was, but they should have known. He shuffled to the sideline, each step slightly stab within the Argentinian heart. Then the board went up: Nicolas Gonzalez is coming, Messi goes.

Messi walked slowly to the bench and threw his boot on the bottom. He sank into his seat and buried his face in his hands. Leandro Paredes, his teammate, ruffled his hair but said nothing. What could he say?

A second or two later, the camera turned back to Messi, zooming in on probably the most famous face of football. And even of humanity. And Messi, the arch-stoic, could not contain his emotions.

The crowd chanted his name. Messi sobbed.

The tears were for the moment – Argentina needed them, they all the time do – however it was inconceivable to separate them from the larger context. Wherever Messi steps on this prolonged profession outro, he’s all the time accompanied by the unmistakable sense of an end.

Messi is 37. Earlier this week he confirmed that this is able to be his last edition of the competition. The mood within the Argentine camp suggests that it might be his last major tournament, period. He can be 38 when the following World Cup begins within the United States, Mexico and Canada, and he can be 39 in the course of the tournament.

Those limitless summer days of watching Messi romp across the football pitches of our souls? They could now be numbered.

Retirement isn’t a sexy prospect for any athlete. Athletes die twice, they are saying. Messi's incredible longevity – and sustained peak performance – have been an efficient safeguard against talk of retirement, but nobody can run perpetually. At some point, every little thing you do is the last time. Everything carries a heavy finality.

Messi clearly seems to have an inkling of what awaits him on the opposite side of the afterlife. “I'm a little scared that it's all over,” he told ESPN Argentina earlier this 12 months. “I try not to think about it. I try to enjoy it. I'm doing that even more now because I know there's not much time left.”

Here, on this stuffy, charged night at Hard Rock Stadium, he actually didn't expect to be denied a part of the balance. Sitting there on the bench, an ice pack on his swollen ankle and a yellow vest over his blue and white jersey, it was tempting to wonder what was occurring in Messi's head.

Maybe he just became a fan in that moment. Maybe the thought of ​​the team playing without him – a picture he would should get used to within the many years to come back – twisted his already knotted insides into recent, uncomfortable shapes.

After the match, Argentine head coach Lionel Scaloni said that Messi didn’t need to retire, but his injury made another option redundant.

“Leo has something that everyone should have,” Scaloni said. “He's the best in history and even with an ankle like that, he doesn't want to let go.

“It's not because he's selfish, it's because he doesn't need to disappoint his teammates. He was born for the pitch.”

At the end, there was at least some relief. When Lautaro Martinez scored the decisive goal four minutes before midnight in Miami, it was telling that most of the players did not gather around the goalscorer. No, Argentina's players rallied around Messi, their shining example.

“When we talk about players who have marked the history of football, we try to prolong their careers when we have the end in sight,” his coach at Inter Miami, Tata Martino, said recently. “I believe that Leo and his family are preparing for the end. It is coming for everyone.”

For Messi, it's not quite that point yet. He'll proceed playing within the MLS when his injury heals, and possibly even play his part in helping Argentina qualify for the World Cup, but this was the last episode of Messi Does Tournaments and one other stop on the solution to the top. The real end. The day when this absurd, magical, hilarious little imp of a footballer fades into the past tense.

“I'm lucky that I can do something that I'm passionate about,” Messi said within the Apple documentary about his American adventure. “I know these are my last years and I know that when I don't have this anymore, I'm going to miss it a lot because no matter how many things I find to do, nothing will be like this.”

Perhaps no more big finals. No more nights like this one, hard and glorious for his country. And so he cried long before the celebrations. It was comprehensible.