Lionel Messi was on Monday crowned the Fifa World Player of the Year for 2009 at an awards ceremony in Zurich. It marks the end of an outstanding year for the Argentine who has stood head and shoulders above the competition. Rarely has there been a more deserving recipient.
Three weeks ago, The Good of The Game predicted that Messi would follow his European Ballon d'Or with the Fifa award, following Cristiano Ronaldo who achieved the same feat in 2008. He has duly delivered, no surprise considering the quality and consistency he has achieved this year.
Above all however, perhaps it is his sense of occasion that has marked him out as the truly great player of the past 12 months. Like Diego Maradona, his Argentinian predecessor who he has been so closely compared to, or the French magician Zinedine Zidane, Messi has shown that he can produce his very best football on the very biggest occasions - truly the sign of a great player. Messi's moment came in the 2009 Champions League final as he scored a remarkable headed goal to seal victory for Barcelona against Manchester United. It was as if he was born for that stage, and it seemed inevitable that he would influence the game in such a profound way.
Ed Smith sums up this characteristic of sporting greatness in his fascinating book What Sport Tells Us About Life, and I think it's particularly relevant to the example of the great Lionel Messi:
Scratch a brilliant sportsman deeply enough and you reach a layer of self-certainty in his own destiny. The greater the sportsman, usually the more convinced he is of his own predestined greatness. The big stage means it must be his stage, victory has been prearranged on his terms, it is his destiny to win the World Cup or the Olympics or the Ashes. It might be perfectly rational for a great player to believe he has a good chance of decisively influencing the big occasion. But that isn't what he thinks. He thinks it is inevitable.
For me this perfectly sums up the genius of Lionel Messi, and why he is perhaps the most worthy winner of this award since Ronaldinho in 2005. While others such as Ronaldo have stuttered on the biggest stage of all, seemingly losing faith in their ability, Messi never looks anything other than totally convinced of his right, perhaps even his obligation, to command the very biggest stage. That's why The Good of The Game loves Lionel Messi, it's why he has been the greatest player on the planet this year, and it's why he will prove very hard to beat again in 2010.
What Sport Tells Us About Life, by Ed Smith, is published by Penguin.
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