Short, slow and now old, how does Lionel Messi still dominate football?

Lionel Messi is 39 years old. He is 1.70 metres tall – shorter than almost every defender he plays against. He was never astoundingly quick, and he is slower now.

And yet, watching this World Cup, you would be hard pressed to name a player doing more damage: he has scored the equal most goals so far (six), alongside France’s Kylian Mbappé.

How can someone with so little of what we might call athleticism (relative to his peers, at least) still be the best player on the pitch?

Does athleticism really matter?

Maybe the puzzle is the wrong way round. Many are surprised by Messi only because we have been told a story about what makes an athlete great, and the story is mostly about the body: speed, height, strength, fitness.

Measured against that story, Messi looks like an exception.

But what if the story itself is the problem? What if soccer was never a contest of physical attributes?

Johan Cruyff, the great Dutch player, manager, commentator and soccer philosopher, saw this clearly half a century ago. He said: “What is speed? The sports press often confuses speed with insight. If I start running slightly earlier than someone else, I seem faster.”

It is a remark that sounds like a riddle, but a fast player...

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