Does it all depend on a game now?

That's how it seems to be in times of absolute escalation at this World Cup: After more than 1000 professional games that Lionel Messi has played and after five World Cup tournaments that are behind him on Sunday, his last game should now decide who he is.

And what image of him remains.

This is what is being said and written around the world ahead of the final against France.

Michael Horini

Football correspondent Europe in Berlin.

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Before the final in Qatar, the home of his financiers, who always think and act in superlatives anyway, there are also questions about Messi, the answers to which can hardly be improved: Are we dealing with the "Greatest of All Time", the Greatest of the great - greater even than Maradona, the twentieth-century Shakespearean character, in full life and miserable death?

The better question would be: Why is this important?

As an icon of his time, Messi will be extensively honored at this World Cup.

Ronaldo is far away, Neymar even further.

If Messi does not make it into this immortality this Sunday (4:00 p.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the soccer World Cup, on ARD and on MagentaTV), but in the golden stadium of Lusail, a Circus Maximus of the 21st century, then invincible youth named Kylian Mbappé triumphs, who has long been kept in a good mood by the sources of Al Thanis, would only climb another peak in the sign of megalomania: two world championship titles at the age of 23 - Mbappé is then the new Pelé.

The greatest of his time, and of those to come.

It is only thought in dimensions

When you look at how the global entertainment industries work, whether they are based in Qatar or Hollywood, one thing is striking these days: the production of stories and characters like those from Outer Space - the showdowns of the Godzillas, Kongs and their avatars - have an unprecedented level dimensions reached.

It is only thought in dimensions, even with Messi, Mbappé or Neymar, in those that are getting bigger.

Football in Qatar is creating exactly what is desired around the world: material for a triumphalism taken to the extreme, behind which the individual person threatens to disappear, both his vulnerable sides and his primitive ones.

All of this is undoubtedly ideally suited as a projection surface for your own dreams, no matter where they are dreamed on the same end devices in the world.

Or, turned to the national, to imagine the size of one's own country, in this case Argentina, which is once again badly hit economically.

Under the flood of images produced at this World Cup, who would claim that they now know Messi, at least got to know him better?

That a corner of his personality had been discovered, his ambivalences?

And not just moments that can be loosely strung together like video sequences that you can download just as quickly in Buenos Aires and Berlin as in Doha or Delhi.