Messi missing signature World Cup moment

The World Cup can only hope that Lionel Messi is leaving his best for last.
In the most important World Cup match to date in his epoch-shaping career, football's superstar was neither super nor a star.
The four-time world player of the year was a bystander, not a decisive protagonist, for large chunks of Wednesday's semifinal, his first on football's biggest stage.
The match dragged on into extra time and then still finished 0-0 in large part because Messi failed to leave his mark on it as he has done on hundreds of others for Barcelona, his club, but not for Argentina, his country that needs him now to step up.

Frankly disappointing. In the penalty shoot-out, Messi did score the all-important nerve-steadying first goal that his teammates then built on, heaping intolerable pressure on the Netherlands after its first shooter, Ron Vlaar, saw his effort saved.
But Messi's contribution to Argentina's win pretty much started and stopped there. His thousands of fans in the Sao Paulo crowd chanted "Ole, ole, ole, Messi, Messi!" But he didn't really do anything to deserve it.

Bottom line: Messi needs to be spectacular in the final against Germany on Sunday if he is to put his stamp on World Cup history like Diego Maradona.

Pub debates about who was/is a better footballer, Messi, Maradona or Pele, are always entertaining but ultimately can't be answered, because these judgments are very much a personal thing, because the three of them played in different eras and because their careers took different arcs.
Still, at this stage of the 1986 World Cup, Maradona was pretty much winning the thing single-handed. Captain of Argentina, just like Messi, Maradona scored both goals against Belgium in the semifinal, carrying the team to the final where it beat West Germany, 3-2.
Maradona also scored both Argentine goals that eliminated England in the quarterfinals. The first was the infamous "Hand of God" punched in with his raised fist; the second was a gem after a sublime dribble past five England players.

Messi, on the other hand, hasn't scored since the group stage here in Brazil. He scored in Argentina's win against Bosnia in its opening match and made a splash with a fabulous injury-time winner against Iran. He also got Argentina's first two goals in a 3-2 victory against Nigeria.