— Raul A.
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, December 1, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — “Who do you think will win the next football World Cup?” asked one of my colleagues. I never took him for a football fan. At least not like the ones you see every day. Today’s fans argue under every post on Messi, Cristiano & Neymar about which one is the greatest player of our time. Some even go so far as to etch their fandom on themselves with tattoos of their most beloved players.
But it would be wrong of me to assume that my colleague, a 42-year-old former sports player himself, would not be interested in an event as grand as the FIFA World Cup. Come to think it may have been my love for football that got me hired in the first place. I remember him asking who my favorite player was & why during my interview. And I also remember seeing a kind acceptance on his face as I described why I thought a 34-year-old Lionel Messi was already one of the greatest to set foot on a football field, just days before he ended Argentina’s 28-year drought for a major trophy by winning the Copa America final in 2021.
“It will be France’s two-peat. They have got Mbappe & Griezmann. Don’t think any other team can compete with that” said another colleague. In fact, he was right. France has one of the best teams on paper, they are looking like the team to beat. But as history would have it, good on paper doesn’t necessarily result in winners, as some days simply belong to the underdogs.
“I don’t care about stats. On his day, Messi can beat any team” I exclaimed hoping to find a supporter for my cause. “I too think this is Messi’s year. Argentina finally has a good team behind him. But you can never rule out Cristiano Ronaldo” I heard from the corner of the room. To my surprise, the person who came to my aid was my boss & CEO of GLOBODOX document management system, Mr Shiraz Ahmed.
“While you are at it, why don’t you guys find the document management requirements of sports marketing companies. I am sure they too have to deal with a lot of paperwork”. This got me thinking, as a DMS provider we never thought of approaching sports marketing companies for our product and neither did they contact us. As most sports marketing companies might not even know much about the kind of services we provide & how those services would make their lives easier. “Good idea. I will look into it immediately” I said with slight enthusiasm. But my mind was still preoccupied with the initial question “Who will win the next football world cup?”.
I desperately wanted it to be Argentina & Messi. Messi’s story was special, somewhat like a fairytale. A short-statured boy, who most people thought didn’t have what it took to play football, was picked up by Argentina’s local Rosario football club at just age six. Even though Messi belonged to a football-loving family, his height & young age blocked his footballing aspirations. But his grandmother always thought he was special. At one of Messi’s first games, his grandmother goaded him with the words “Lionel… One day you will be the best player in the world”. Those words had a huge impact on the young six-year-old, who would go on to score more than 500 goals for his club. To this day, Messi celebrates a goal with a kind gesture towards the heavens as a sign of love & affection for his grandmother who died when he was only eleven.
Messi’s greatness was spotted by one of the best footballing academies in the world, FC Barcelona, and the rest as they say is history. With records like the most Ballon d’Or wins (6), the youngest to win the Ballon d’Or three times, the only player to win the Ballon d’Or four times in a row, the player with the most hat-tricks in LaLiga history, the first player to score five goals in a Champions League game, LaLiga’s top scorer of all time, Barcelona’s top scorer of all time – the now 35-year-old who will likely be playing in his last World Cup tournament, is the epitome of hard work & success. But if there is one player that is & always has been equally determined to not let the Argentinian get away with all the glory, it is Cristiano Ronaldo.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s influence on Portuguese football has been immense, to say the least. Before Cristiano’s first national appearance, Portugal had qualified for a mere six major tournaments. Since his international debut in 2004, Cristiano has helped Portugal qualify for 10 more major tournaments, including five World Cups & five European Championships, while scoring 117 goals in 189 international appearances. At 37 years old, Cristiano already holds some of the most outrageous records in football history. Cristiano has the most Champions League title wins (4 with Real Madrid & 1 with Manchester United), most goals in Champions League history (128), the fastest to 150 LaLiga goals (140 appearances), and is the only player to score 60+ goals in four successive years in football history (2011-2014).
Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other brilliant players that will probably get their last shot at the highest prize in football during the next World Cup, including Luka Modric (Croatia), Sergio Busquets (Spain), Thiago Silva (Brazil), Robert Lewandowski (Poland), Manuel Neuer (Germany), Eden Hazard (Belgium) and Luis Suarez & Edison Cavani (Uruguay). And as someone who has seen these incredibly talented players play since I could barely even understand the offside rule, it has truly been an honor & a privilege. All these players are equally deserving, if not more, of lifting the World Cup trophy, but if you ask me, I would want the last thing I hear on December 18th to be “It’s not a dream folks! He has done it. Messi has done it. Messi has a World Cup ”.
Harold Anthony
ITAZ Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
+1 650-646-2551
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