SPECIAL REPORT: Argentina fans are convinced Lionel Messi is destined to bring the World Cup home

It started spontaneously, in a place in the desert called Al Janoub, where many of the 40,000 Argentines from the army here retire when they have painted another stadium blue and white and have seen their team win.

In the early days of the tournament, an Argentine musician named Mati Teclas was playing Colombian cumbia on a keyboard at the venue he and his friends are renting.

So many of his compatriots were drawn to it, gathering in and out of his basic ground-floor room, that he decided to take his music to the streets.

Since then it has become a nocturnal ritual: Teclas, 35, his keyboard and thousands of fans, singing the lyrics of the song Muchachos, now we are excited again (Guys, now we are excited again) in a party that continues for hours under a jet black Doha sky.

Al Janoub is the main Argentine enclave in this World Cup: perhaps the place to better understand why some 40,000 people from that nation, comfortably more than any other, have traveled here.

“This is our identity,” says Valentina, who is 25 years old and lives in Al Janoub with her brothers. ‘The team represents us and we represent them. Soccer is what makes our country proud and we are always there at the World Cup. We always follow them where they go.

His cousin, Agustina, wants to talk about Lionel Messi during a momentary pause in the singing, which ends when Vamos Argentina, another of the anthems, plays. “He holds a torch for us, as difficult as other things may be,” she says.

She is talking about the fact that Argentina is on the brink of economic collapse again. In home supermarkets, prices go up every month and inflation this year is headed for 100 percent. Triple-digit inflation is nothing new in Buenos Aires and neither is the current fear that supermarkets will be looted again.

“It’s expensive to be here,” says Carlos, who is in his 30s. “But to see Messi lift the trophy and say we made this trip… we will tell our children and grandchildren.”

This ingrained Argentine conviction that he is coming home will ring all too familiar to generations of English players who have carried a heavy weight of expectation into World Cups.

“We are one of those Sigmund Freud countries, like you are in England,” distinguished soccer columnist for La Nación, Ezequiel Fernández Moores, tells Sportsmail. Now it is a psychological affliction.

This complex does not seem to extend to the insecurity that Brazil is seen as a land of purer football, samba, which has won five World Cups compared to Argentina’s two. They will tell you that they have won six more Copa América titles than Brazil and enjoyed more success in the South American equivalent of the Champions League, the Copa Libertadores.

There is always rivalry between us. Always’, says Argentine journalist Fernando Czyz. But it’s not just about the World Cup. We beat them in the Copa América final at the Maracana last year. That’s why Brazil was desperate to play us here, but they went home.’

Still, even the image of Messi taking center stage this past month hasn’t obscured brief glimpses of the monumental pressure Lionel Scaloni’s players, who haven’t won the World Cup since 1986, are under. Argentina froze against Saudi Arabia and allowed the Netherlands. back, during that panic finale of the quarterfinals, a week ago.

The national team has been with this national ballast for 80 years, since President Juan Perón appropriated it as part of his personal mystique. Messi will not need to be reminded of the reaction in Buenos Aires when the team failed in the last World Cup. Broken (‘Broken’) and soulless (‘Sin alma’) were among the headlines.

It doesn’t help that many of the players won’t be seen playing at home again outside of Argentina games. ‘When the national team plays, we feel like a First World country,’ says Fernández Moores. Then they go off to play for their clubs and leave us alone. We need them, but when they leave, we feel that they are traitors.

But as anyone at Al Janoub will tell you, the symmetries are in their favor this time.

In Russia four years ago, they lost 3-0 to Croatia, a score they neatly reversed against that opposition in Tuesday’s semi-final. They were knocked out with a 4-3 loss to France in the round of 16, although the average age difference in that game was Argentina 30, France 25.

Back then, the challenge of playing with Messi had become stifling for some on the Argentine side, who were so focused on looking for him that they couldn’t find their own way in games. The striker Paulo Dybala even admitted it.

This time, Messi leads a team of younger players, working in sync with him to get the best out of him. At Al Janoub, many fans insist that he will be on the same pedestal as Diego Maradona, the last man to bring him home, if Argentina triumph.

But there is division on this point. For many older Argentines, Maradona will always be the god of soccer because of the charisma and rebellious spirit that allied himself with his soccer genius. “I am the voice of those who have no voice,” Maradona once said. The journalist Carlos Ares described him as “the Perón of the 90s, a postmodern leader.”

But it’s Maradona’s soccer that they loved most: the way he led an average team to glory in the 1986 final, against West Germany at Mexico’s Estadio Azteca.

At another gathering place for Argentine fans, beachfront at Al Wakrah, Juan Carlos Assan, in his 50s and here with three friends, says Maradona’s class of ’86 was better than Messi’s of 2022.

“In all the years we’ve been watching, we’ve only seen one better Argentina team than this: 1986,” he says. Hopefully, let’s dream, that Messi raises the cup. Then we can say: “Thank you very much for your dedication and professionalism”. But for most Argentine fans, Messi will never be placed on the same pedestal as Diego Maradona, even if he lifts the trophy on Sunday.”

Juan Carlos makes a gesture to point out the point. ‘Messi here’, he says, putting his hand to his chest, ‘Maradona here’, raising his hand above his head.

This is another conversation carried away between versions of Muchachos, whose lyrics reveal the deep nationalist sentiment that has led this enormous army of supporters to this point.

One line in the song reads: ‘I was born in Argentina, land of Diego and Lionel, of the children of the Falkland Islands, whom I will never forget.’ Messi and company were filmed dancing around the dressing room and singing after their group stage win over Mexico.

The anthem is a reworking of a 2003 song that was originally titled Muchachos, esta noche me emborracho (‘Boys, I’ll get drunk tonight’), which was about heartbreak. The nation feels that this time will be different.

“It’s been the Argentine way, over the years, that a lot of people, often 30,000 or 40,000 of them, come,” says Czyz. “But this has been a special World Cup because it has been very difficult for the people. A long trip, very, very expensive, and it’s a very difficult time back home. Winning it this time would be very special.

Such is the weight of expectation that Messi and company will bring to Lusail Stadium on Sunday. It is not a task for the faint-hearted.