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Gigatons of pressure crashed down on Lionel Messi and, on a harrowing night in June 2016, sent the world's most galactic athlete tumbling to Earth. Nerves and stress had hounded him throughout a fractious Copa América final. They , then broke him as Chileans celebrated and Argentine vitriol flew.

His . His face twisted in pain. Guilt gripped him, tears dripped, and a vicious cycle accelerated anew.



This, for over a decade, was the Messi-Argentina story. It was the devastating pattern that bound him to his country, and destroyed their all-consuming dream. Argentines would curse him and question him: Messi, in turn, would suffer.

He would , then , then , then crumble some more. He flopped in 2010. He failed in 2011.

He “was destroyed,” as teammate Angel Di Maria said, after falling short at the 2014 World Cup. At the 2016 Copa América, . A shattered his psyche.

“It’s over,” he told reporters late that night in New Jersey. “The national team has ended for me.” He ultimately returned for the 2018 World Cup.

But there, on the biggest stage of all, he wilted again. There, every four years, he’d bear an unbearable burden. There, with billions expectant, he’d tell this same sad story to the entire globe.

Each World Cup became a new chapter; put together, an anguished narrative flowed — until a different tournament changed it forever. It was Copa América — the quadrennial South American championship, the 48th edition of which begins next week here in the Un.

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