"I felt like an ignoramus." That's Lionel Messi — 39 years old, eight World Cup goals in six games, and still haunted by never learning English.
The quote is from an old interview that resurfaced this week, and the timing is hard to ignore. Argentina face England in the semi-final at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Wednesday, July 15. If there's one opponent that makes a Spanish-speaking superstar's language regrets sting a little more, it's this one.
"I regret a lot of things, and today I say it to my children. To have a good education, to study, to be prepared. Not having learned English as a child. I've had time to study even English, and I didn't. And I regret it a lot, because then I saw situations where I had incredible personalities to talk to. I had a talk, and I felt like an ignoramus," Messi said.
Seventeen seasons at Barcelona, then Paris, then back to Argentina — and now Inter Miami. The language barrier was never a professional crisis, but it clearly left a mark on him personally. The man has won everything. This is the one thing he couldn't.
What he's doing on the pitch needs no translation
Eight goals in six matches. A hat-trick against Algeria in the opener. A brace against Australia that took him past Miroslav Klose as the World Cup's all-time leading scorer. A goal against Cape Verde that made him the first player to reach 20 in World Cup history. He's now at 21 — and counting.
He went scoreless in the quarter-final against Switzerland, a 3-1 win, which snapped a nine-game scoring run in the tournament. Argentina barely noticed. They're in the semis either way, and Messi's influence on a match rarely begins and ends with goals.
At 39, this is almost certainly his last World Cup. Argentina are 90 minutes from a consecutive final, chasing something no nation has done in the modern era — back-to-back titles. Those semi-final odds deserve a hard look, because this squad, with Messi in this form, is not a team you want to face needing a result.
England will have heard the quote too
The revival of the language regret story is a footnote, really — a humanising moment in what is shaping up as a genuinely historic campaign. But England will be thinking far less about Messi's linguistic regrets than about how to stop a forward who has scored in five of six games, at 39, on the biggest stage in football.
"I said, of course, I wasted my time. But it's true that football is a way of life. It teaches you a lot, it gives you a lot of value."
Twenty-one World Cup goals. One language he never learned. Some trades are easier to live with than others.
