What can one soccer player’s reputation as a god teach us about what we mean when we speak about God?

By Andrés Caro

Lionel Messi is not God. His compatriot, the Pope, has said so. And yet, people keep referring to the Argentinian soccer star as if he were divine. 

This holy reference may be a metaphor, and if we take that metaphor seriously, at least for a while, perhaps we can learn something about what we mean when we speak about God.

The Game and the game

What do we name with the word “God”? 

According to Biblical tradition, the attributes of God are omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and creativity. This means that God knows everything, can do anything, is everywhere, and is the creator of everything.

The human condition, on the other hand, is characterized by contingency and limited possibilities. We don’t have unlimited powers, and our existence depends on the existence of others who nurture us, teach us, play with us, love us or hate us. These others have immense–almost God-like–power over us in that they can give us life, name us, give us meaning and purpose, or even kill us. God is not subject to these existential contingencies. 

In fact, God is the architect of the human condition. In the Bible, He creates a couple of humans who need and yet suffer because of one another. According to Genesis, incensed that the Babylonians sought to build a mighty city and a tower “with its top in the heavens,”God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. Thus creating the divisive contingencies of language and community, as Richard Rorty explains in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. 

With the help of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, we can see that God is fundamentally a game-maker. He creates space, time, and rules that allow an array of unspecified yet limited behaviors. He instructs and punishes, and, significantly, He creates the possibilities for communication. 

That Game, with a capital G, is the World, and several smaller games happen within it. Sports like cricket or soccer are examples of those games within the Game (see: Hart, The Concept of Law). Players in these games do not create the rules, but rather contribute to constructing its meanings through their interaction with one another.

Looking Around, Walking Around

In an eloquent  New Yorker article, Jody Rosen argues that “the most transfixing spectacle in sport” is beholding “a small man walking back and forth.” He is referring, of course, to soccer player Lionel Messi. The “grand capitán” of the Argentinian team is short, and he is 35 years old (the average age of the last World Cup player was about 26). 

Some years ago, Messi would sprint so fast that he would breeze by the second-fastest player on the field even while dribbling a ball. He was nicknamed “la pulga,” or the flea, because he was small and swift, playing with the ball close to his feet and the grass in a style similar to Maradona's. 

In recent years, Messi has spent most of his time on the field walking, rather than running, and watching. Rosen observes that he has become both the ultimate soccer player and the ultimate soccer observer. From this perspective, Messi is at once a participant and a spectator. 

He keeps calm and looks around–almost as if sipping a mate, the popular South American tea-like hot drink–as he waits for the decisive moment to act. And then, at crucial moments, Messi intervenes and turns “analysis into action.”  

In this way, Messi behaves like a god: spectator and participant, he waits until the moment is appropriate and then appears in order to change the specific flow of history of the lower-cased game in which he acts. For example, he completely turned around his team’s match against Mexico in the group stage of the 2022 World Cup tournament. 

Creating Space 

Messi is celebrated for both his goal scoring and his assists. He has scored 764 goals in his career and has the record for most assists in soccer history. During games, he consistently shares the ball with his teammates. Messi’s generosity on the field could be due to his famously unassuming personality, or his understanding of soccer as a team sport (he has, after all, been part of two of the greatest teams in history: Guardiola in Barcelona, and Scaloni in Argentina). But his achievement may also be ascribed to his talent as a great spectator of the game. 

In a small g game, with restricted space (limited both by strict lines, offside rules, and the kicking of rivals), Messi has acquired the capacity of amplitude: of creating space for himself (this was especially clear during his time in Barcelona) and for his teammates (as is clear from his current tenure in Argentina). 

Theodicy and the Revelation of Order

There are moments in history in which evil, disorder, and chaos raise doubts about the existence of a perfect creator, and questions about how and why such a perfect being could allow injustice, inequity, and violence to occur in the world. 

There are other moments in which justice and harmony are manifest –when we are loved by the same person we love, when we see happiness in the face of a suffering person, when we discover a poem, song, or being that becomes necessary for our existence. These instances seem ordained, like an answer to a supernatural call for balance.

We witnessed such a supernal event last December when the best player in soccer's history finally won that game’s most important trophy after five attempts.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the celebrated Brazilian soccer player better known as Pelé once said that the prize of the World Cup is not happiness but relief. With Messi’s triumph, there was a sense of relief for many, but also a revelation of a sort of invisible order and justice.

Conclusion

Of course, there are problems with comparing a human being with a god, and with seeing in human feats a revelation of divine agency, especially in a World Cup stadium built by thousands of enslaved workers, 6.500 of whom died during its construction.

However, I had a sort of epiphany when Messi won the cup. Even though I do not believe in God, I was rewarded with a profound revelation of order and justice. Lionel Messi, unlike God, did not create the rules of the game he plays. However, he has extended the limits of what is possible to achieve. 

And, ultimately, we spectators are left overwhelmed and grateful. 

Andrés Caro

Andrés Caro is a JSD candidate at Yale Law School, where he works with Anthony Kronman. He holds an M.A. at the University of Chicago, where he studied with Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr. In Colombia, his home country, he writes for La Silla Vacía and La República. He is the founding director of the Fundación para el Estado de Derecho.