Football’s greatest player gets his fairytale ending

There were tears from Messi, the gravity of a dream so long held at last coming true finally hitting home, writes Ben Burrows

Lionel Messi emphatically delivered (EPA)

Football doesn’t always do fairytales. Just ask Harry Kane or Kevin De Bruyne or Cristiano Ronaldo or any of the star players who didn’t get the ending they wanted at the World Cup. But for the greatest of all, the story played out even sweeter than surely he could ever have planned.

In what he said would be his last match on the biggest stage in the sport, Lionel Messi emphatically delivered and finally, at the fifth and final time of asking, won the one trophy he wanted more than any other.

After 16 years of trying and failing, the player many believe to be the best to have ever played sat atop the world at last, the World Cup finally and mercifully in his hands for the first time. He thought he had won it much earlier, his whole country did.