Jorge Messi wanted his country to fall in love with his son. That ambition was fulfilled during a brilliant international career that ended this week

“What Argentina is doing in this World Cup is of a sacred order,” Brazilian writer Milly Lacombe posted at the height of the tide of anti-Argentinian sentiment during this year’s tournament. She was exploring the contradiction she felt around her support of Lionel Messi: “a player who is a God and a man who shakes Trump’s hand”.

Lacombe highlighted the importance of acknowledging the complexities around Messi and the Argentinian team. How is it possible that Messi was not speaking out against the racist incidents we all saw around the Argentina team, she asked. “That’s why it hurts so much to see someone with Messi’s power choosing to make himself small,” she wrote.

The 2022 World Cup champion was given a raucous sendoff with plenty of pomp and circumstance. Read Pablo Iglesias Maurer’s minute-by-minute report.

Guardian reader Paul reached out via email and is apparently deep in the comments section of a 20-year-old Messi article we published here at the Guardian. I can only hope Guardian reader “snafuclarke” has fully recovered from such a scorchingly terrible take:

don’t kid yourselves. messi is currently hugely overrated. the amount of hype this lad gets has never matched his performances on the pitch the last game aside.