How Messi and Ronaldo can still define World Cup 2026 despite their waning powers

On 11 July in Kansas City, there’s a fixture that many at the top of Fifa are already giddy about. Barron Trump is even said to have noted it.

Right now it’s just the quarter-final between the winners of matches 95 and 96, but it could well become the first World Cup meeting between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Should Argentina and Portugal both win their groups and proceed, that is where Messi and Ronaldo would come together, six tournaments on from their 2006 World Cup debuts and a collective 48 appearances so far, with more history to be made to stand among the immortals. The first meeting will also be the last, if this is indeed to be the final World Cup for both players.

It would inevitably be billed as the grand showdown, the game to end all games, the result to finish all debates.

Except, for all that Fifa and so many other entities would salivate over its commercial possibilities, such a prospect has just as much potential to show why both should have finished before this. If they even get that far.

In any case, it’s hard not to feel that any “debate” was concluded with Messi’s victory in 2022. Argentina’s Qatar campaign had a lightning-in-a-bottle element, a unique emotional momentum driven by this huge will for Messi to finally win the World Cup.

There’s not much sense the Portuguese squad feel as deeply about Ronaldo, with that impression sharpened by the longer debate – now stretching back at least six years – over whether he is holding them back. Is it even possible for veterans playing in the MLS and the Saudi Pro League to have anything close to the impact that the 35-year-old Messi did in 2022?

It would feel much more late Floyd Mayweather Jr v Manny Pacquiao than Muhammad Ali v Joe Frazier III.

There would even be a symbolism for this World Cup and the game’s current direction if a fixture were to happen with such intense focus on two players, given their contribution might be relatively immaterial to the actual lifting of the World Cup.

Fame over actual football.

That very fame has nevertheless been huge in popularising the sport in the US, given the cultural attraction to two individuals who may well be the best-known people on the planet.

Or is that entirely uncharitable given how creditable their very presence in the tournament at this age is, let alone in a game that could decide a semi-final place?

Both are busting through the records of Lothar Matthaus and Rafael Marquez to make it to their sixth World Cups.

Such unprecedented longevity is just another way they’ve changed the world.

Despite a certain mirth at how casually Messi can now move in MLS, even a worker like David Beckham was “blown away” by the Argentine’s ultra-professionalism at Inter Miami. He is obsessed with “every detail”. These have long been qualities more associated with Ronaldo, which perhaps shows how both have influenced each other as much as the wider game.

And if their participation in weaker leagues on different sides of the world has dimmed the competitive fire of their rivalry, it will surely blaze again if this quarter-final even looks possible.

The flame has spread elsewhere. Messi and Ronaldo are just the two most famous examples from a number of big names defying football’s age norms. With Luka Modric and Manuel Neuer both due to line up at the age of 40, Roger Milla lighting up Italia 90 at 38 now feels like the achievement of a relative stripling.

If you want to extend this to players who are refusing to accept their powers might have waned, there’s a 33-year-old Mohamed Salah, a 34-year-old James Rodriguez and – perhaps most curiously – a 34-year-old Neymar.

A lot of this is, of course, deeply admirable. Longevity like this is only possible through that modern ultra-professionalism, but also the super-intense competitiveness the Messi-Ronaldo era has sparked.

An inevitable corollary to that, however, is an egotism only further driven by the industrial complexes built around such players. They’re keeping their careers going, sure, but also keeping their businesses going. And where better than the world’s commercial centre? This is the one they’ve been waiting for, a World Cup in the States. Of course they’re all insisting on playing.

Both Messi and Ronaldo have spent time at the White House. Messi went after Inter Miami won the MLS Cup for the first time, the Portuguese on the invitation of Donald Trump for a dinner in honour of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

That’s the world they now operate in, as they also dominate less heralded parts of the football world.

Ronaldo recently celebrated his first title in the Saudi Pro League, to create a certain symmetry ahead of this potential meeting. Much was made of his celebratory social media post, which only featured images of himself.

A similar tone is struck by a line recently uttered in football circles: Salah did well to keep his diva personality hidden for as long as Messi did.

That feeds into a fair question over how much this individual competitiveness now affects the competitiveness of their teams. They now have to be accommodated rather than amplified.

For Messi’s part, he has been a bit different, given that he was still the top scorer in the South American qualifiers. This is more about how he exemplifies a notably old Argentina team. The defending champions have been heavily favoured due to topping that South American group and their run of three consecutive international trophies, but the ingredients are there for an abrupt fall. It is like they are falling into the trap of many previous champions and looking to persevere with the same core, when that crucial energy has inevitably dissipated.

Portugal’s squad is almost the opposite. It is full of brilliant players around their prime, from Ruben Dias to Vitinha… until you get to the front.

The feeling around the squad has long been that they’re freer, with a more exhilarating unpredictability, when Ronaldo isn’t there. And yet no one actually says this, either in public or private. Bruno Fernandes and Bernardo Silva may look much better without the 41-year-old, but they’re only ever going to speak with respect. A sense of gratitude persists, despite growing debate about how deserving Ronaldo is of a place. Hence, Roberto Martinez won’t drop him.

This all despite it being impossible to see either star have anything close to the impact of the past.

Newly influential players are instead set to benefit from the world they’ve created – especially the commercial value of stars.

It is precisely because of Ronaldo and Messi that Kylian Mbappe’s career has been curated like no player before. His camp long had plans for his “story”. The game still takes capricious courses of its own, though, as both Messi and Ronaldo know from their own histories in the World Cup.

Even without yet getting to their level, Mbappe is already facing his own usurpers.

Erling Haaland has put up Ronaldo numbers. Lamine Yamal is talked up by some opposition as “better than Messi at the same age”.

Such players can actually outdo the great duo by having dominant World Cups much earlier in their careers, even if it is the very fact that Messi and Ronaldo have done everything else that creates a certain pressure to do something that marks them apart. Who can compete with them otherwise?

It is still that longevity that stands apart.

And as tempting as it is to dismiss even these legends at this age, the world might well bend to them again. Slower-paced games in suffocating heat may well suit individual moments.

They’re still capable of those. And there may yet be one big moment left.