What a striking couple Lionel Messi and Abby Wambach cut atthe world player of the year gala in Zurich. And what a difference in theirfortunes.
Messi continues to score more goals than any man in hisgame, and to reap the financial rewards commensurate to being the outstandingplayer of his generation. His fellow professionals gave him more votes for theFIFA Ballon d’Or in 2012 than the next two players combined “ yet his teams wonnothing during the calendar year.
Wambach won everything she plays for, leading the UnitedStates to Olympic gold in London. Yet she enters the new year technicallyunemployed, as a professional player, following the collapse of the Women’sProfessional Soccer league in the United States last year. (There are plans foranother league in the United States, but the new venture is at least a yearaway.)
At 25, Messi is on the cusp of that great period in sportinglife when physical capability merges with experience on the field. He hassigned up with Barcelona for the rest of his playing career, and he does whathe said in his acceptance speech in Zurich on Monday: He plays for the joy ofit.
At 32, and with nowhere to play professionally in hercountry, Wambach may have to go abroad to see out her prime, and to earn aliving at what she does best.
Maybe soccer is still what it was when the magazine FranceFootball set up an award for individual honors in a team game. The firstrecipient, in 1956, was the English wizard of the wing, Stanley Matthews. Thesecond was Alfredo Di Stefano, the great Argentine playing for Real Madrid.
And down the decades, before and after FIFA appropriatedFrance Football’s Ballon d’Or as its own, it remained predominantly masculine.Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini, Marco van Basten and Ronaldo de Lima: Allindisputably left their imprint by becoming the recipients of multiple Ballonsd’Or.
On Monday, little Leo Messi, looking so dandy in hispolka-dot tuxedo, eclipsed them all in terms of numbers. He now holds anunprecedented four world player of the year awards, and we do not need tocatalogue, again, the records he keeps on breaking.
In any case, counting his goals does not give us the measureof the man and the pleasure he gives and gets from being a team player.
Little Leo? In size, maybe. With Wambach nudging thediminutive Brazilian, Marta, off the top of the women’s game, Monday also gaveus a telling picture of sexual equality in reverse.
This has to be the first time that the female honouree hastowered physically over the male on the soccer stage. As they stood side byside, each holding their golden ball, Abby dwarfed Leo.
She is 1.8 meters, or 5-foot-11. He is 1.68 meters in hisshoes.
She weighs in at 77 kilograms, or 170 pounds. He tips thescales at 67 kilograms.
They are, according to votes cast in every country amongnational team coaches, national captains and journalists, the figures and facesof the year just ended.
We shouldn’t argue with it, because it’s fine that thosegroups of people managed to look at the sport both ways in 2012. In the men’sgame, the majority recognized Messi, even above any player from Real Madrid,the team that knocked Barcelona off the top of the Spanish league, or any fromthe Spanish national team that retained the European Championship last summer,to go along with the world championship it won in South Africa in 2010.
Wambach was recognized for being on the winning team, indeedfor imposing her strength and size and goal-scoring opportunism on the highestlevel of the game.
Rightly and properly, the clear winner of the men’s coach ofthe year is the Spaniard Vicente Del Bosque.
Here, again, was a male-female split. Del Bosque blinked inthe spotlight, said his few words and sought the shadows. Pia Sundhage, theSwede who coached Team U.S.A., took the microphone and sang her way through theceremony.
To each his, and her, own.
