And so, Lionel Messi has reached his second World Cup final with a dazzling performance people will be talking about for years.

So have the rest of the Argentina team, but most of the discussion in the next few days is likely to ignore Angel Di Mariaand Julian Alvarez and Enzo Fernandez, and centre on the man many believe to be the greatest footballer of all time. Many people also dispute that he is the greatest footballer of all time.
There will be lots of talk, echoes from debates down the years, about whether Messi needs to win a World Cup to be considered the greatest. People will compare him to Pele, to Zinedine Zidane, and most pertinently to his Argentine countryman Diego Maradona. There will also be comparisons with Cristiano Ronaldo, the spicy old to-and-fro argument that will still be going aboard some spaceship somewhere long after our sun explodes and the Earth is consumed by the fires of the apocalypse. And as a counter to this line of debate, there will also be lots of sensible, centrist types who will say things along the lines of ‘Why can’t we just enjoy them both?’ or, ‘Does it matter who the best is?’, or ‘We shouldn’t compare players like this’, or ‘Let’s just all be friends and have a big hug’.

Granted, that last one might actually be quite nice and we should all take note. But the others are best ignored. Essentially, that sentiment is telling you not to have an opinion. Walk the middle ground, don’t feel strongly about anything, drift on through life without committing to anything. It is, in a roundabout way, a method of shutting down debate. 

Is that a bit of a dramatic thing to say about what is a fairly frivolous football opinion? Maybe, but surely the frivolous things are the things that everyone can have opinions about. Who are they going to harm? If you speak your mind about, say, Palestine, you’d better be sure you know what you’re talking about, because otherwise you could cause some damage. But an opinion on the best footballer of all time? Who’s that going to negatively impact in any material way?