Lionel Messi. Is this the end?

For the past two decades, watching Lionel Messi has been a joy, a privilege and a source of near-constant wonder. There are good footballers, there are great footballers and then there is Messi, who plays as if he has been sent here from another dimension, a superior life form inside the 5ft 7in frame of a normal guy from Rosario, Argentina. At the dizzy peak of his powers at Barcelona, spanning all the way from the late 2000s to the early 2020s, he took the breath away almost every time he played. In the blink of an eye, he went…