Lionel Messi faces heir apparent Lamine Yamal in the World Cup final: The father-son symbolism could not be stronger as Argentina star comes up against a generation of players who idolised him, writes OLIVER HOLT

Les Miserables is playing at Radio City Music Hall this week. There are rumours Thomas Tuchel and his tactics board are set for a special guest appearance. Ariana Grande is at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Jon Bon Jovi is at Madison Square Garden, Noah Kahan’s at Citi Field in Queens.

At Carnegie Hall on W57th Street, there will be a recital by the Washington International Rachmaninoff Music Competition Winners. At the Broadway Theatre, there is a musical production of The Great Gatsby. The New York Yankees are hosting the LA Dodgers. Death of a Salesman is playing at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway.

But the main event of the weekend is taking place on the other side of the Hudson River. The World Cup final, the 104th and last match of a protracted, mammoth tournament that has stretched across three huge countries, will take place in the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon.

If it were on Broadway, they’d call it All His Sons. Because this might be a tie between Argentina and Spain but it is also a meeting between Lionel Messi, the greatest football player the world has ever seen, and a generation of Spain players who grew up revering him, a generation of players who have been inspired by him.

In a way, we are all Messi’s sons, those of us who love football, even those of us who are 20 years older than him. For two decades and more, he has made us feel lucky that we live in the era in which he has played and that we have been enchanted by the magic he has worked.

Messi is 39 years old and this will be the last World Cup game of his incredible career. So there will be poignancy attached to the final, too, because no one wants to see him go, no one wants to lose his artistry and his genius.

Even amid the bleak disappointment of England’s defeat to Argentina in Wednesday’s semi-final in Atlanta, it was possible to acknowledge that Messi’s run and right-foot cross to set up the winning goal for Lautaro Martinez was a verse of poetry.

The final will come to be seen as his crowning moment if Argentina become the first team since Brazil in 1958 and 1962 to win back-to-back World Cups. Many in his home country consider him the equal to Diego Maradona but if Messi wins a second World Cup, it will elevate him to a different level.

But whether Argentina win or lose, it will be a final heavy with the symbolism of the passage of time. Messi’s reign is almost over and the man many have anointed his heir, Lamine Yamal, will be playing on the opposite side.

Messi is more than twice Yamal’s age and it will be the first time they have met on the pitch. At the final whistle, it will be Donald Trump and his stooge, Gianni Infantino, who present the World Cup trophy but it will be Messi who passes the torch.

Between Messi and Yamal, the father-son symbolism could hardly be stronger. It is captured most obviously in a picture taken of the two of them in 2007 when Messi was a shy, callow, 20-year-old who was just breaking into the Barcelona first team and Yamal was still a babe in arms.

Several other members of this Spain squad – including Dani Olmo, Gavi and Joan Garcia – also had their pictures taken with Messi as children before they would go on to become senior Barcelona players.

The photoshoot with Yamal took place in the away dressing room at Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium after Yamal’s parents, Morocco-born Mounir Nasraoui and Sheila Ebana from Equatorial Guinea, entered a raffle run by Catalan newspaper Sport where the winners would have photos taken of their baby with a Barcelona player.

Yamal’s family were among the winners and they were paired with Messi. In the shoot, Messi was pictured bathing the five-month-old Yamal and then holding him, wrapped in a towel. Now that baby boy is a young man who turned 19 last week and has been spoken about widely as the successor to Messi.

The comparisons are irresistible, partly because of the picture, partly because Yamal has followed the same route as Messi, coming up through the club’s La Masia academy and announcing his prodigious talent early. So far, Yamal is ahead of the curve Messi’s career travelled.

By his 19th birthday Messi had scored 11 first team goals and won La Liga and the Champions League. At the same stage, Yamal has already scored 56 goals, won the European Championships with Spain in 2024, won La Liga three times and the Copa del Rey once. He is setting a fearsome pace.

Is he set to become Messi’s successor as the best player on the planet? Well, Kylian Mbappe might have something to say about that. In fact, there has been talk of the torch being passed before, when Mbappe inspired France to their World Cup final victory in Russia in 2018 and, again, when he scored a hat-trick in the 2022 World Cup final before a penalty shoot-out defeat to Messi and Argentina.

Mbappe had also looked like the best player in this tournament – and is tied with Messi in the race for the Golden Boot on eight goals – until France were so rudely defenestrated by Spain in their semi-final in Dallas on Tuesday.

But Mbappe has never quite been able to establish himself as the undisputed new king. His club career has been bedevilled by political wrangling and he is still to win the Champions League.

That is something also missing from the CV of Harry Kane, who had such a stellar season with Bayern Munich that he had a claim to be the world’s best. Six goals in this tournament, going into last night’s third place play-off with France, has not harmed his cause.

But Yamal is a prodigy. He made his debut for Barcelona when he was 15, the youngest player ever to wear the shirt for the first team, and he can do things on the ball that take the breath away. Sometimes, he looks a couple of levels above anyone else on the pitch, which is Messi’s habitual state of grace.

Yamal tore a hamstring during a Barcelona game against Celta Vigo at the end of April and has not yet been at his scintillating best in this tournament. But he looked closer to that level in the victory over France, a victory so comprehensive that Spain are clear favourites to win the final.

The match will pit the reigning European champions against the reigning South American champions, it will pit Messi against Yamal and it will pit Argentina boss Lionel Scaloni against the man he regards as a mentor, Spain coach Luis de la Fuente. Both coaches, by the way, graduated from age group teams within the national set-up, a route England chose to ignore when they appointed Tuchel.

Spain have a very different identity to most of the sides Argentina have faced so far in this tournament. Time and again, Argentina have recovered from adversity but if they go behind against Spain, Spain will not lose their nerve as Tuchel and England did in Atlanta on Wednesday night.

Spain are a possession-based team. They have the best defence in the tournament and in Rodri, who has been playing with the same authority he had before he tore his anterior cruciate ligament playing for Manchester City in September 2024, they have the best defensive midfielder in the tournament.

Their performance against France, dominant, patient, relentless, penetrating, was a template of how they perform at their best. They keep the ball and when they lose it, they fight aggressively to retrieve it fast. They have averaged 63.7 per cent possession in their seven matches so far.

Their movement is dynamic and intricate. England showed in spells that Argentina are vulnerable in defence, particularly down the flanks and Spain have the talent to exploit that. Tuchel said it was not in England’s DNA to retain possession. Whether that is true or not, Spain are the best in the world at it.

They will also be up against the most cussed side in the world. If England are masters at finding ways to lose the biggest matches, Argentina have proved in this tournament that that thrive when the odds are stacked against them. Time and again – against Cape Verde, against Egypt, against Switzerland and against England – they have found a way to win when the match seemed to be swinging away from them.

They can be a dogged, spiteful, unpleasant force, typified by Enzo Fernandez, who often plays with the malevolent energy of a reconstructed thug. They give no quarter. And they are utterly dedicated to the idea of providing Messi with the vehicle to take him to a second World Cup triumph.

‘For the Malvinas, for Diego and for Leo’s last one,’ the blue and white hordes chant at Argentina’s games. Only 90 minutes of Messi’s World Cup career remain. Only 90 minutes until he claims a second World Cup trophy or retires from the international game with one. Only 90 minutes until he passes the torch and one, from all his sons, reaches out to take it.

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