After his side smashed out of the World Cup, Lionel Messi will have been left pondering whether he ought to have come back to lead Argentina's dispossessed finals appearing in Russia

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as Argentina's protectors punted the ball from net to focus hover for the third time, Lionel Messi looked down with hands on hips and you pondered who he would be more enticed to revile.

Would a stray dim idea twofold down on the figure of Franco Armani, who had quite recently let Kylian Mbappé's shot through his legs to fix the work – and it had not all been great – that Argentina had put in up until this point? Maybe an extraordinary place in damnation would be held for Jorge Sampaoli for giving him such Atlas-like duty and styling a side that, behind their nonentity, seemed deprived from the get-go. Or on the other hand perhaps there would be unforgiving self‑flagellation, pondering precisely what he had been doing when, induced by Edgardo Bauza, he turned around his choice to resign from global football two years back.