Everyone talks about the big moments, right? The 2022 final, the pure redemption arc, or even the heartbreak of 2014. But lately, I’ve been digging back. I decided to run a little project last week, a deep dive into something I always felt was totally missed: Messi’s 2006 World Cup debut. Is it underrated now? I needed to prove it one way or the other.
The Research and Re-Watch Log
I committed to a full, start-to-finish log. I didn’t just want the YouTube highlight reel; I wanted the raw data and the contemporary expert noise. The first step was just pulling up the footage. I swear, finding the full, unedited match replays from 2006 is a nightmare. I spent a good four hours just locating reliable streams that weren’t grainy messes.
Once I had the footage, the real work began. I specifically focused on the Serbia and Montenegro game—the one where he scored. My process was simple:
- I watched the full 20 minutes he played. I didn’t just look at the goal. I looked at the little movements, the passes, the way he carried the ball. He was fearless, man. He just demanded the ball.
- I tracked down old newspaper columns. This was the key. I needed to see what the actual sports writers—the ones who saw the game live and wrote their pieces immediately—had to say. Not the retrospective five-year-anniversary stuff. The fresh takes.
- I logged the expert ratings. I scanned four different major publications’ player ratings. The general consensus landed him right around a strong 7.5 out of 10. For an 18-year-old debutant, that’s monstrously high. He wasn’t the star, but they absolutely rated his impact.
The whole exercise proved my initial gut feeling. The individual performance was highly rated by the people there at the time. The raw data—the assist, the goal, the energy—it was all there. So why does everyone forget it now?
The real shocker, the thing that unlocked the “underrated” status for me, was watching the quarter-final against Germany. I re-watched that whole miserable game. The drama unfolded in front of me again. Pekerman, the coach, pulled Riquelme, put in Cambiasso, and then just left the kid—the most obvious attacking threat they had—sitting on the bench. He just watched as the team collapsed. I sat there, typing notes, and the truth hit me.
The expert rating of the individual was high, but the application of that talent by the management was zero. And that, in my books, is the ultimate definition of being underrated in the history books. They had the Ferrari in the pit crew, and they chose to leave it covered up when they needed to win the race. I logged all the data and the conclusion was clear: Yes, it’s underrated because the decision-makers failed the talent.
Why I Dug So Deep: The Reason Behind the Log
Why did I spend a whole week obsessing over an 18-year-old’s 20-minute debut from almost twenty years ago? Because I had the time, and I needed to see an example of wasted potential validated by raw data. And I had all this sudden free time because the guy I worked for, the founder of the company I helped build, decided to flush five years of my life down the toilet.
I poured everything I had into that start-up. We built a platform from the ground up, me and a handful of other guys. I was the key architect in the backend. I designed the whole API structure, wrote 80% of the core functionality, slept on the floor sometimes to hit deadlines. My internal rating within the team was always off the charts. They called me the ‘utility man’ because I could handle anything. I was the guy they went to when things broke.
Then, about three months ago, the founder, a guy I thought was a friend, just sold the company’s tech stack to a larger venture capital firm. He signed the papers on a Tuesday. He sent out a boilerplate email on Friday evening that the office was closed. No warning, no thank you, no severance. Just shutting down the whole team instantly. He walked away with a massive payout, and I walked away with an empty company laptop and a box of cold coffee mugs.
I spent weeks just staring at the wall, feeling that same kind of deep, wasted potential. I knew my work was solid, the data showed it, the team validated it, but the guy at the top—the one who was supposed to manage the talent—just pulled the rug out when the pressure got heavy. It felt exactly like watching Pekerman leave Messi on the bench while the entire World Cup dream died around him.
The Current Readout
I dusted myself off, started sending out resumes. I blocked the founder’s number—I refuse to even hear his voice after that snake move. I found a few promising interviews, but the market is tough. Meanwhile, my old company’s code—the stuff I stayed up nights writing—is being used to power some new, ‘innovative’ platform. And the founder? He rolled that VC cash into a new, smaller operation and hired three fresh grads to maintain the old code base for half the rate. He’s doing great.
So yeah, I needed to dig into 2006 Messi. I needed to prove that the experts saw the genius, that the raw data didn’t lie, and that the failure was strictly down to the guy at the top making a bad call. It’s my small way of validating the worth of hard work that got completely ignored and undervalued by someone who only cared about the exit strategy. The practice log confirms it: the debut was special, the talent was there, and history has been harsh because one guy chickened out.