Fresh off reasserting his extraterrestrial talent by opening his sixth World Cup with a hat trick, Lionel Messi proved on Monday that he is in fact still human. Seven minutes into the match between Argentina and Austria, Lautaro Martínez sprinted through on goal only to be taken down by a pair of Austrian defenders. After a VAR review, the play was correctly called a penalty. Messi took the ball, placed it on the spot, and proceeded to do what he has done many times before: miss.
The failed penalty seemed to affect both Messi and the team as a whole. Despite starting the game with the cool confidence typical of this group of world champions, Argentina looked uncharacteristically tentative and anxious after the miss. Austria took advantage, grabbing the match's reins and holding them for the next 20 minutes. Again, the failed conversion and the evident nerviness in the aftermath made for a rare humanizing moment for a man so often described as an alien or even a god. There's a valuable lesson in there: Not even D10S is perfect.
Oh, and the rest of the game? Argentina won, 2-0. Messi scored both goals. He now has five for the tournament, and has officially risen above Miroslav Klose and Marta as the player with the most goals ever scored at the World Cup.
Whatever, he's still only human. Probably.
