Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi arrives at his sixth and almost certainly final World Cup as the sport's greatest player and Argentina's reigning world champion, having finally claimed the one trophy that eluded him for so long in Qatar 2022. Now 38 and playing in MLS with Inter Miami, the physical demands of a tournament will test his recovery capacity, but his footballing intelligence — the positioning, the passing weight, the late runs — has never depended on pace. Argentina's entire attacking structure is built around giving him space to operate. When he is on the ball in the final third, the game still changes.