Leo must tidy up this mess
Ten days ago, this World Cup threatened to unfold as the greatest tournament since Mexico 1970. No such luck. Today, it appears to be unfolding as the greatest tournament since Germany 2006.
Ag, well: middle-class problems. As a librarian once told me when, as a schoolboy, I wanted to borrow five books, but was only allowed four: "Life is not a bed of roses. Think of the Black Death!"
No pandemics as yet this month, but a jangling minor key has invaded the melody of the event with Neymar's painful exit, and with the ejection of the two coolest, ballsiest sides in the tournament, Colombia and Costa Rica.
The goal glut has suddenly throttled, while the prospect of a shock at the business end is now dim, with only the Dutch presence in the semifinals representing a (modest) defiance of pre-tournament expectations.
None of the semifinalist sides can rival their great forebears of the '70s or '80s.
Of course, it would be beautiful if Louis van Gaal's maverick footie brain does deliver a long-deferred dream to Dutch football. If so, the Netherlands would become the smallest nation to conquer the world since Uruguay did so at the very same ground 64 years ago.
To do so, (Arjen) Robben, Robin (van Persie) and company will need to dislodge the world's greatest footballer from the stage.
Leo Messi is only 27, so he should get at least one more chance in Russia, and perhaps even in Qatar, to supplement his forest of club-level trophies with the biggest bauble of all.
But if you're not Brazilian, German or Dutch, you must agree that the battered, elusive gods of football justice want Messi to win this thing on Sunday.
His four goals at this tournament have been a little upstaged by the dubious misadventures of Luis Suarez and Robben.
In a weird way, Brand Messi has been curbed in recent years by his well-balanced personality: by comparison to his nearest rivals, he is boringly functional, tediously sane and disappointingly free of megalomania.
I've just read a fantastic stats-driven article on Messi's greatness by Benjamin Morris - called "Messi is Impossible" - on the data journalism website FiveThirtyEight.com.
The numbers show that Messi is an outlier, way beyond all of his rivals, in almost every important category: shooting accuracy, passing accuracy, assists and dribbling.
And crucially, his excellence extends to emotional intelligence. For example, he takes far fewer long-range shots than Cristiano Ronaldo, but scores far more frequently from those efforts.
Messi's shooting accuracy is superior when he makes "unassisted" goal attempts (i.e. engineers the shooting chance entirely himself.)
He converts about 23% of his unassisted chances, as against 21% of his assisted shots. By contrast, Ronaldo nets with less than 10% of his solo shots, compared with 22% of his assisted shots.
Needless to say, this ratio doesn't deter Ronaldo from going it alone wherever possible.
By contrast, Messi thinks beyond himself. He mixes up his option-taking, frequently slipping the ball to his team-mates, despite being more deadly when he takes on defences alone.
Never mind the lack of tragic passion, of theatrical villainy. History will judge Messi a greater footballer than Diego Maradona. But to seal that deal he must triumph tomorrow, and again on Sunday. It won't be easy, but life is not a bed of roses.