Messi had always seemed immune to such human failings. For almost a decade, longer than any of those players, he had dealt with the pressure of being called the best in the world. But last October, following years of inquiry by the Spanish government, he and his father (who is also his agent), had been charged with tax fraud after placing sponsorship earnings in offshore accounts. The trial had begun in May, a verdict was imminent, a prison sentence possible. For the preternaturally private Messi, it was a crushing blow.

By the time he led Argentina into MetLife Stadium for the Copa America final on June 26, his frustration at not being able to win a major senior competition for his country had reached a boil. In both the 2014 World Cup and the 2015 Copa America, Argentina had lost emotional finals.

This summer was meant to be different. Argentina was primed to dominate this special edition of the Copa America, held in the United States to celebrate the event’s 100th anniversary. “Tell them not to bother coming home if they don’t,” Maradona had said. Indeed, Argentina trounced the hemisphere, dispatching Chile, Panama, Bolivia, Venezuela and the U.S. by a combined 18-2 score. But in the final in New Jersey, in a rematch with Chile, a Messi-led Argentina again proved to be less than the sum of its parts, playing 120 minutes to a scoreless tie.

Messi stepped up to take the first penalty kick. In goal was Claudio Bravo, then his Barcelona teammate — but also the specter of Maradona, who’d single-handedly copped the 1986 World Cup for Argentina and hasn’t let anyone, least of all Messi, forget it. Bravo lunged right; Messi shot toward the gaping hole to Bravo’s left. But he hit the ball too high, spinning it and Argentina’s hopes into the night. Messi covered his face with his hands.

He cried in the locker room, then announced that he was done playing for Argentina. “The product of real sadness,” says former Argentine international Ossie Ardiles, “after losing another final.”

On July 6, Messi was found guilty of tax fraud, made a payment of $5.5 million to the government, was fined the equivalent of more than $2 million more and given a suspended sentence of 21 months in prison. When he showed up in Barcelona with shocking platinum-colored hair, supporters and doubters alike began to wonder: Is this what the beginning of Leo Messi’s decline looks like?

Then he stepped onto the field at Camp Nou for the start of another season and began to play.IT HAS LONG been apparent that the world’s greatest football player has few passions beyond having a ball at his feet and figuring out where he wants to put it. If he isn’t doing that on a patch of grass, he’s likely doing it on a PlayStation or an Xbox. His finances don’t interest him in the least; he cedes all control of them to his father. One reason the trial was so difficult for Messi is that he had to engage with them himself — something the prosecutor admitted he might never have done.

“He has a very special way of being,” says Robert Fernandez, Barcelona’s technical director. “A lot of the important stars have complicated lives, but not Leo. He has a simplicity. He’s very local, very absorbed in his immediate circle.”

No matter what side you approach Messi, he yields … nothing. Few athletes are as consistent in their opacity. In 2009, author and political writer John Carlin, who has lived in Buenos Aires and Barcelona and contributes a soccer column for Spain’s El País, was granted a short session with Messi. That’s a rarity, like access to the queen of England. Yet Carlin ended their interview with 10 minutes left. It wasn’t Messi’s fault; he just had nothing he wanted to say.

“Outside of football, he’s like a fish out of water,” Carlin says now, “and I mean that almost literally. He comes alive only when he crosses that white line. When he plays, he’s vibrantly, magnificently alive. He gets such joy from it — not just from scoring but creating goals for others. You’d think it would grind him down after a while, that he’d lose his zest for it. Yet he’s still as excited to play as a little kid.”

If Messi has a secret weapon, an edge beyond his obvious talent and intense competitiveness, that would be it. Messi’s favorite activity is to win a football game, but his second-favorite might be to draw or lose one. If there’s no game, he’ll practice. “Whenever I get there, his car is already there,” says midfielder Arda Turan, who joined Barcelona in 2015 from Atletico Madrid. “He comes earlier, leaves later. He just loves it.”

Messi almost never willingly leaves the field, no matter if his team is up by multiple goals in the second half or if more crucial games are on Barcelona’s horizon. Substitute for him with time remaining, a string of Barcelona managers has learned, and he’ll make his displeasure known with pouts and silence.

Last season Barcelona played 38 games in La Liga. Apart from five-plus games he missed in the fall with a torn medial collateral ligament, Messi sat only 160 of the nearly 3,500 minutes. And when the game ends, he doesn’t want to leave the stadium. “I’m used to being the last person,” he said in his speech accepting the 2012 Ballon d’Or. “I like the dressing room. Besides,” he added, “I don’t have anything better to do.”

Messi was clearly bothered by recent events after he rejoined Barcelona in July. “He felt such responsibility for missing the penalty, he almost couldn’t forgive himself,” says Juan Pablo Sorin, the former defender who captained Argentina’s 2006 World Cup team and who has remained close with Messi. “It was a great disappointment for him.” But as soon as workouts started, Messi channeled his frustration into his game. “It’s the same as every other year,” explains Javier Mascherano, a teammate on both Argentina and Barcelona. “We say every season that he looks more motivated than the season before.”

In Barcelona’s La Liga opener against Real Betis at the end of August, that motivation showed itself in two glittering goals. In the first half, Messi moved left across the box with the ball and threaded a shot through a gap that opened only in that moment. Later, he barreled up the middle, launching a precise strike that no keeper on earth had a chance to stop. “He reads the game,” Sorin says. “He finds perfect spaces to do what he wants to do. And what he does are things you can’t even imitate with a video game.”

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