It has become a staple of the England team in recent years. The shattered standing forlornly by the podium at the end of a draining tournament, hearts broken, bodies exhausted, having to watch as the opposition receive the reward that England were agonisingly close to. It happened two years ago in Berlin, when Spain won Euro 2024. And three years before that at Wembley, when Italy won Euro 2020 after a penalty shoot-out.

But at the end of this bizarre game in Miami, this silly 6-4 thriller, this giddy attacking exhibition of some of the world’s best players, and some of the world’s worst defending, England were on the winning side. The France players headed down the tunnel and England stood by the podium in the middle of the pitch. The medals were carried out on silver trays and after the Venezuelan match officials received theirs, Harry Kane led the whole England squad up onto the stage. Jude Bellingham brought up the rear, with Thomas Tuchel just behind him.

In a choreographical sense it might have felt like what these players had dreamed of, stepping up one by one, handshakes and hugs, a medal round their necks. But the differences between this and their dreams were staring them in the face. First that the medals were the wrong colour; this was the ‘Bronze Final’ after all. And secondly that there was no trophy for Kane to lift. All they could do was call Jason Steele — the training goalkeeper, not an official squad member — over before they had a team photo taken. When the players went for a walk around the pitch with their medals around their necks, Tuchel insisted that Steele go with them.

To fly home with those bronze medals is not nothing. As Tuchel said afterwards, this makes it England’s second best World Cup campaign, their best since 1966, and their best on foreign soil. They have only reached the semi-final on two other occasions, in 1990 and 2018, and both times they lost this fixture. The medals are a manifestation of a campaign that included far more good than bad.

Imagine if you could lay out the bare facts of this campaign to an England fan at the start of June: beating France to third place, after losing to an inspired Argentina in the semi-finals, beating Croatia, Norway and Mexico along the way, winning in the Azteca Stadium with 10 men. Most England fans, knowing only that, would have accepted it. Those simple facts are all to Tuchel’s credit.

And yet the strange thing about this last week is that it does not quite feel like that. It feels as if the specific circumstances of Wednesday night in Atlanta — the retreat, the punishment, the fall-out afterwards — have wounded Tuchel. That much of the credit he had built up over his first 18 months was lost in those 40 minutes, and that he will have to work hard to rebuild it.

That, ultimately, is the biggest single question as England fly home. What weighs more in the minds of the public? Is it those bronze medals they won here in Miami, the smiling photoshoot, the sense of unity and achievement on the podium? Or is it the pain of Wednesday, when England had one foot in the World Cup final before meekly letting Argentina barge past them?

Tuchel, perhaps understandably, wants to see the positive side. He said after this game that the questions he received in Friday’s press conference “felt as if we went out in the group stage without a win”. He believes that there has been more good than bad over the course of this campaign. “I strongly think and I strongly believe,” he said, “that we built more in this World Cup than we can lose in 30 minutes.”

It is probably too early to know. What happened in Atlanta was so traumatic that, even three days on, its effects are still being felt. Tuchel admitted in his Friday night press conference that the pain is still getting worse. John Stones looked shaken by what had happened. Anthony Barry, Tuchel’s assistant, was overcome by emotion during his half-time interview, praising the squad for “playing with broken hearts” and attacking France in the first half. If they watch the final on Sunday, with Argentina playing Spain, they will feel even worse.

Thomas Tuchel puts his message across to his players (Roberto Schmidt/ AFP via Getty Images)

But there is no question that Wednesday night has dented Tuchel’s standing with the public, in a way that this win alone will not be able to repair. He was recruited at great cost with the aim of winning this World Cup, and because of his tactical nous in knockout football. What happened in Atlanta damages him more than it could Gareth Southgate. That is why there has been such a deluge of anger and frustration from the public, even more than from the tournament exits under Southgate.

It will not have escaped fans, either, that the intellectual underpinning of the Tuchel appointment has taken a dent. The idea behind the Football Association appointing Tuchel was that by signing up one of the best managers in club football into the international game you could gain a tactical edge.

It is a great idea in theory — and not one unique to England — but the reality of this World Cup is that Tuchel, Carlo Ancelotti, Mauricio Pochettino and Julian Nagelsmann all had bitterly painful exits. And the two men still standing in the final? Lionel Scaloni and Luis de la Fuente, the two international football specialists, who have no glittering club CVs behind them but do have a deep understanding of how to win in this form. If they are still the masters of the international game, what does that say about the idea of appointing Tuchel in the first place?

Tuchel does not believe that his standing has been set back to zero. “I don’t think that I lost the trust after whatever happened in the 30 minutes against Argentina, or maybe 45 minutes against Argentina,” he said in his press conference.

The biggest challenge to Tuchel now is what happens to that public anger, whether it passes with time or threatens to come back in the autumn. That Tuchel held his hands up so clearly on Saturday night — “I take the blame and of course the responsibility” — will count in his favour. He has owned the events of the semi-final in a far clearer way than he did on Wednesday or on Friday. He has opened up about “the scar” of Atlanta which he will carry forever.

England will not play again for more than two months. No-one can say with any certainty now how the public will react to Tuchel when England host Spain at Wembley on September 26. Maybe all this will feel like ancient history by then, and people will move on with optimism towards Euro 2028. Or maybe it will continue to fester, and then the Nations League campaign could be uncomfortable.

Ultimately September does give the chance for a restart, a new second chapter in the Tuchel era. If the history of English football has taught us anything it is that people will argue about Wednesday’s semi-final defeat for decades. There is nothing anyone can do about that now. And two months, Tuchel will have the chance to renew that relationship with the public again.

“We need to win the trust on a daily basis in international football,” he said. “In seven or eight weeks, we’re back together, and in the Nations League, we need to gain the trust, and rebuild the trust. It’s never a given.”

Leandro Benitez was a childhood friend of Lionel Messi and played alongside the Argentina star in the youth ranks of Newell’s Old Boys, the Rosario-based club where Messi started. Benitez, 39, was a left-back who went on to join other teams in Argentina, such as Lanus and Chacarita Juniors.

He previously worked in the Newell’s academy and is now head coach of Rosario youth side ADIUR.

I met Leo when I was eight years old at Newell’s Old Boys’ youth academy. There were different teams — A, B, C and D — and Leo was in a great team, the best of all. I was in the C team, so we met when playing against each other until we moved up to full-size pitches at 11 years old. We started to be team-mates and we became great friends.

My first impression of him was that he was different, like now. Imagine: now he’s still short, but he’s tougher, better physically. He’s improved 100 per cent in those aspects. But here in Argentina, with so many ‘potreros’ or makeshift pitches, you could see he was very small at that time — everyone said: “This guy’s not going to do anything, don’t worry.” The last thing he looked like was a player who would sweep all before him, an extraterrestrial like he is now.

But when he went onto the pitch, he showed everyone up. His shirt was gigantic. The bigger lads tried to kick him from all sides — they couldn’t grab hold of him. We all knew what he would go on to do, but not to the level of becoming the best in history.

I knew he was different from the first time I saw him play. He had that gift which he was born with and which he perfected. That’s why he’s so thankful to God, because he was born in a humble neighbourhood. I know his family and his entourage very well, and they were always working people. He deserves everything he has experienced.

Lionel Messi and Leandro Benitez, bottom row, second from the right and furthest right (Leandro Benitez)

When we moved up to that 11-a-side pitch, we became great friends, along with Lucas Scaglia, the cousin of Messi’s wife Antonella, who also played football.

Every day, we went to play at Lucas’ house. Lucas was the one who had all the games: a football pitch, a ping-pong table, and another house where we could play football tennis, and we could jump in the pool. We also spent moments with Antonela there as they went there every Sunday and ate as a family, so we gathered together.

Leo was very introverted and very shy, but incredibly lively. He was always inventing things for us to do so that we could get up to some mischief as kids.

We went to play a tournament in a town near Casilda, west of Rosario, and we all went to stay in a guest house. We played a lot of truco — a card game. We were 12 years old and we really wanted a Coca-Cola. We didn’t have the money for it, so we thought about what we could do to afford it. Leo had the idea of asking for money in the street. We all went out barefoot — 10, 11 boys like that — and it was raining that day. And this little skinny guy made more than any of us. They gave us coins, and notes to him.

Today I remember these things and I see the heights he’s reached and it makes me really emotional.

One time at Lucas’ house, we stayed up late talking. He told me he wanted to get to Primera, the top division, for his grandmother and to help his family. The dream for all three of us, always, was to play in the first division.

Lionel Messi, second left on bottom row, with Lucas Scaglia, centre, his cousin and Messi’s wife Antonela Roccuzzo to his right, and Leandro Benitez bottom-right (Leandro Benitez)

He always made the difference on small-sided pitches — he scored seven, eight, nine goals at a time. At 11, we travelled to Peru for a tournament. He would start doing keepy-uppies and everyone would come closer to see. He would do 200 or 300 keepy-uppies for 10 minutes. In the final, we won against Cantolao, a Peruvian side, 8 or 9-0, and he scored seven or eight goals. We knew we had an ace up our sleeves.

Leo had that magic where, wherever he went, his aura — as people say now — was contagious, his energy, the way he demonstrated it. He wasn’t a boy who spoke a lot. But he always showed what he was about playing with the ball.

One day, he told us he was going to Barcelona for trials because he was having problems with Newell’s when it came to his growth hormone treatment. At the time, the club weren’t able to afford it and he needed it a lot.

Whenever we went to tournaments or to Lucas’ house, he always took his little case, which went in the freezer, and he would give himself his injections. He’d inject himself in one leg, take it out and inject himself in the other. When you know him and you know he went through difficult things — because it was really tough to see him injecting himself — it fills you with even more pride at what he’s achieved.

I remember him leaving like it was yesterday.

He came on a weekday. We had more or less spoken about it, but we didn’t know when he was going. He knocked on my door, he came with his agent and he said, “Mate, I’m coming to say bye to you because I’m going to Barcelona”. It was as if I were in shock. I didn’t grasp the full extent of it and the first thing I thought was to go to our washing machine — my mum hadn’t put it on yet — and get the Newell’s shirt we’d played in that weekend. I said, “Take it, it’s a present”. And he gave me a big hug.

We spoke via internet, on MSN Messenger. We did that at Lucas’ house, because he was the only one who had a computer. We saw him again at 15 or 16 years old. He’d had a growth spurt; now he had different legs, he had different shoulders.

In 2005, he played in an Under-20 South American Championship game against Brazil. We spoke to him on the internet before that match and said, “Leo, if you score a goal, put three fingers on your heart (to symbolise the three friends) and run off.” Leo said, “I’m going to score a goal and I’m going to celebrate like that.”

He scored the goal to make it 2-1, and when he put his three fingers on his heart and started running off, Lucas and I looked at each other — we were watching in his room — hugged each other and cried. We couldn’t believe we were experiencing that — we lived all his emotions.

He returned to Rosario to see Lucas and I play. I travelled twice to visit him in Barcelona.

One day, we were eating in his house and I said, “Leo, I want to show you a video that came out great on YouTube, a compilation of yours.” It was just us two eating milanesas with mashed potato. I asked him, “Do you remember this, Leo? Do you remember this move? What about this one?” And he looked at me and did this (shrugs and looks bemused). He said, “Some yes, some no.”

“And what do you think about this?” He said, “What do I know? Nothing.” As if he were a little bit unaware of what he was doing.

That lack of awareness is brilliant, because when you step foot on the pitch, you need to be a bit unaware. If you think about everything you’re doing with so many people around you, it scares you and you do nothing. It paralyses you. That lack of awareness, for me, is where what he does comes from.

At first, the criticism he received in Argentina before the international trophies he won angered me a lot. I had lots of arguments but then I understood the game, too — that I had to be a bit calmer about who those words were coming from, because here in Argentina everyone knows about football.

He started to do what the people wanted and what he knew was missing. In this case, it was the comparison with Diego Maradona — everyone said Maradona spoke out on the pitch, he was in charge. He understood that and said, “You want me to speak out? I’m going to speak out. And besides, I’m going to play well.” He didn’t even like losing a game of truco. And if he has to learn another game after losing, he’ll do everything to train to win. Until the day he beats you, he won’t stop.

When the first Argentina goal against England went in, I sat down and let it all out. It was sensational, because you think the end will never come but everything has an end. Without Leo, I don’t know if I’ll support the national team as much as I do now.

If I were to speak to him now, I’d tell him thank you for everything. For what he’s given to football. For those of us who love football, he came to change all our lives. And thank you for being Argentinian, for letting me see Argentina become champions, making my kids champions and thank you for letting me see their feelings so clearly.

And thank you for being the example you are as a human being. Because to be a good football player, first you have to be a good person — and he always says that.

Whatever happens in the final, I know he’ll do his best. Thank you forever. And thank you for being my friend.

For the past two decades, watching Lionel Messi has been a joy, a privilege and a source of near-constant wonder. There are good footballers, there are great footballers and then there is Messi, who plays as if he has been sent here from another dimension, a superior life form inside the 5ft 7in frame of a normal guy from Rosario, Argentina.

At the dizzy peak of his powers at Barcelona, spanning all the way from the late 2000s to the early 2020s, he took the breath away almost every time he played. In the blink of an eye, he went from mesmerising to killer mode. He didn’t just score goals at a prodigious rate. He created, caused havoc and performed in a way that left even the most cynical press-box veterans in thrall.

Watching Messi at this World Cup — and indeed the previous one, given how little we knew at the time — has felt different. You are not just watching in awe of his other-worldly talent. You are watching in disbelief that he is still doing it, albeit perhaps more sporadically, at the age of 35 in Qatar in 2022 and at the age of 39 now, and knowing, in the knockout stages, that each time might be the last you see him play on the sport’s biggest stage.

Beyond that, there is the knowledge that every game, every performance, every dramatic intervention on Argentina’s behalf, is embellishing a sporting legacy that already seemed complete. Among those who have long felt Pele’s or Diego Maradona’s legacies unsurpassable — perhaps even for a small minority of those who insist the Argentina captain is not the greatest of the modern era — Messi is challenging deeply entrenched beliefs.

Sunday’s final against Spain will be Messi’s last game on the World Cup stage. He has made that clear — even if he said the same thing in 2022 and for a long time afterwards, reflecting that leading Argentina to glory at his fifth attempt, fulfilling his life’s ambition, “closed a circle” and represented the perfect ending.

This time it really will be the end. That song Argentina’s players and fans have been singing, which features a well-documented line about wanting to win the World Cup “por las Malvinas” (for the Falkland Islands, the subject of a decades-long dispute with the UK), also contains a line about wanting to do it “por la ultima de Leo” (for Leo’s last one).

Messi has appeared far more emotional at this World Cup (Getty Images)

He might yet continue as far as the Copa America in 2028, also to be held in the United States, but the 2030 World Cup looks beyond even his remarkable powers of endurance. For the vast majority of sports fans across the world, those who are not minded to tune in to follow his exploits for Inter Miami in Major League Soccer, this could, realistically, be the last time they see Messi play.

At times over the past five weeks, it is as if that realisation has dawned on him in the closing stages of games. For long periods he has been quiet until, at 2-0 down against Egypt in the round of 16 and trailing England 1-0 in the semi-final, a raging intensity has taken hold of him. As his former Barcelona team-mate Thierry Henry put it, in the Fox studio: “You do not (want to) wake up the beast. You look at his eyes, and he switches. When he goes into that mood, it’s very difficult to stop him. He starts to take the ball and dribble past almost everybody to try to change the game.”

The danger is that, if Argentina find themselves trailing once again in Sunday’s final, their opponents will be far less accommodating than Egypt and particularly England were. England’s response to taking the lead against Argentina in Wednesday’s semi-final in Atlanta was to retreat further and further until Messi’s inevitable impact, setting up goals for Enzo Fernandez and Lautaro Martinez. By contrast, Spain’s response to going 1-0 up against tournament favourites France 24 hours earlier was to double down and dominate the game until they scored a second.

Since a stuttering start with a draw against Cape Verde, Spain have looked the most complete, most cohesive team of this tournament. Argentina have played in bursts, frequently drawing on their never-say-die spirit as well as Messi’s brilliance. Bookmakers’ odds, data-based predictive models and indeed the majority of Athletic readers in our predictions hub lean towards a Spanish victory at MetLife Stadium.

That said, France were favourites in the last final and Argentina beat them, albeit by the finest of margins, recovering from the shock of Kylian Mbappe’s hat-trick before holding their nerve to win the penalty shootout.

In 2022, there was much focus on the symbolism of a meeting between Messi and Mbappe, seemingly the heir to the Argentinian’s throne. Mbappe is a wonderful player, as he has demonstrated for France during this World Cup, but Messi has remained pre-eminent, even while playing his club football in Florida. Now thoughts turn to whether tomorrow’s final might see the torch passed to Spain’s 19-year-old phenomenon Lamine Yamal, which would be all the more poignant given the extraordinary circumstances of their only previous meeting.

In these situations, the narratives can be so seductive. But in Messi’s case, his status and his legacy are surely by now so secure that he has nothing left to prove.

The same feeling took hold in the build-up to the 2022 World Cup final. The notion that Argentina had to win it in order to secure his position on the pantheon of all-time greats, elevating him to the level of Pele and Maradona, was appealing but ultimately facile. Had Argentina lost that penalty shootout, rather than won it, would it really have caused Messi’s career to be seen in a less favourable light?

It probably would, but it shouldn’t. Before that World Cup final in Qatar, he had played 1,002 games at senior level for club and country. In that time, he had changed our perception of what elite performance in football looks like. The idea that his legacy should hinge on the outcome of one game — let alone a game settled on a penalty shootout — was the 1,003rd game of his career for club and country. His greatness had already been proved over and over.

The same applies now. Sunday’s final will be the 1,196th game of his career. It makes little sense to suggest that his legacy hinges on whether or not, at the age of 39, he is able to lead Argentina to a second world title.

But that word “lead” is significant because, for years, leadership was the one thing Messi was perceived to lack. His talent was extreme, but his introverted personality seemed at times to inhibit him on the World Cup stage, where the burden of trying to deliver glory for his country — as Maradona did so memorably in 1986 — weighed so heavily on his shoulders. Maradona himself remarked after Argentina’s defeat by Chile in the 2016 Copa America final that Messi had “no personality” and lacked the “character” to be a leader.

Messi has a devoted following among Argentina’s players (Elsa/Getty Images)

In 2016, Messi was faced with a dilemma: fight or flight. His instinctive reaction, tearful after losing another final, was to throw in the towel, to announce his career with Argentina was over at the age of 29, to focus on his club career, which by comparison brought him so much joy and so little anxiety by comparison.

But then he listened to his heart, listened to the advice of his nearest and dearest, and pledged to carry on trying to bring Argentina’s success. He reevaluated his role as a captain and a leader and made it his greatest obsession. He finally won his first senior trophy with Argentina at the Copa America in 2021. Since then, they have won the Finalissima (one-off match between the champions of Europe and the Americas), the World Cup in 2022 and the Copa America again in 2024 and now he has the opportunity to win his second World Cup and Argentina’s fourth.

In some ways, watching this late-career Messi has become just as compelling an experience as watching the one who recorded a quite absurd 91 goals and 22 assists for Barcelona and Argentina in 2012. Not as reliably, breathtakingly, constantly brilliant — you would not expect that of a 39-year-old — but perhaps slightly more human, more relatable, more conscious of his own (notional) fallibility and of how time is now so precious, particularly in those moments when Argentina’s ambitions have been hanging by a thread.

He knows his time as a footballer is running out. He knows his powers have to be used more selectively these days. There have been times at this World Cup, even until the closing stages of the semi-final against England, when it has felt as if his endeavours over the previous might just have caught up with him. Watching him has become a more intense, more dramatic experience, perhaps less about appreciating his incredible talent and more about marvelling at his ability to conjure up one more piece of magic when the stakes are so high and when time — not just on the scoreboard but on his body clock — appears to be catching up with him.

He is astonishing: the prolific goalscorer who is also a selfless creator; the virtuoso who brings out the best in every team-mate; the quiet, unassuming guy who is transformed with a ball at his feet; the teenage wonderkid who is illuminating the World Cup more brightly than ever in his 40th year.

Now, as ever, he leaves his audience in thrall.