On Lionel Messi’s birthday…the body is not kind to opponents.

When Lionel Messi said in 2019 that “the body has no mercy”, the sentence seemed very natural at the time and perhaps even expected from a player approaching thirty, who has played a huge number of matches and carried on his shoulders a pressure that only a few athletes in history have to face.

He was talking about time, the opponent that cannot be evaded, bypassed or magically defeated, because age eventually imposes its conditions on everyone, even the greatest players.

The only problem is that the following years showed that this sentence was more of a joke.