World Cup Drama: Messi, Mbappe, and the Rise of Underdogs
The World Cup is roaring now.
The expanded 48-team format was supposed to dilute the drama. Instead, it has detonated it. Cape Verde, Japan, Egypt and a cluster of so‑called minnows have ripped up the script, while the sport’s superstars have treated the early rounds like their own private showcase.
Lionel Messi has five goals in two games. Kylian Mbappe looks born for this stage yet again. Erling Haaland has arrived with his usual blunt-force impact. And now Cristiano Ronaldo has stamped his name on the tournament with a ruthless display against Uzbekistan.
Watching it all, and dissecting it from the studio, is India defender Sandesh Jhingan, part of the Zee5 expert panel. He has seen enough to be convinced: this World Cup is already something different.
“He makes a 100-year-old feel like a 10-year-old”
At 39, Messi should be winding down. Instead, he is throwing on hat-tricks and braces as if they were training routines. Jhingan, who lives the grind of elite football himself, can only marvel at the scale of the achievement.
For him, the magic is not just in the numbers. It is in the sheer durability.
The hardest thing, he points out, is not to hit a peak once, but to stay there. To keep performing “at such a high level in the best way you can” year after year. Messi has turned that into an art form, and Jhingan feels lucky to have watched the entire arc in real time.
He recalls a moment from his Zee show: a 100-year-old fan in the stands, utterly absorbed in Messi. That image stuck. Messi, he says, gives you the feeling of being a kid again. If you are 100, he can make you feel 10. That is the kind of joy Jhingan keeps coming back to. Not tactics, not numbers. Pure emotion.
The wall behind the wizard
Yet for all the talk about Messi’s genius, Jhingan’s defender’s eye goes straight to the platform that allows it to shine. Argentina have not conceded a goal. They look hard, compact, and utterly committed.
The key, he insists, lies in the coaching staff and their willingness to build around their best player instead of forcing a rigid ideology. Argentina can sit deep. They can hold a mid-block. They can manage games, bend without breaking, and always look like they know exactly where they should be.
That organisation buys Messi his freedom. The defenders and midfielders understand their job: win the ball, give it to him, let him decide. That clarity of purpose breeds belief, and belief spreads through a dressing room faster than any team talk.
Reliant on Messi? So what if you’re winning?
Lautaro Martinez ran himself into the ground against Austria. He pressed, dropped in, linked play, and chased every channel. Yet the criticism still came: Argentina’s strikers are not scoring enough, the team leans too heavily on Messi.
Jhingan shrugs at that narrative.
If he were Argentine, player or fan, he would not care what label people used as long as the team kept winning. Messi may be the finisher, but the system is the star. The compactness, the defensive discipline, the collective understanding of when to drop and when to hunt in packs – that, he argues, is what makes them so hard to beat.
Messi is the final act. The rest of the cast sets the stage.
Mbappe and the burden of the Messi–Ronaldo bar
Mbappe’s World Cup record already looks outrageous. Goals, numbers, moments burned into tournament history. At 27 or 28, he has done enough to sit in any conversation about the game’s biggest big-game players.
Yet Jhingan is careful with the word “greatest”. The problem, he says, is that the standard has been redefined by Messi and Ronaldo. Two decades of relentless output have created a bar that is almost unfair.
Mbappe has everything to chase it – pace, finishing, mentality. The question now is whether he can keep this level for years, stay fit, stay hungry. What stands out to Jhingan is the way Mbappe seems to switch into a different gear at World Cups. Russia 2018. Qatar 2022. Every time the stage grows, so does he. That, for Jhingan, is the mark of a true heavyweight.
Lamine Yamal: the nightmare you can’t defend alone
Lamine Yamal has not needed full matches to leave a mark. Bursts of play, flashes of daring, and he already looks like one of those rare talents people would pay just to watch warm up.
From a defender’s point of view, Jhingan is blunt: one-on-one, Yamal beats you more often than not. That is his gift. The mistake, he warns, is to turn it into a personal duel.
You can lock a winger down for 89 minutes and still lose the story to one shot, one deflection, one moment. The real job is not to win every tackle; it is to reduce the number of times you have to face him in the first place.
That means compact lines. Midfielders pressing. Forwards working. A high, aggressive back line squeezing the pitch. Yamal will get chances. The task is to make sure there are fewer of them, not to believe you can shut him out on your own.
The Ronaldo debate: “This comes from people who never played”
No World Cup is complete without a Ronaldo argument, and this one is no different. Should he start? Should he sit? Is his age finally catching him?
Jhingan does not tiptoe around it. He calls his view “bold” and then delivers it anyway: most of this debate, he says, comes from people who have never played professional football, or barely did. Opinions are fine, but the only one that matters is Roberto Martinez’s. If the coach believes Ronaldo is good enough, he plays. Simple.
The spotlight on Ronaldo – and on Messi – will never dim. Miss a game, miss a chance, and the noise returns: he’s old, he’s finished, he’s holding the team back. Jhingan points to the reality instead. Ronaldo scored heavily at club level, topped the Saudi league scoring charts, and hit plenty in qualifying. People forget that, he says, and go straight for the easy narrative.
Golden Boot race: Messi out in front, giants chasing
Two games in, Messi already has a “very healthy lead” with five goals. Jhingan sees the Golden Boot race forming around the usual suspects: Messi, Mbappe, Haaland. The trio the world wanted to see scoring are doing exactly that.
He expects Ronaldo to join them soon. With doubts swirling, Jhingan predicts the Portuguese forward will “open his account in a big way”, the kind of response he has built a career on.
For the rest of us, Jhingan smiles, it means one thing: more goals, more fun, more chaos.
Heart with Japan, head aware of Argentina
Pressed to pick a champion, Jhingan does not hide his bias. His heart is with Asia. He wants Japan to go “as high as they can” and is not shy about putting his money on them emotionally.
He knows Argentina and the other giants are looming, armed with depth, pedigree and match-winners. But in a World Cup where Cape Verde and company have already ripped open expectations, he chooses hope.
If Messi keeps gliding, Mbappe keeps sprinting, Haaland keeps thundering, and Ronaldo keeps raging against time, the trophy race will stay with the usual names.
If Japan crash the party, the World Cup might just belong to a new footballing world.
