The fans, too, are entitled to their fun. And for anyone, anywhere, who got to see Messi darting like a lizard between the muscular rocks of Leverkusen defenders, this was indeed joy in a largely depressing week for the global game, with famous clubs going into receivership, arrogant players thinking themselves more important than the sport and a long trial starting over allegations of widespread corruption in Turkish soccer. All of those dark moments were put aside by a single word spoken in Leverkusen on Tuesday.

Barcelona’s coach, Pep Guardiola, was asked on television moments after the game whether he ever thinks of resting Messi, who has played 39 of the team’s 42 games already this season. “Why?” responded Guardiola.

The coach paused, then continued, in English: “People buy a ticket to see him play. I know him — he’s a strong man, he’s just happy when he plays, and for me he’s very important when he’s fit.” End of interrogation. Temporary end, at least, of the polemic in Spain about what is wrong with Barça. Why has the best team on earth slipped 10 points behind Real Madrid in La Liga? Is it tiredness, the mental or physical fatigue of a team built around a genius and expected to perform on all continents twice a week against opponents who either mass in defense against them or kick them? Is it the injuries to key players in a small squad — players like the World Cup striker David Villa, who broke a leg, or the mercurial Andrés Iniesta and the extraordinary playmaker Xavi, who are either playing through nagging pain or in sore need of sitting out games? It is all of those things, and the fact that Messi is required to cross the Atlantic every month or so, trying to inject into his Argentina national team the fun that he enjoys so often with his club.

Here, again, the answers can be as simple or as complicated as we wish them to be.

Messi is an Argentinian by birth, but a Catalan, a product of the Barcelona academy and its way of playing, since his adolescence. He moves the way he does for Barça because of the players around him, even on occasions when the youths are thrust into the roles that Villa and Iniesta and Xavi do so exceptionally well when they are not broken.