I see a bad moon rising: I see trouble on the way. Or if not quite trouble, then some interesting times this summer for the poor old beleaguered World Cup; and indeed for Lionel Messi in what is surely a last realistic shot at the ultimate prize for the most exhilarating footballer of the modern age.

Argentina’s travelling fans are still among the most vivid memories of the last tournament in Brazil, a sweaty, gleeful, Messi-worshipping horde from across the border that in the last few days before the final seemed to be coming up through the Rio drains and falling down from the trees, emerging in ever greater numbers from the Copacabana surf.

By the end they were sleeping in cars in the Rio side-streets, packing out the bars and parading in the main streets, and all the while singing that song to the tune of Bad Moon Rising that ends with the line: “You’re going to see Messi, he’ll bring us back the cup.” Except, of course, it didn’t happen like that. And it seems even less likely to happen this time around given Argentina’s 6-1 shellacking at the hands of Spain on Wednesday.

In mitigation, Spain were sensationally good in Madrid. Plus, of course, Messi didn’t play, watching instead from the stands and looking as mournfully blank as he had four years ago, wandering off the Maracaña pitch past a huge screen proclaiming him the player of the tournament.

And really it is the sense of heaviness that is striking here. “The World Cup is like a revolver to his head,” the manager, Jorge Sampaoli, had said even before the evisceration by Spain, referring to Messi having to carry both his team and his own elite sporting destiny.

But his words chimed uneasily with the wider weather fronts of Russia 2018, a tournament that has become ever more grey and ominous, from the relentless politicking on all sides, to the bad moon that hangs over every Fifa event, an ugliness spawned in the Sepp Blatter end-times that must now play itself out over four more years of curdled power-play.

Against this backdrop the idea that Messi, now 30 and who has done nothing but bring sporting joy, might get another shot at winning a World Cup has felt like a glimmer of something redemptive, a happy ending of sorts, a way of making this tournament beautiful.

Even this is complicated, however. It would be fair to suggest at this point there is nothing particularly subversive or novel about the world’s most famous multimillionaire footballer illuminating Vladimir Putin’s circus. Better, from this perspective, for France to go and win it after Tuesday’s reports of racist Russian taunts, or for some perennially menaced Baltic state to make a late entrance and thrash the host nation in the semis.

But this is where Messi himself becomes interesting, where glory at this World Cup might also add another layer, or at least some actual substance to the basic meaning of Lionel.

Let’s face it, away from the on-field feats, the most interesting thing about Messi is how startlingly uninteresting he is, the peculiar remoteness of his public persona. Has any near-ubiquitous public face ever had so little content, so little depth? He seems nice. But Messi really does have nothing to declare but his own genius, no context beyond that endlessly gushing well of brilliance.

This is not meant as a criticism. There is no extra obligation for sports people to intersect with the wider world. But usually great athletes just can’t help being political beings. Diego Maradona got to mean something simply by being poor and brilliant and flawed, the charismatic outsider with shades of darkness and light. Even Pelé, who seemed to have spent most of the 1970s travelling the world in a fur-lined helicopter wearing a solid gold hat, had a depth of meaning to his feats, a kid from Bauru who emerged from poverty to conquer the sporting world.

And then we have Messi. For a while his defiantly ordinary demeanour felt like it might carry some significance, a kind of holy fool dynamic. The best player in the world didn’t have tattoos and a douchebag hairstyle. Then he got tattoos and a douchebag hairstyle. So that was that. At the end of which the meaning of Messi is, simply, that being really good at football is really good. Being the best is the best. Have a good time – all the time.

Except, of course, there is something else here. The joy. As Sampaoli also said in Madrid, Messi needs to be able to enjoy football, to relax, to exist as a free spirit, to become his most exhilarating self. And this is perhaps Messi’s wider significance, a reminder that playfulness and joy are the essence of what he does, that he succeeds by communicating this basic sense of freedom, of something upliftingly impish.

This enduring spark is the most striking thing about his years of success in the most managed of footballing worlds, a place of corporate lockdown and annihilating physicality. In the middle of this, hiding in plain sight, Messi is the opposite of control, an antidote to grey.

It isn’t so far-fetched he could do it in Russia too. Argentina very rarely lose with him in the team. Messi himself looks fitter than four years ago and more at ease, an oddly gentle supercharged sporting genius who is still, and for all the gongs and glories, an element of grace within the machine.