Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Messi’s World Cup: Rise of a Legend’ on AppleTV+, a Four-Part Documentary Look At The Soccer Great’s International Career

For the better part of the last two decades, Lionel Messi has been recognized as the greatest soccer player in the world, and the wins and accolades stacked up. For too long, though, the greatest goal–a World Cup win for Argentina–eluded him. In Messi’s World Cup: Rise of a Legend, a four-part documentary debuting on Apple TV+, we see both his career and his ultimately-successful chase for that elusive win in Qatar 2022.

MESSI’S WORLD CUP: RISE OF A LEGEND : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Eight Ballon d’Or honors, ten La Liga titles, four Champions League victories… zero World Cup wins. Lionel Messi dominated at the club level, but his first four appearances on the biggest stage found him coming up short. As he approached the back end of his career, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar presented Messi’s last best chance to bring a title home to Argentina. Messi’s World Cup: Rise of a Legend provides some basic context on the great’s long career through extensive interviews (including with the man himself), and sets the stage for his greatest victory.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: If you’ve been keeping up on your Apple TV+ documentaries, then Messi’s World Cup: Rise of a Legend might strike you as a companion piece to Messi Meets America, which debuted on the streaming service in December 2023. Both programs come from the same production team, and while that one focused on Messi’s current club career, following his move to Inter Miami, this one covers the international end of his game. They’re complementary, rather than redundant.

Performance Worth Watching: Most of the interviews in the documentary are conducted in Spanish with subtitles, which makes sense when contextualizing Messi’s presence in the international game–we’re hearing the story straight from Argentinian people (including Messi’s teammates). Figures such as Argentinian journalist Sofi Martinez work to tell just how much Messi matters in his home country.

Memorable Dialogue: “It’s unbearable to be Messi,” a Spanish-language commentator says over a montage of Messi’s long history of struggles in the World Cup, and a shot of fans burning his iconic Argentina jersey, “but it’s extraordinary to be Messi,” he follows, and the camera cuts to a skyscraper-sized mural of the beloved star. (In conclusion, Messi is a land of contrasts.)

Sex and Skin: None, other than that sexy ball-handling. (Not a euphemism.)

Our Take: “He has said it’s his last World Cup,” an announcer intones as the Argentinian team steps onto the pitch for their first match in Qatar 2022, “is it going to be his World Cup?” That narrative–simple, but powerful–was easily the biggest storyline of the 2022 tournament. There was hardly anything else that Messi hadn’t done in his career, but there was also nothing that could possibly matter as much as bringing home a trophy for his home country.

Messi’s World Cup: Rise of a Legend works to give some context–both in describing the enormity of Messi’s exploits, and in illustrating the importance of the game to his countrymen. There’s nice flashbacks, including an endearing segment showing a babyfaced Messi when he was first recruited to Barcelona’s youth academy, and footage of a 17-year-old Messi scoring his very first goal for the club. We see him quickly rise to stardom at the club level, and make the patriotic decision to play for his native Argentina rather than for Spain at the international level. He reflects in interviews on the experience of making his first World Cup–and scoring his first World Cup goal–at only 18 years old in the 2006 tournament.

Each of these flashbacks is done in service of the main story, though–and that’s the chase for that elusive title in Qatar. Much of the first episode’s runtime is dedicated to their opening match, a stunning 1-2 defeat at the hands of the far-less-regarded Saudi national team. It’s a shocking turn of events in a tournament that many had hoped would be Messi’s final coronation. Some of the best footage in the episode is the Saudi team’s manager, Hervé Renard, giving a booming speech at halftime, excoriating his team in a manner one commentator dubs “French Churchill”: “Messi, he has the ball, take your phone, you can make a picture with him if you want! He has the goal!”. His team comes out of the locker room with a fresh fire, and comes back from a one-nil deficit to win. Even if you know what’s happening in the rest of the tournament–and frankly, if you didn’t already, I’ve already spoiled it several times here, Argentina wins the World Cup–it’s dramatic enough a start to make you think they might not do it, and enough to keep you watching to make sure they still do.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you’re a longtime fan, Messi’s World Cup: Rise of a Legend is a nice retrospective of his international career. If you’re a new fan brought in by his move to MLS, you can start with Messi Meets America and then come here for the rest of the story.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.