There is a particular kind of grief in sport that has little to do with defeat. It arrives not when a team loses, but when time finally catches up with the players who once seemed beyond its reach.

This FIFA World Cup has felt full of those moments. Luka Modric leaving with Croatia gone. Cristiano Ronaldo, who for so long bent matches to his will, walking away from another one. Manuel Neuer, for years football’s last great illusionist in goal, no longer carrying the same aura of permanence.

These were not just elite footballers; they were part of the architecture of the sport, figures so omnipresent for so long that they came to feel less like athletes and more like fixed points in our own lives.

Every major tournament had them somewhere in the frame. Modric gliding through the midfield with that strange combination of delicacy and defiance, Ronaldo summoning goals and drama with the force of habit, Neuer redrawing what a sweeper-goalkeeper could be. Their brilliance stretched across so many summers that it began to feel normal, and that was perhaps the greatest trick of all. Greatness, repeated often enough, starts to masquerade as permanence.

But sport, with its occasional cruelty, has a way of reminding us that permanence was never part of the bargain. This World Cup has exposed the mortality of men who once seemed immune to it. The legs do not always obey. The recovery takes a little longer. The moments still come, but not always on command. The body, eventually, begins to negotiate with the mind. And so, one by one, the stars who seemed to live outside time have begun to look what they always were underneath the myth: mere mortals.

Perhaps that is why Lionel Messi’s presence in this tournament feels so affecting. He is still here, still resisting and still playing as if he has found a private loophole in the laws of ageing. Around him, Argentina carries the urgency of men who know exactly what this moment means.

Against time: Lionel Messi remains the old giant still holding back the inevitable with that familiar left foot and stubborn shrug of genius. | Photo Credit: AFP

There is something faintly familiar in the way his teammates seem to be fighting not only for a trophy but for the dignity of a farewell, for the chance to make sure that when their great man finally walks away, he does so with his head held high. It recalls, in its own way, those late-career years of Sachin Tendulkar, when Indian cricket seemed to understand that every innings, every tour, every knock might be one of the last chances to honour a figure who had towered over its imagination for a generation.

The runs still mattered, but so did the ceremony of care around him, the collective desire to protect the ending of someone who had given so much. Maybe that is why these exits land differently as we get older. When we were younger, sporting heroes felt eternal. Tendulkar seemed as though he had always existed and somehow always would.

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Then came Roger Federer, making tennis look too graceful to be real; Rafael Nadal, with his fury, faith and wounded endurance; Novak Djokovic, the last great disruptor who has also now reached the stage where each tournament is shadowed by the thought of how many more are left.

In cricket, Virat Kohli has moved from prodigy to elder statesman, playing just one format. And now football’s old gods, too, are being claimed by time. Their ageing has a way of confronting us with our own. You notice the greying beard in the mirror. The stiffness in your back after a long flight. The niggling pain in the knee after a walk up to the stadium media centre.

Passing seasons: Virat Kohli, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal, who once felt eternal, now stand as reminders that even the brightest eras must eventually yield to time. | Photo Credit: AFP, GETTY IMAGES, AP

You tell yourself these are manageable, that life is carrying on, that the body can be bargained with. But then you watch Modric labour where once he floated, or Ronaldo rage against the limits of legs that no longer answer every call, and that illusion breaks a little. If they can fade, then what chance do the rest of us have? These men were supposed to outlast ordinary rules. We were the mortals.

That, perhaps, is why sport’s greatest stars matter beyond medals and numbers. They do not simply entertain us; they become markers of our own passage through life. We remember where we were when Tendulkar made that hundred, when Federer glided through another Wimbledon fortnight, when Nadal clawed through another five-set war, when Ronaldo leapt above defenders as though gravity could be compromised, when Messi finally won a World Cup.

They become companions to our years. Their careers are the thread that stitches together school and work, first love and heartbreak, new cities and old friendships, parents growing older and children growing up. And so, when they begin to disappear, it is never only their ending we are mourning. It is the passing of our own seasons too.

Maybe that is the ache running through this World Cup. Beneath the tactics and scorelines, beneath the noise of a new generation arriving, there is the unmistakable sense of an era loosening its grip. The old giants are not all gone yet. Messi remains, still defiant, holding back the inevitable with that familiar left foot and that stubborn little shrug of genius. But even his survival sharpens the feeling rather than easing it. It reminds us that the ending is near.

And perhaps that is enough for now. One last run. One last attempt to hold the darkness off a little longer. One last tournament in which the old gods can still be glimpsed in the light, even if the light is beginning to fade.

Published on Jul 08, 2026