File Photo: Captain of the Argentina National Football Team, Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi has been considered one of the greatest footballers of his time. The Argentine has touched epic heights in the sport but has not been impressive for the national team. Not until he scored a blinder against Bosnia and Herzegovina in his team's FIFA World Cup 2014 opener - signaling a wave of change in the horizon.
Trophies, plaudits and individual honours have rained down upon the record-shredding 26-year-old Barcelona sensation over the past few years, but a signature showing at a major international tournament had eluded him. All of that changed at the Maracana stadium in Rio.
Although he was a member of the Argentina team that claimed Olympic gold in Beijing in 2008, success in the World Cup and the Copa America has proved harder to come by.
A four-time Ballon d'Or-winner and three-time European champion with Barcelona, Messi's devastating ability cannot be questioned, but without definite success with Argentina in the previous editions of the World Cup, there will always be an asterisk against his achievements.
But while his previous World Cup experiences in 2006 and 2010 proved unfulfiling, there is a feeling that 2014 should be Messi's time.
As an 18-year-old in 2006, he scored once off the bench against Serbia and Montenegro, while in 2010 Diego Maradona's tactics left him overburdened as the sole creative force in an unbalanced 4-1-3-2 formation.
Now, though, he has been given everything he needs to succeed, with coach Alejandro Sabella carefully crafting his team to put Messi in an optimal position to thrive.
Having abandoned attempts to recreate Barcelona's system, Sabella now asks Messi to line up on the right side of an extravagantly gifted three-man frontline, usually alongside Gonzalo Higuain and Sergio Aguero.
With Real Madrid's Angel di Maria, man of the match in the Champions League final, also darting forward from midfield, it ensures that Messi is not the sole focus of opposition defenders' attentions, but he rejects any notion that Argentina are a one-man team.
"I don't think the Argentina national team depends on me -- far from it," he told FourFourTwo magazine recently.
"We've got a great group of players who can perform to their best and lift the trophy, which is our fundamental objective."