Aleph and the endgame: Messi's redemption meets Spain's tiki-taka in a final for ages

In celebrated Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “El Aleph”, the eponymous character is a mystical point in space that contains all other points in the universe, allowing whoever looks into it to see every place on Earth from every angle simultaneously without distortion.According to the giant of Latin American literature who died on June 14 in 1986 — eight days before Maradona’s two mythical goals against England at the World Cup in Mexico that Argentina would go on to win — a man is both the victim and the flow of his destiny.This Sunday, Lionel Messi — the Aleph in Argentina’s football atmosphere — will seek the infinite in the finite at the very place in New Jersey where, lonely and defeated a decade ago, he had decided to quit the game.