In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the great bard, through the character of Portia, gives the attributes of the ‘quality of mercy’. Among them he says “Tis the mightiest in the mightiest”. The same can be said about generosity and magnanimity which are qualities entirely different from patronising others. Of these qualities it can also be said that they are ‘the mightiest in the mightiest’. And, how wonderfully these qualities were captured in a short video after Spain defeated Argentina in the Football World Cup final in New York on July 19. 

There on the football ground with all the clamour and din was one of the greatest football players, if not the greatest player, of his generation the 39 year old Argentine captain Lionel Messi. He was reclining on the ground wrapped in his own silence amidst the tumult and the shouting. No one knows what thoughts were enveloping him. And, then the video captured the 19 year old Lamine Yamal of Spain who has already established himself as one of the world’s great football players walking up to him. Messi gets up. They hugged. Yamal told the media that Messi “ told me to keep going my way and that the future belongs to our generation. Those words mean as much to me as the gold medal around my neck”. He also said that he is “the best in history”. And, that he had walked up to........

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