Look at him cry. What does a man who already has everything football can give cry for?
He is not crying over the Cup: he already lifted that one. He is crying over something else, harder to name. He cries because they were a breath away from going out, two goals down, with his penalty saved and the nets singing his funeral.
Perhaps those tears are of relief: the one who was saved by a miracle cries differently from the one who wins easily. Perhaps they are of exhaustion, the exhaustion of carrying a country on his back for twenty years without ever lowering his arms. Perhaps, and this is the deepest one, they are of farewell: he knows that every World Cup is the last, that the clock does not negotiate, that he already has more matches behind him than ahead.
Football gave him everything, and that is why it hurts him differently now: the way it hurts when you know you are going to miss something.
A man who won it all, crying like a child afraid of losing. That too is greatness: to keep feeling, after having everything.
Don’t cry, Lionel. You are still here. And as long as you are, we all dream.