The Warm-Up: Leo Messi is incredible; hats off to Panama; USA crash out

Only when you have stared into the abyss can you truly appreciate life.

Words the Warm-Up holds dear on its early morning trudge to work through west London’s post-industrial sprawl.

But also relevant for Argentina, who just a few hours ago had their World Cup qualification fate outside their own hands – before going behind in the first minute of their must-probably-win-then-fingers-crossed-for-results-elsewhere finale against Ecuador.

So, a decent time for Leo Messi to stop pretending it’s important to involve his team-mates, and win the match on his own.

Messi unleashed a hat-trick to secure a 3-1 win, while Peru and Chile’s failure to win sent Argentina directly to Russia (where they’ll spend eight months waiting patiently for everyone else to arrive).

Whether this sham of a one-man team will be equipped to do anything of worth once they get there can wait for another day. After weeks being urged to IMAGINE A WORLD CUP WITHOUT ARGENTINA (hint: much the same as one with them, only with fewer pundits slagging Messi off), we can finally relax.

Which, ironically, is also true for Alexis Sanchez and Chile, who became South America’s highest-profile non-qualifiers as they lost 3-0 to Brazil.

Sanchez has not had a proper break for several millennia due to consecutive summers on international duty – great news for Arsenal fans that his first proper holiday since puberty comes the moment he leaves the club on a free.

So yeah, he’ll be nice and rested when he gets going at Manchester City.

Of secondary interest, but something we’ll be hearing about A LOT – Messi’s heroics could make the Ballon d’Or very interesting indeed.

Back in spring, we all sort of gave up caring and awarded it to Cristiano Ronaldo on the basis of Real Madrid’s absolute dominance of club football and the lack of plausible alternatives.

Could a single, heroic qualifying performance change all that?

Well, maybe ask Cristiano Ronaldo, whose hat-trick against Sweden in a Euro 2014 play-off led to FIFA extending the voting deadline for the 2013 award which eventually went the Portugal star’s way.

Granted, it also coincided with the PR calamity of Sepp Blatter hilariously rinsing Ronaldo at the Oxford Union, which is always worth a re-watch.

Short-sighted as it may be to judge FIFA presidents on comedy value alone, the Warm-Up can only sigh ruefully that we’ll never see Gianni Infantino stomping around performing an exceptionally weird Ronaldo impersonation. It’s football’s loss.

We believe the correct vernacular for the USA’s World Cup qualifying campaign is ‘Dumpster Fire’.

The US last night failed to qualify for Russia 2018, losing 2-1 to an already-eliminated Trinidad and Tobago side.

They finished fifth out of six in the final CONCACAF qualifying group, behind Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras.

Far be it from the Warm-Up to impose its dismissive Eurocentric attitudes on a vibrant football region, but that’s absolutely crap.

Before we get all Gloaty McGloatface about the US’s failure, they’re consistently one of the most fun teams at World Cups – in their absence, let us spend the winter months looking up Panamanian footballers who aren’t Julio Dely Valdes.

Over in Europe, France went through as expected and the Netherlands were eliminated – also as expected.

And in the first time anyone has typed the words ‘spare a thought for Switzerland’, spare a thought for Switzerland who came into their game against Portugal with a perfect nine wins out of nine, and somehow ended it in the playoffs.

TEAMS QUALIFIED LAST NIGHT: Portugal, France, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Panama.

Panama’s first goal? Yeah, not that much a goal. The chuckling commentator really says it all.

Oh wow.

Another call for The Match, a new podcast in which footballers talk in depth about a particular game that marked their career. Episode two is a bittersweet affair with Danny Higginbotham.

And if you’ve never wanted a bittersweet affair with Danny Higginbotham, the Warm-Up doesn’t even want to know you.

Does four years ago count as retro? Given it can hardly remember four minutes ago, the Warm-Up is saying yes. Here’s Ronaldo’s Ballon d’Or winning hat-trick against Sweden.

You can either look patiently at your watch for the next 76 hours until Big Football resumes on Saturday, or you can watch England v Mexico in the U17 World Cup on Eurosport Player. It’s entirely up to you.