Though I tend to agree with you, it depends from individual to individual. Robben has only gone from strength to strength since that horror night in Johannesburg. Ronaldo is the type of player who just becomes stronger with each loss. The current generation of your nationall team have suffered numerous crushed dreams. Messi himself had his most outstanding season after World Cup heartbreak.
Can't say what will happen with Messi. For football's sake, let's hope he gets past this. I think he will have another great chance in Russia to lift the trophy, atleast he has to convince himself of that if he needs to get over this. Most importantly, he needs to be supported from all sides because this is definitely the lowest point of his career. Unfortunately, the media seems to have turned against him a bit. Who remembers the time when Messi was everyone's favorite player?
Yeah, every person is different at the end. Still. Messi in 2010 for example was only what? 22? Way too young to give up as he knew that he had at least 1 more chance in his prime. His current situation is a bit different. Family man and 4 Ballon d'Ors. Next World Cup he will be 31. Has a bit more of a "end of an era" feeling right now than 2010 IMO.
Ronaldo? Ronaldo never came 10 minutes close to winning a World Cup. I'm not even sure he ever believed he would win that trophy given his comments about Portugal as a team. Don't think he's too shattered about going out in the group stages when he can boast a CL goalscoring record and possibly win another Ballon d'Or for that in a few months. That's his personality. And club football is just not the same. If you fail to win the league or CL you get like 10 more chances. The next season, the season after, the season after season after ... That can never drag you down that much.
I guess Robben 2010 is kinda compareable. But even then Robben in the great scheme of things is just a sidekick, just another player who missed chances like Higuain today. I don't think in 2010 he felt like he was OBLIGED to win Netherlands the trophy single-handedly or that he felt too much pressure that it was going to mark his legacy and whether he's up there with Maradona or not. And it still took him 12 months to get over it. Remember 11/12 he missed a league deciding penalty against Dortmund and a penalty in the CL final and was at an absolute low with Bayern fans booing him in the 12/13 preseason in the Netherlands vs. Bayern friendly at Allianz.
It just feels like Messi really really wanted this trophy badly. I mean there was even this aura around him that he was saving himself for this months before the even had even started.
