Barcelona's Claudio Bravo Stands in the Way of Lionel Messi's Argentina Dream

When you look down Lionel Messi’s long list of honours, you can’t help but be struck by the difference between the club and country sections.

For Barcelona, the Argentinean magician has won prize after prize—and he won everything possible in the 2014/15 campaign—but his international roll of honour is limited to just two winners’ medals.

There was the World Youth Championship in the Netherlands a decade ago, when Messi’s two penalties in the final beat Nigeria and led a squad including current internationals Pablo Zabaleta, Ezequiel Garay, Fernando Gago, Lucas Biglia and Sergio Aguero to glory, and then there was Olympic Gold in Beijing three years later, again versus Nigeria in the final.

That’s it. Ten years of international football and over 100 senior caps boiling down to two medals. In Messi’s vast trophy cabinet they hardly need a shelf of their own, just a small space in the corner will do.

A year ago, had the bounce of the ball been kinder or Rodrigo Palacio taken that chance in extra time when he lofted the ball over Manuel Neuer then things might have been different, of course.

Messi could be a World Cup winner, with that medal perhaps deserving of its own room instead of a prized spot in the cabinet. While Argentinians have long since abandoned an initial and puzzling mistrust of a player they perhaps saw as more Spanish than South American when he first broke into the team, Messi will still be desperate to crown perhaps the most impressive spell of his career by leading his nation to some form of glory.

Its good news for him, then, that Argentina are in the final of the Copa America on Saturday evening. The bad news is that he’ll be up against his Barcelona team-mate Claudio Bravo, Chile’s captain and goalkeeper.

After spending his debut Barca season exclusively playing in La Liga—where he won the Zamora trophy for the lowest ratio of goals conceded to games played—Bravo hasn’t shown an aversion to the cup competitions as he’s kept three clean sheets in five games during the host nation’s run to the Santiago final.

There has been a real sense that the Chileans are building something special and that glory here could cap it off, but when Bravo was inevitably asked about Messi in the build-up to the clash his response was somewhat predictable.

Speaking at a press conference, Bravo said:

The truth is that it is not easy, seeing the quality that Leo has and what he has done throughout his career, it's been amazing.

I think that our focus is the team - that as a team we can control Leo and the other class players.

So far, so very predictable, but given that Messi has only scored one goal in the tournament so far—a penalty in Argentina’s opening match against Paraguay—Bravo is quite right to emphasise that the team ethos is driving Argentina, but at the same time he must have a feeling that his club team-mate is due to find the net.

Indeed, Messi has now failed to score for Argentina from open play for 918 minutes, but as his virtuoso display in having a hand in all six goals in the semi-final against Paraguay shows, that’s hardly a matter worth fretting about.

What is, though, is that relative underachievement on the international stage when it comes to his medal collection.

If that is to weigh on his mind in front of thousands of screaming Chileans in Santiago on Saturday evening, then Bravo, former Barca team-mate Alexis Sanchez and company can take advantage, shock Argentina and leave more dust to gather on the international shelf of Messi’s trophy cabinet.