Mario Alberto Kempes drew a hard line between Argentina’s World Cup greats, saying he does not believe his 1978 level can be directly compared with Diego Maradona in 1986 or Lionel Messi in 2022. The 1978 champion made the comments while following the tournament from Estados Unidos and said he will head to Dallas next to keep watching Argentina.
Kempes has been moving through the event from the opening in México to Argentina’s debut against Argelia, where he said he was among “the legends” and that three or four figures from 1978 and 1986 were together. He placed himself inside that history, but not beside its biggest names on the same pedestal, saying the phenomenon players decide matches while the group wins championships.
That distinction is the center of his argument. Kempes did not dismiss his own year, but he framed it differently. In 1978, he said, he did not score in the first three matches and then scored four goals in the other three. That is a strong tournament by any ordinary measure. It is also not, in his view, the same kind of force as Maradona or Messi, whom he described as players who could make teammates “pasar vergüenza” because of how far ahead they were in thinking with the ball.
He spoke about Diego in the same breath as Messi, saying he had the chance to play with him and recalling how he would carry the ball, feint a pass and then hook the play after others had run uselessly. For Kempes, that is what separates a great footballer from a phenomenon. A great player helps. A phenomenon alters the game before everyone else knows the move has begun. On that count, he put Maradona and Messi in a category of their own and left himself out of it.
Messi, though, was not just a name in the comparison. Kempes said the praise was earned, pointing to what he did against Argelia. He said Messi played 60 minutos and scored un hat-trick, adding that he was having fun as he always does. That description matters because it shows why the comparison keeps resurfacing whenever Argentina steps onto a major stage: the old champion is not guarding his place, he is measuring the same rare standard in real time.
It also leaves the useful question hanging in plain sight. Kempes can describe the difference between a championship player and a phenomenon, but his own 1978 record still sits inside the same conversation because Argentina keeps returning to these three eras whenever a new tournament begins. For now, his view is uncomplicated. Maradona and Messi were the kind of players who bent the game around them. Kempes was the man of 1978. He just does not pretend those things are identical.
