“Messi Was the Best Player at the World Cup, Not Rodrigo” — Odumodublvck Reignites a Debate That Was Never Really Settled
Nigerian rap star Odumodublvck has never been shy about his football opinions. This time, he’s wading straight into one of the most contested debates to come out of the 2026 World Cup and he’s not alone in thinking the official verdict got it wrong.
Odumodublvck posted a short, pointed statement on X: “MESSI WAS THE BEST PLAYER AT THE WORLD CUP. NOT RODRIGO.” It’s classic Odumodu blunt, capitalized for emphasis, and zero interest in hedging his opinion. The post quickly stirred debate among football fans weighing in from every angle of the Messi discourse.
One small correction worth making here: the player he’s referring to is almost certainly Rodri Manchester City’s Ballon d’Or-winning midfielder who captained Spain to their World Cup final win over Argentina not “Rodrigo.” It’s an easy mix-up, but an important one, since Rodri is very much the actual name attached to the award Odumodu is disputing.
To understand what Odumodu is reacting to, you need the full picture of how Argentina’s 2026 campaign ended. Messi led Argentina all the way to the World Cup final, hoping to cap off his legendary career with back-to-back titles. It wasn’t meant to be Spain beat Argentina 1-0 after extra time, denying Messi the storybook ending. Rodri, Spain’s captain and midfield general, was subsequently awarded the FIFA World Cup Golden Ball the official award given to the tournament’s best overall player, an honor Messi himself had won four years earlier in Qatar.
That decision was immediately controversial. Despite Argentina losing the final, Messi’s overall tournament numbers were extraordinary: 8 goals and 4 assists across 7 matches, with an average match rating of 8.33 according to independent trackers statistics that, on paper, dwarf what most tournament MVPs have ever produced.
Here’s what makes Odumodu’s tweet more than just fan loyalty talking: a respected independent football body has already made the exact same call. Just days after the final, the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) broke from FIFA’s official decision and named Messi not Rodri their own Best Player of the 2026 World Cup, based on what they described as a rigorous, data-driven methodology weighing match ratings, goals, assists, and knockout-round impact across the full tournament.
The IFFHS didn’t mince words in their reasoning, stating plainly that their conclusion was “not by sentiment, not by reputation, but by the unimpeachable authority of the data.” It’s a direct rebuke of FIFA’s Golden Ball decision, and it’s given fans like Odumodu real statistical ammunition for their argument this isn’t just nostalgia for an aging legend, it’s a genuine, credentialed dispute over how “best player” should actually be measured when a team loses the final.
Even opposition players seemed to agree before a ball was kicked in the final. Rodri himself, in the buildup to the match, called Messi “the best player of all time,” while Spain teammate and midfielder Toni Kroos separately praised Messi’s performance throughout the tournament as evidence of “football intelligence” that kept growing even at 39 years old.
This isn’t a random hot take from the Nigerian rapper he’s been an outspoken Messi loyalist for years, well before this World Cup controversy. Back in 2023, Odumodu publicly settled his own personal GOAT debate between Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, crowning Messi for a reason that went beyond football itself: he drew a direct parallel to his own career grind, noting it took him seven years to break through in the music industry while many of his peers blew up in their early twenties. “When I look at Messi, I draw inspiration,” he said at the time, pointing to Messi’s history of losing multiple major finals with Argentina before finally breaking through to win the World Cup as “a symbol of hope, a symbol of determination.”
Framed against that backdrop, this latest tweet reads less like a random football opinion and more like a continuation of a years-long personal connection Odumodu has drawn between Messi’s story and his own.
Whether FIFA’s official Golden Ball or the IFFHS’s competing honor is the “correct” verdict is ultimately a matter of methodology and opinion but the fact that a credible independent body sided with Messi over the tournament’s official pick gives fans like Odumodu real grounds to keep pushing back on the final word. For a player whose career has been defined as much by heartbreak and redemption as by trophies, it’s a fittingly contested footnote to what was, either way, an extraordinary final World Cup run.
