I agree that Messi was the most important player for Argentina in winning the world title.
However, the same cannot be said for Ronaldo and his performance in Qatar.
Ronaldo did not play at his usual level and Portugal started to play well in attack only when Ronaldo was dropped from the Portugal first team.
Instead of accepting the coach's decision, Ronaldo rebelled and brought discord into the team, and the media wrote more about why Ronaldo is not playing than about the Portuguese national team. The atmosphere in the team was broken and I think that is the main reason why Portugal was not successful at the last world cup in Qatar.
Same people who said Messi was too old to be the best player, also were the players who praised Di Maria for playing that well. I agree that on the final game Di Maria played a perfect game, amazing penalty thanks to him, amazing goal, it's all him, he played amazing.
But, Messi played as well as anyone else and he did helped the team on so many occasions. Dude may or may not be the best when the next one comes, but he won't be bad enough to just leave from the rtoster, he will still be in the starting eleven without a doubt, who could be better than a 37-38 year old Messi? Like I am saying, he may not be the best player in all of the team, but he will be there to win for sure and start the games. It's going to be the very last one for sure though.