Soccer, like any contact sport, is inevitably a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ affair. Flair and artistry are always likely to be followed by – indeed, to provoke – a crude physical response. The artistry has no known limits; it springs from the inventiveness, the genius, of the individual player. But the physical stuff is permitted only within the narrow limits set out in soccer’s rules. No tripping or kicking or jumping at or charging or striking an opponent – constraints that are violated in every game, but that, on the whole, maintain the precarious balance between skill and force.

Rarely has that balance been as sorely tested as it was last Wednesday when Chelsea faced Barcelona in a European Champions League game. The beauty came courtesy of the superb skills of Barcelona’s 18-year-old Argentine Lionel Messi. And it fell to Chelsea’s Spanish defender, Asier Del Horno, to play the spoiling role of the beast.

Poor Del Horno. For the first half hour of the game he was tormented by the diminutive Messi, who tricked his way past Del Horno at every opportunity, cutting sharply inside him, swerving smoothly outside him, outpacing him, dodging his tackles with insulting ease. Del Horno, sensing humiliation, could take no more. Contesting a bouncing ball, he went in hard on Messi and violently jabbed his studs into Messi’s knee. An obvious foul, ugly and dangerous – yet Norwegian referee Terje Hauge allowed play to continue as Messi sat on the ground, pulling stray strands of material from his Lycra shorts that had been ripped by Del Horno’s boot.

Three minutes later came the pivotal moment. As Messi gathered the ball just inside the Chelsea half, Del Horno unleashed another reckless tackle, scything ferociously into Messi’s legs. Messi jumped over the assault, stumbled, and kept going as Chelsea’s Dutch winger, Arjen Robben, came racing on to the scene to assist Del Horno. Robben stole the ball but, no defender he, quickly lost it again to the persistent Messi, who then prepared to move into the penalty area.

He didn’t get very far, a step or two, before Del Horno arrived at full speed. Totally ignoring the ball, he charged heavily into Messi. Both players crashed to the ground, but this time Hauge got it right and ejected Del Horno. Messi played on, a menace to Chelsea every time he touched the ball, a dazzling, dominant presence on the field as Barcelona took the game 2-1. All this from a 5-foot-6-inch 18-year-old playing just his 24th game for Barcelona.

Messi put his extravagant talent on display last year when he led Argentina to the under-20 World Cup title. But that was youth soccer and many doubted whether such a small player could make an equivalent impact in the senior game.

Messi showed in the under-20 games an uncanny ability to unsettle opponents, to spread nervousness. Argentina won six of its seven games; Messi was the key player in every win, scoring crucial goals in five of the games.

He had shaped a tournament in a way that no player had since Diego Maradona guided Argentina to victory in the 1986 World Cup. The comparison seems a little too perfect, for Messi, like Maradona, is a squat, left-footed attacking midfielder.

It’s almost a cliche that Messi should be hailed as the “new Maradona” – except that one of the people doing the hailing is Maradona himself, who said: “I have seen the player who will inherit my place in Argentine football and his name is Messi. I see him as very similar to me.”

Messi grew up in Rosario, where he joined the pro club Newell’s Old Boys. The youth coaches there were unanimous in praise of his talent, but there was a problem: Messi was unnaturally small. He was diagnosed as being in need of hormone treatment, which neither the club nor his family could afford. In 2000, when Messi was 13, his father moved the family to Spain, with the hope that he would find work that would enable him to pay for Lionel’s treatment. Instead, it was Messi’s talent that solved the problem. After a short trial period with Barcelona, the club took him on and agreed to pay his medical costs.

So Messi got stronger and taller. In four years at Barcelona he went from 4-foot-7 to 5-foot-6,but the real growth was the more secret, more subtle, burgeoning of his extraordinary talent.

His performance against Chelsea shattered any doubts. Messi has the strength, the fighting spirit, and the courage to excel at the top level. But way beyond those qualities – which, after all, are the common property of all great players – he has what some are already calling genius: intricate, easy, baffling skill on the ball, plus all the right soccer intuitions, like choosing the right moment to pass or to dribble, knowing when to run, where to be. But breaking down genius, reducing it to a mere catalogue of achievements, destroys its essence. Messi stands out as different from everyone else, an original, not a clone. He will do things the Messi way, no other, and it is beautiful to watch.

But not for everyone. Each time Messi touched the ball after the Del Horno ejection, he was loudly booed by the Chelsea fans. The beast in soccer was having its say, one that was articulated after the game by Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho. Already known as a formidable purveyor of sour grapes, Mourinho had not a word of praise for Messi ,but instead accused him of being a good actor. After Del Horno’s clumsy foul, Messi had rolled over on the ground two or three times – sheer theater, Mourinho claimed, exaggeration designed to sway the referee. “Barcelona is a very cultural city. They know all about theater,” was his snide comment.

But Mourinho’s churlish refusal to acknowledge Messi’s brilliance exposes the pettiness of his complaint.

In this newest confrontation of soccer’s beautiful and bestial sides, the beauty of Messi’s artistry emerges as the clear winner. It shone brilliantly in the 73rd minute of the Chelsea game when he picked his way delicately forward to the edge of the Chelsea penalty area and released an arcing 25-yard shot that beat goalkeeper Peter Cech but bounced back into play off the goal frame. A thrilling moment that looked so simple, so graceful, so beautiful.