Throughout my lifetime, the northern-hemisphere summers of even-numbered years have been dominated by one mega-event, the Olympic Games, or the other, the FIFA (men's) World Cup.

OK, depending on location, the Olympics might occasionally slip into the autumn.

But that was the full extent of variation from the norm we were expected to cope with.

The start of the 2020s, however, has seen all of that go out of the window.

The summer of 2020 did not bring the Olympic Games (thank you, COVID); and the summer of 2022 is not bringing the World Cup, whose opening match we would normally be looking forward to right about now.

It is remarkable too how the practice of staging bog standard international football matches on neutral territory, sometimes far removed from either of the nations actually lining up, has spread over the past 10 or 15 years.

So, the revelation that Leo Messi’s Argentina had rounded off a particularly worrying week for the Baltic nation of Estonia by routing its national football team 5-0 at a match played in Pamplona, the place in northern Spain known chiefly for the running of the bulls, scarcely raised an eyebrow.

What did raise eyebrows is the fact that Messi, who will soon turn 35, scored all five Argentina goals.

Such is his current form that people are starting to wonder whether he might yet crown his breathtaking career with the World Cup winner’s medal that has so far eluded him - when, that is, the 2022 World Cup finally gets under way in late November in the Gulf state of Qatar.

I did think this might happen four years ago in Russia, but France turned out to be just too strong.

This time around, though it is a beguiling fairy-tale, I fear it might be too late - particularly with the competition not kicking off this month while the little maestro is in this rich vein of form.

The most gifted footballers in the world do not, after all, have any divine right to be World Cup winners.

Some were - Pelé, Diego Maradona, Zinedine Zidane, Franz Beckenbauer; others weren’t - Johan Cruyff, George Best, Eusebio, Lev Yashin.

Another member of the sport’s pantheon who failed narrowly to secure the world title his talent merited was the player whose international goal-tally of 84 Messi overhauled in Pamplona.

Ferenc Puskás was the biggest star of the brilliant Hungarian team of the 1950s, the so-called Aranycsapat.

Like Messi, Puskás won an Olympic gold medal - in 1952 in Helsinki, when Hungary beat Yugoslavia 2-0 in the final.

Also like Messi - at least up to now - the best he could manage at a World Cup was to be a beaten finalist.

In both cases, their hopes were dashed by Germans.

Messi’s "nearly" moment came in 2014 in Brazil, when Mario Götze’s late goal was decisive.

The biggest match of Puskás’s international career had come six decades earlier at the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland.

The best concise assessment of what happened to the previously all-conquering Hungarian team at this tournament that I am aware of is contained in the British football-writer Jonathan Wilson’s haunting book on Hungarian football and its impact on the modern game, The Names Heard Long Ago.

Beginning with the moment, four minutes from time in the final, when a left-footed shot by Puskás apparently tied up the score at three-three only to be ruled offside, Wilson recalls how Hungary went into the competition as favourites, and promptly hammered South Korea 9-0.

They were even more impressive when thumping the West German team who were destined to turn the tables on them in the final, by an emphatic eight goals to three in their other group match.

With Hungary leading 5-1, however, Puskás had been fouled and forced to leave the pitch with what turned out to be a hairline fracture of the ankle.

With the benefit of hindsight, this may well have been the most significant moment of the entire competition.

In Wilson’s words, the foul would "reverberate far beyond the confines of a football pitch in Basel. At that moment, Hungarian football began its decline."

Hungary soldiered on without their talisman through a ferocious quarter-final against Brazil and a quite magnificent semi-final against holders Uruguay.

The Uruguay game - won by Hungary by four goals to two, thanks to two extra-time goals by Sándor Kocsis - remains to this day almost certainly the best football match to have been played in the Olympic capital Lausanne.

Puskás returned for the final, scored one, had his left-footed "equaliser" disallowed, but, according to Wilson, "was clearly not at his best".

The initially unfancied West Germans won the match 3-2 and were crowned world champions.

Four years later, in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, a Puskás-less Hungary were eliminated in a play-off by Wales - a nation that, like Messi, will have its own 2022 World Cup aspirations.