I know football is a team game.. But firstly the best player and sides playmaker carries a significant part of the burden for making the team tick. Secondly I'm actually talking about Messi's performances, not Argentina's. Argentina don't have to thrash every team 4-0 for Messi to play the perfect football he's shown before. Di Maria having a poor tournament isn't responsible for Messi not being as explosive as he used to be or his decline in dribbling. At his best a few years ago he was by far the best dribbler I've ever watched, by an absolute distance, he would skip around players as if they weren't there due to that combination of ball control and agility. If you think this is the best Messi can do then fair enough, but I think you underestimate what he's capable off.
I agree with your general point, though I need to ask if you watched the Swiss game yesterday?
There are 3 separate instances which immediately comes to mind where Messi beat 3 players through dribbling - and those are only the ones I can recall. I'm not sure what the official stats were, but I think he created +-4 scoring chances for his teammates and grabbed the all important assist.
Outside of Messi, it never looked like anyone else was going to do anything. Higuain/Palacio etc were all invisible, and frankly, that defence was lucky not to have conceded 2 or 3 at least.
And I think that's what amol was referring to. Outside of what he has done - what more could any other player (always surrounded by 3-4 players) try to do to influence the game? I never watched WC '86, and hence I never comment on the Messi-Maradona (or even Pele) debates. But from what I gather, that '86 Argentinian squad was much better then this current one. Or at least the support cast was.
So once again, it's very difficult to compare players from different eras because there's just too many variables to consider.