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Yes, he was two different children.
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And if Leo had not been a Messi and had not made it as a professional, where would he be now?
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I think he would be with his family. Maybe he would have made his own family, as he now has, and of which we are very proud and we hope that one day he will bring his son Thiago to see the school that he attended. That is what all of us teachers hope for. I think that, yes, he would be surrounded by all his family …
… I get emotional when I talk about him.
’93, six years old, the year of the birth of María Sol … bad at adapting to school environment, hygiene practices, effort shown, manual expression, music, writing and physics.
’94, under the tutelage of Mónica Dómina. Bad at adapting to the school environment, creativity and effort shown.
’95, eight years old … spectacular progress. Very good at mathematics. Very good at creative writing, good at oral expression. Not a single bad report. Cintia helped him a lot. ‘An extension of himself, always together,’ says Dómina. Ten in PE, very good behaviour.’ (Extract from Toni Frieros, Messi: El Tesoro del Barça.)
Leo was protected by both adults and children. Because he was small. Because he was good with the ball. Because he was a good kid. Because he was a son, or a friend’s son. For that cheeky smile. Because he was reserved; not shy, but introverted, guarded, even. No one crossed him, no one gave him any aggravation. At least not at school, he had them all won over. It is easier to grow as a person, as a footballer, even, with all that protection giving you a safety net.
All children go through a testing time at school that has nothing to do with studying. The mob will bully them, it always happens. Childhood can be cruel. When it’s your turn make sure you come out of it well. Leo played well with a ball and this drew people to him and helped him to be respected, loved, needed and protected. He was small and conscious of his size, but the rest of the yard ignored this difference because he never failed to impress those who played alongside him, those who watched him as he played. So he was never bullied. There were fights to be on his team because with him on your side you were sure to win. And better to win rather than lose the yard games, because the defeats had to be put up with for the rest of the day. Even when there were boys missing in the older grades’ teams, they would invite him to play for them so that he could help them become champions. And Leo obliged, leading with his silence and his game. Just as now: more by his actions than by his words.
But it couldn’t all be football; the teachers could not allow that passion for the ball, for the playground match, to take over the pupils’ lives to the point where it was impossible to make them understand that playtime had ended. The teachers’ challenge with Leo was to disengage him from the game. And distancing him from the ball, from this invisible but oh so tangible connection, was a daily struggle.
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Today the teachers cite Messi as an example of …?
The question is directed at Cristina Castañeira, the new head teacher at Las Heras school, who did not know Leo and who views the phenomenon that was Leo’s presence from a certain distance and with some surprise.
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I don’t know, I don’t know … just about everyone who comes to this school knows about Leo, they all know he used to be here. I don’t know if it’s explicit but it’s here all the time. Now I’m in charge, I’m going to see if we can create a Messi corner, with all the cuttings. There’s nothing anywhere.
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Is that good for the students; to create his own special corner?
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I don’t know, but so many things get done in his name …
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… so you feel that something should be done that can serve as an example, a motivation …
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What do I know … we have … the Argentine culture allows these situations of … we are very much of…
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Legend, myth …
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Yes, yes, of course, the success of Messi is not going to be on the curriculum, but it would be good to have something so that when people come from outside we could always be ready to show them things. Or to him if one day he comes back here, because he has been to the school before. I have been in this profession for 30 years and I always follow school procedure. This seems like I am departing from procedure, but, anyway, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be that strict. I don’t think they’ll applaud me for it, but that isn’t the idea; the idea is that there should be a Messi corner that will serve as a reminder of him.
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Leo, the public Leo, represents a series of commendable values.
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Of course, above all, because he is a person of whom one can be proud. Messi has those values inside him that one would like to instil in others.
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An Argentinian friend of mine, a footballer, told me that the government should get hold of Messi once a month and get him to say ‘Brush your teeth’, and then suddenly all the country would brush them, or ‘behave yourselves at school’, and then suddenly the whole country would change. I don’t know if it could come to that …
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Yes, it could …
When Leo’s grandmother took him for training with Grandoli after school, they would have crossed the fields of the old quarter that will probably in the future become – who knows? – some kind of business park or maybe – now that the council has loaned the land to the Messi family – pitches created so as to train young footballers who share Leo’s dreams.
If there was no training he would meet up to play with friends from the neighbourhood, friends like Diego Vallejos: ‘We often did things together, there was always some new trick to learn, something to try or something to do. We weren’t really mischievous – sometimes we would wreck flowerbeds with the ball, or use gates as goals … We played with an air pistol … we did a lot of things. Coming out of his house, on the left-hand side about 200 metres down, there is an open space: this was the Camp Nou of Argentina. This is where he took his first steps in football. Where we used to have our kickabouts, where we ran, where we hid … it was our place.’
At Fragotti’s, a nearby store, Leo would use the iron door to do one-twos to prevent his friends stealing the ball from him. It was an age where neither time nor clearly marked out lines existed, and few limitations were put on them other than those set by their school or parents.
‘We cut the wire fences [that surrounded the old quarter] to be able to play and time and again were chased out by some of the military people because we weren’t supposed to be there,’ recalls another neighbour, Walter Barrera. ‘But the thing was that this field was perfect for us to play football because it had a wonderful grass surface that no one ever walked on and was great to play on. Sometimes they took us by surprise while we were playing and took us indoors where they had a type of cell. But nothing happened: they would take you in through one door and then let you out through another; more than anything it was just to scare us.’
Leo spent his primary school years in Las Heras before starting his secondary education, at the age of 13, at Juan Mantovani Middle School on the Avenida Uriburu, also close to home, only to leave it just four months later: in his mind, his future was away from all that he knew. At Juan Mantovani he did not have his inseparable soulmate, Cintia, at his side; some of the things closest to him were beginning to change.
Leo is the benefactor not of that school, but of his first one at Las Heras: over the past decade he has donated the equivalent of two years of the total school budget. And he visited the school in 2005. One of the teachers had a son who had played football with him and made the most of that contact by inviting him along for the school’s anniversary. They were putting on an event and Leo turned up. He wasn’t as well known then as he is now, but he still made their day. And one afternoon two years later, towards the evening, he returne
d again, this time to see his cousin, Bruno Biancucchi. It was a surprise visit and he arrived with his head down, quiet, hiding behind Bruno’s mother, his Aunt Marcela. He was dying of embarrassment.
Suddenly something switched on in his head. He began to connect with the other children, to talk to them. He went around all the classrooms, kissing people, signing autographs and allowing himself to be photographed. Three memorable hours for both students and parents in a school where, except perhaps for the playground breaks, hardly anything ever seems to happen.
A boy from the first year, no more than five years old, said to a friend of more or less the same age and size, wearing the same little shorts and with the same little school smock: ‘Pinch me.’
2
Waiting for Leo
A true story (with scenes and imaginary meetings set in two acts).
Characters (see Appendix for full list of characters).
We hear from Leo’s team-mates, coaches and technical directors during his years at Newell’s, some of his opponents, neighbours and others who have played a part in his life. They speak with a touching devotion, but also of time tinged with melancholy. This is what can happen when genius touches your life.
There are plenty of names and they all have huge relevance – this is, after all, their story as well as Leo’s. But allow your imagination to be suspended while you read this. You don’t have to remember who is who, or who says what. In a way, they all symbolise a single character who represents all those that accompanied him in Rosario. So if you get lost in the maelstrom of names, just latch onto the hand of the kid who couldn’t grow.
The action takes place in Rosario, in the late nineties, the last years of a forward-looking Argentina. The first act is set in a cafeteria at Malvinas, the training centre for youth teams of Newell’s.
ACT ONE
Scene One
Voices can be heard off. The set is lit by a single light.
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Where’s Leo?
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He’s got hepatitis, so they say.
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Ah.
The scene goes dark and the words SIX YEARS EARLIER appear. On the wall of the set, the following video is projected:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GFeiJEGjUo
It shows a five-year-old Messi who collects the ball and controls it. He doesn’t pass it, but searches out the route to goal. He dribbles past opponents moving from side to side, until he can hit an accurate shot away from the goalkeeper. And he scores. He turns and runs back into his own half, with the minimum of gestures. Taking little steps. Waiting for the game to restart. Later, his side kicks off and the first touch is to Messi who heads for goal, dribbling once again past whoever crosses his path. The ball is almost as high as his knees.
It is a game played at the Malvinas, a name with particular connotations and where the Newell’s Old Boys youngsters play seven-a-side, also called ‘baby’ football. The simple sports centre is divided into two parts by Vera Mújica Avenue and the best cared-for pitch is pitch number one – it has a stand and hosts most of the games. Such as the one in the video.
Walking from Leo’s home was impossible, it was too far, so someone always had to bring him – his father, mother, the father of a team-mate perhaps, and often he would arrive in a white Renault 12 that belonged to the father of his friend Agustin, a car that would be driven down Uriburu Avenue until it reached Boulevard Orono, and then up, crossing Independence Park (where the Newell’s stadium was located) up to Pellegrini Avenue. You had to turn to the left before arriving at Francia and two blocks further you turned left again, by Zeballos Street. The main gate was at number 3185. Inside is a mural with all the names of the players who have made it into the first team. Leo’s name isn’t there yet.
Between the entrance and the goal of pitch one there are two small buildings: the café, with tables and chairs, and the office area. There’s always something going on around here: fathers sitting around with coffee or beer talking football, their sons kitted out in their NOB shirts, people going in and out, older men who used to be at the club and who now come by to see what’s happening, friends of the fathers …
In the Malvinas cafeteria, while keeping an eye on the children as they play on the adjacent field, a group of friends chat as they sit at round tables with a beer or a coffee. It is mid-afternoon. Some time ago, someone removed the Malvinas sign that hung in the entrance and now we see it in a corner, abandoned, its corner rusting. Painted on the wall at the back of the set, a building of two floors. The ground floor has a door that leads to offices with random papers strewn about, the odd trophy on the floor and others on a shelf. On the second floor there is a door, which, strangely leads nowhere. Nobody can explain this. Maybe the money ran out and there wasn’t enough left to put in a staircase. Hardly anyone goes up to the second floor, the club’s office is on the first one. On the edge of the set, between the actors and the audience, are some goal nets.
Gabriel Digerolamo (coach, NOB): The day they brought him to me I said, ‘well, this is something totally different from what one would expect, no?’
Ernesto Vecchio (coach, NOB): He had a spectacular technique; no one taught him that, he was born with it.
Gabriel Digerolamo: You never expected that something so diminutive could make such an explosive impact. He was someone who thought about what he was going to do, and then did it: he went from right to left, from left to right, through the centre, moving deep, and always with the goal in his mind, always there, inside his head.
Ernesto Vecchio: Before he even got to Newell’s the whole of Rosario was talking about the talent of a young boy who played for Abanderado Grandoli.
Diego Rovira (No. 9 with the juniors at NOB): I had arrived at Newell’s halfway through 1998. My first training session was at the Bella Vista site, where the first team train. We played a friendly against Renato Cesarini. We won 7–0, something like that. Three of the goals were scored by a tiny, extremely quick and skilful little feller. I didn’t know anyone, but he was the first to catch my attention. It was Leo.
Rosario was getting to know Leo because he was starring in the inter-school tournaments, like the popular Alfi league. Here you would meet technical directors, scouts, trainers with eyes sharpened by years of watching coaching sessions and ‘baby’ football matches. Rodrigo and Matías were in the junior ranks of NOB and it was Rodrigo who suggested that Leo was ready to play for Newell’s in preliminary tournaments at the start of the Rosario season. So at the beginning of 1994, at the age of six years and seven months, he played for a few weeks with a number of the Newell’s youth teams, afternoon and evening.
Roberto Mensi (director of NOB): At the time of picking a player, primarily what you have in mind are his technical qualities, then his physical attributes and finally you take a look at the home life of the boy.
Quique Domínguez (coach, NOB): At Newell’s there was a philosophy, driven by Jorge Bernardo Griffa, a former player with Atlético de Madrid: Newell’s has to have the best players, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of losing a great talent. So I would take my car and stop and wait five minutes watching a kids’ game and, if there was something that grabbed my attention, I would get out of the car, get to the side of the pitch and ask, ‘are you the mother?’, ‘yes’, ‘has your boy signed for any club?’, and if he had, I would say, ‘wouldn’t he like to play for Newell’s?’ We would steal them before they could be stolen from us. By way of natural selection really, Leo always played alongside the best players in the area.
Gabriel Digerolamo: Claudio Vivas came to see me, the one who was assistant to Marcelo Bielsa, and said, ‘You are going to have a boy here who is out of this world.’ He played three or four games with my team, and with other coaches at the club, like Walter Lucero, a few others.
Quique Domínguez: When it came to comparing Leo with his rivals in terms of quality the gap was vast, and I mean vast. Up against a defender, eight out of ten times Leo would do
exactly what he wanted; the defender got it right and almost recovered the ball once and lost possession on the other occasion. The difference was enormous. Today, Leo seems still to be a superior player compared to the rest, but the rest are now players from Real Madrid, from Serie A in Italy, from the Premiership in England …
Gabriel Digerolamo: At the end of the preliminary tournament we asked Leo if he wanted to play for us.
Ernesto Vecchio: After watching him play, we spoke to the parents and reached an agreement. He joined Newell’s. All the Messis are Newell’s fans.
Except for Matías. As we know, he supports Rosario Central.
And so it was that on 21 March 1994, just shy of his seventh birthday, he was signed up by the club he supported. A Leo who measured one metre 22 centimetres in height (that’s just over four feet), arrived at Ñuls where, three months earlier, Diego Armando Maradona, who was preparing himself for the 1994 World Cup, had played his last game during his brief stay with the Rosario club.
Jorge Valdano (ex-NOB player): [Newell’s] has a very good football school in a city that clearly has an overwhelming connection with football, being in an area that is just one huge football pitch.
Quique Domínguez: I encouraged them to do what they did best and then subtly polished it, that’s how I made my reputation in the schooling of football. I never shouted, or threatened, or scolded, or humiliated, or applied pressure, as my father did with my brothers and me. So if you make a big cock-up, I want you to understand what you have done and not to repeat it, not because you’re frightened, but because you understand what you did wrong.
Gerardo Grighini (ex-junior player with NOB): We had all seven-and eight-year-olds and we played on the seven-a-side pitch and did the usual kids’ training: a bit of speed work, keepy-uppy and technique. But at that time the most important thing was to learn to play the ball with your feet, to domesticate the ball. We trained Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and played Saturday and Sunday.
Messi Page 8