Messi

by Guillem Balague

  Rijkaard thought he deserved an ovation from the 91,000 spectators present so he substituted Leo in the eighty-ninth minute. On came Giuly who, from that day onwards, recognised that his days as an automatic starter were over.

  After a 2–2 draw, Juventus took the cup on penalties.

  Leo was named man of the match.

  Fabio Capello spoke about Messi at the press conference. ‘I’ve never seen a player with so much quality at that age, and with such personality, wearing such an important shirt. Messi is a great champion and he can do what he likes with the ball. I am pleased that a boy so young does something so beautiful for football. Because these aren’t things you see every day. It’s an advertisement for the game.’

  The Italian coach confesses now: ‘When I saw him he dazzled me. As he was legally prevented from playing for Barcelona, I seized the opportunity to ask my friend Frank if we could have him, even on loan. But he told me, no, no way, and that the bureaucratic problems would eventually be sorted out and that Messi would end up playing that same year for Barcelona. Messi is a genius, someone who can win any game. For me he is among the greats in the history of football alongside Pelé, Cruyff, Di Stéfano or Maradona, even though he has not yet won a World Cup.’

  Rexach adds: ‘At the end of the game, Capello comes out and says, “today a star was born”. Fuck me, the star had been with us for five years, but what happened was that Capello’s words crossed borders, and from then on everyone was talking about Messi. And even here everyone sat up and took note. Capello’s words, so full of enthusiasm about one of our players, did not fall on deaf ears.’

  The journalist Ramón Besa remembers that night: ‘Until then no one had pointed him out. Now everyone tells a different history, the easiest thing to do in journalism: I knew him, I discovered him, I had already written about him … But I got the feeling that when Capello announced: “this is the one …” is when people said: “bloody hell, if Capello says it …” This is such a typical culé phenomenon – until someone from outside makes us see what we have, we can’t spot it. I have the impression that up to that point, not everyone at the club was supporting Messi. There is a problem with the management of talent at Barcelona. Deep down, however well you have everything organised, or however much you know what has to be done, at some stage someone needs to say: “now, this is the moment”.’

  During those days, Txiki Beguiristain called José Pekerman. This is how ‘the Professor’, Salorio, recalls it: ‘The director of Barcelona telephoned us one day and said: “What have you done with Leo? You’ve changed his attitude.” This what he told Pekerman. “He’s a different Leo, he’s not the one we sent to the World Cup.” What we gave him was a certain type of aggression, not to hit anyone, but just to fear defeat: in the Spanish second division B Barcelona lose, lose, win, draw, draw. Here we have to win or we’re all out. There’s a queue of twenty people looking to tear us to pieces.’

  Juventus put money on the table, but it was Inter Milan who made an astronomical bid for the player. The message received by Beguiristain and Laporta from those close to the player was loud and clear: ‘If Leo cannot play in the Spanish league, if the red tape is not sorted out, then he’s off to Italy.’

  ‘The only time that there was a real risk of Leo leaving Barcelona was when the offer from Inter came in.’ So remembers Joan Laporta, who had to use all his powers of persuasion and diplomacy, and make full use of the bond of trust he had built up with Leo’s father, to prevent Leo from playing in Serie A.

  Inter understood that this was their opportunity to link up with a footballer whom they had been following for the past three years. This is how Ferran Soriano recalls it. ‘There had been moments of crisis with various offers, I remember one from Inter, one from Real Madrid … but the father always had the confidence that we would back Leo, always call him up in time to offer him a new contract, which was the stability they were looking for.’

  No question about that, but in September 2005 things became so complicated that a great deal of tact was required.

  ‘Jorge called me and asked to come by the office,’ Laporta explains. The president of Barcelona did not know what it was about. ‘I’ve got something very serious to tell you, I want to share this with you,’ Jorge Messi began. Leo’s father was asking the opinion of a friend as well as that of the president of Barcelona, a sharing of views and thoughts with Laporta.

  Jorge told him that Inter wanted to sign Leo, that they had offered him three times as much money in wages, and weren’t put off in the slightest by the €150 million buyout clause.

  Joan Laporta spoke to him as club president and as a friend: ‘The first thing I told him was that we were not thinking of selling him; secondly, I put myself in the position of the father: “look, you want money for your son, obviously, and they will guarantee his future; but his career here will be assured from a financial point of view, too, and what’s more, he will also get the glory.” I was taking a bit of a gamble because at that time we’d only had a few good results. We had a team that half the world loved and were beginning to be seen as a point of reference for other clubs. But we had not reached glory yet.’

  Jorge Messi knew there was some truth in what Laporta was saying. Leo now considered himself to be part of the first team, and his sporting prospects looked good. And he appreciated Laporta’s obvious affection for his young player. The conversation about Leo’s future was left hanging in the air.

  Around that time, at a supper in Madrid, Massimo Moratti, the owner and president of Inter, told Joan Laporta that he wanted Leo in Italy, that he was in love with left-footed players and that Messi was special. The Barcelona chief told him that, with all due respect, the Barcelona side had no intention of letting him go.

  Laporta may have thought that that was the end of the matter, but, with all the cards on the table, everything might easily have been turned upside down in three tense autumn days.

  Barcelona travelled to Germany to play Werder Bremen, the strongest team they would face in the Champions League group in which they had been drawn. UEFA had given Lionel permission to play, despite the fact that he was unable to do so in the Spanish league, but Rijkaard took an extra player along just in case there were any problems.

  On 14 September, the morning of the match, Jorge Messi got together with Txiki Beguiristain to talk about Inter’s interest. The meeting did not go particularly well. It was firstly agreed to keep him at the club until December and, if the bureaucratic problems continued, ‘all Spain and the whole of Europe wants him, so loaning him out won’t be a problem,’ Beguiristain told him.

  But then a sticking point was mentioned. The club, conscious of the fact that just three months earlier he had signed a new contract, were in no rush to renew it, despite the pressure being put on them by Milan and the extraordinary summer Messi was having. Barcelona’s position was unequivocal: wait and see if Messi is allowed to play, analyse his performances then and after that maybe a new agreement could be negotiated. The lack of sensitivity shown by the club in view of the progress made by Leo, now a full international and an Under 20s World Cup winner, and with regard to the patience shown by him as he continued to train with the same intensity despite being unable to play, exasperated his father. He expected a proposal to renew his contract.

  That morning he said, ‘we’re off’. The road to Inter now looked more likely than ever and the Italians were beginning to talk numbers and promising to have the transfer sorted out for the following season. It looked as though matters were coming to a head. Ferran Soriano received a call from Messi’s inner circle and was told that he was thinking of leaving Barcelona.

  The day of the Werder Bremen match, Rijkaard decided to include Messi among the substitutes, with Silvinho left in the stands. Leo came on in the sixty-fifth minute in place of Giuly, stuck himself on the right wing and on the few occasions that he got into the game he made a difference: a couple of dribbles, a couple of runs with Christian Schulz, his opposin
g full-back, who lost both duels. After an inside pass from Ronaldinho, Leo found himself facing the opposition keeper, only for Schulz to grab him by the shirt in the penalty area. Penalty. Ronaldinho converted it for the final 0–2 Barcelona victory.

  ‘Messi was important to us,’ declared Rijkaard after the game. ‘Of course I am keen that the bureaucratic problems should be sorted out so I can play in the league but I’m calm,’ said Messi. In the stands Ferran Soriano and other members of the board, once again impressed by the reaction of the Argentinian on the pitch, were close to a nervous breakdown. We’ve got to sort out his future, and now, was the unanimous verdict. ‘Can we meet tomorrow?’ they asked Jorge Messi.

  At ten o’clock the following morning in an office at the Camp Nou, a nervous Joan Laporta, Soriano, Txiki Beguiristain, Alejandro Etxebarria (one of the movers and shakers at the club who was much respected by Leo and all the footballers), and Jorge Messi, all met.

  The president repeated in public what he had told Leo’s father in private: yes, Inter had put an astronomical offer on the table, but in Milan he would only earn money; at Barcelona he would have both money and glory. ‘Jorge believed what I told him,’ remembers Laporta. ‘Leo wanted to stay, his father wanted him to stay, but we couldn’t match Inter’s offer, who looked as if they were prepared to pay the €150 million buyout, in addition to paying him two or three times the salary. I wanted to raise his money because he deserved it. Money always helps, but it isn’t what makes you happy, I said to Jorge: if he went to Italy it would be a different way of playing, he is used to playing here … and so on. I was coming out with just about anything I could think of at the time.’

  Jorge Messi was told that Leo would play more than Giuly. What’s more, at that meeting, Leo gained something else: a direct link to the president. ‘For us Leo’s case was a very sensitive and special situation,’ reiterates Laporta.

  Barcelona managed to prevent Leo from going to Inter.

  The Italians did not want to pay the buyout clause; instead they intended to challenge in the courts the disproportionate amounts between what he was earning and what the Italians were being asked to pay for him. ‘But I had a very good relationship with Moratti and he saw that there was no way that I was going to sell Messi, and it wasn’t worth two clubs like Inter and Barcelona facing up to each other on a matter like this,’ confirms Laporta. ‘And he was told soon after that meeting that Leo and Jorge had decided to stay at Barcelona. I think that’s what put an end to Moratti’s intentions. Every year there’s been an offer, or some kind of movement. But this was the only time I thought there was a real risk of him leaving us.’

  After that meeting work began in earnest to draw up a new contract.

  Leo’s growing celebrity made living at the Gran Via Carles III apartment increasingly awkward. One day as he left his apartment someone threw himself on top of his car, demanding an autograph and refusing to move until he had it. He had neither pen nor paper, and he had to get both from one of the people who was travelling with Messi in the car. The new contract therefore had to include a bonus for renewing the contract that would pay for a new house and garden. In Castelldefels.

  Leo and Jorge wanted the contract to run until 2013, a year before the World Cup. That way, if he wasn’t playing he could move to another club on a free transfer and still be in good enough shape so as not to miss out on it. That is why the 2014 tournament has always been considered in the Messi household the most important one for Leo – he will be 27 when it takes place, in theory at the height of his career. A further example of the family’s vision and careful planning for the future.

  Jorge Messi rejected Barcelona’s first offer, but when the club altered a few clauses and numbers, agreement was finally reached, just two days before Leo had planned to join Inter. It was his third contract in 18 months.

  Barcelona managed to add one more year to the contract than the Messis wanted, up to 2014, but as far as everything else was concerned Leo’s new financial position would place him at the level of a medium-class player in the first team. In his first year he would earn €900,000 and by the end of 2014 he would be earning €3.5 million, including all image rights. He would receive a bonus in his first season of €250,000, which would go towards buying the new house. If he played at least 45 minutes in 60 per cent of the games he would receive a further bonus of €280,000 in his first year, going up progressively to €800,000 in the last year. Furthermore, he also received a one-off payment for the renewal of his contract of €2 million. The buyout clause was maintained at €150 million. The contract drawn up in September would come into force in January 2006.

  Jorge Messi had asked the club to push for a settling of all the bureaucratic issues as soon as possible, and was told that it was only a matter of days before they would be resolved. On the one hand the Spanish football authorities looked as if they were on the verge of reaching a favourable verdict for Messi and Barcelona, but the Catalan club also had an ace up its sleeve; the definitive solution.

  Running parallel with the process that was grinding along at the football league with exasperating slowness, a similar problem had begun two years earlier, when Jorge Messi had sworn allegiance to the Spanish constitution. A little later, Jorge and his wife asked for Spanish nationality for their son, who was still a minor. Finally, on 26 September 2005, Leo Messi acquired Spanish nationality in the Civil Register Office. He was no longer a foreign player. After missing out on six league games, Leo Messi was available for the seventh match of the season.

  ‘Throughout that whole summer, I never saw my son nervous once,’ said his father.

  What I’m not saying, or suggesting, or agreeing with, is the statement that we have before us the new Maradona. I prefer to say that we have before us the new Messi. He has a very long road ahead of him. And he can grow as a footballer. He has an innate class that allows him to play in a number of positions even though he believes that ultimately he will play as mediapunta, in the hole. We have to be grateful that he can assume responsibility to play in whatever position we ask him to, always for the benefit of the team.

  (Frank Rijkaard in 2005)

  That 2005−06 season saw the climax of Frank Rijkaard’s team. With the arrival of Van Bommel and Ezquerro, and the departure of Gerard López at the end of his contract, the squad had been finely tuned with the same core players as in the previous league-winning season. Positions were doubled up and the collective synchronisation that had started the previous season continued in the new campaign.

  Real Madrid, who hadn’t won anything relevant in the past two years, added Robinho to their list of galácticos – which already included Roberto Carlos, David Beckham, Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane, who was once asked by Messi if they could swap shirts. Leo would only do that with Gago, Aimar or some friends, he was too embarrassed to ask anybody else. Zidane, who happily complied, was the exception.

  Ronaldinho confirmed his status as the great new star of football when in December 2005 he was named as FIFA World Player of the Year for the second year running.

  Around that time the ex-Barcelona player Ronald de Boer was having breakfast with Frank Rijkaard when he dared to analyse the Argentinian. He’d only ever seen him on television. ‘I’ve seen this boy, Messi, but truthfully he doesn’t impress me.’ Rijkaard looked at him in astonishment. ‘You need to see him in training, Ronald. He does things that nobody else can do. We don’t even need to put ideas in his head. We can just leave him to do what he does. Instinctively.’

  But Rijkaard only wanted to say that in private. At the end of one training session, Ten Cate stopped the journalist Roberto Martínez who followed Leo closely and wrote about him in El Mundo Deportivo. ‘Listen, Roberto, easy with the boy,’ Ten Cate said, hoping to calm things down. ‘He’s good, but not as good as some of the things that you are writing.’

  But the brake that the coaches were trying to apply did not correspond to the opportunities that were presenting themselves: with the n
umber 19 on his back Leo’s appearances meant that Giuly was no longer first choice. The Barcelona players received a bonus for playing 60 per cent of all matches and they all counted their appearances. ‘Sometimes one of the players would tell me: “Boss, I’m at 58 per cent, I need two more games, play me!”’ recalls Ten Cate. It became a joke asking Giuly what percentage he had played. ‘Forty-eight per cent!’ he told van Bronckhorst. ‘Lionel is playing.’

  ‘Then,’ Gio would add, ‘you’re twelve per cent short. Leo!! Leo!!! Giuly says he needs twelve per cent! Help him!’ the full-back and others used to shout at the Argentinian, laughing.

  Ten days after signing his new contract, Messi was in the starting line-up to face Udinese in the second match of the Champions League group phase. Leo, following the performances against Juventus in the Gamper and Werder Bremen, had another storming game. This is how Ramón Besa in El País described it: ‘Shaken by Messi, the man of the match, Barcelona battered a Udinese side with the trigger of Ronaldinho in his role as chief sniper. The Argentinian dismantled the Italians’ plan with a supreme performance.’ Barcelona won by a convincing 4–1 scoreline.

  In November he scored his first goal in the competition against Panathinaikos. Rijkaard particularly liked the pressure he exerted to provoke a goalkeeping error: Leo stole the ball, then lifted it over the keeper before rounding him and scoring. It was the third goal in a convincing 5–0 victory.

  Barcelona were now in the last 16 where they would face José Mourinho’s Chelsea.

  But before that, his first appearance in the line-up of a clásico at the Bernabéu. So far that season he had only played two full matches, against Osasuna and Panathinaikos, and Rijkaard was trying to protect him and respect the status quo of each player within the squad. His assistants weren’t so sure any more that that was the right response to the appetite and quality he offered, and they told the Dutchman so: he was ready to start, even against Madrid, and it was time to forget the old order – Giuly was certainly a step down from Leo. Against his instincts and following the advice of his staff, Rijkaard decided to include him in the starting eleven against Real Madrid, although he didn’t tell him until two hours before the game, so as not to put too much pressure on him. Leo had thought he was going to be a substitute. ‘It was a surprise,’ he said afterwards.