Schuster: ‘We should have kicked him, even if it had cost us a card. You can’t be that noble.’
And Leo? What did he say?
‘Rijkaard congratulated me. I had seen the Maradona goal a million times but I did not think of copying it at any stage. I didn’t think of it after the Getafe goal either. I realised when Deco told me. I saw both goals, Diego’s and mine, played at the same time in a TV programme. I heard what people were saying, but I didn’t stop for a second to think if it was the best one in history or not. After the goal and some banter after, it was not mentioned again in the dressing room. We didn’t even talk about it with the family after that day.’
He dedicated the goal to Maradona, who had just been admitted to a psychiatric clinic.
Since that day Leo has been marked more tightly by defenders.
That goal would never be repeated.
Partly because defences have become more alert to his runs, and partly because that goal also reflected a series of Barcelona mistakes that had to be corrected. You cannot prepare such a piece of play on the training ground, but you can avoid it being necessary: there are more collective and easier ways to score goals.
This is what Rijkaard said to Messi some time after. According to the Dutchman, it was the best piece of advice he ever gave him: ‘Finish the play: shoot or play the final ball but don’t carry on dribbling.’ He wanted to stop Messi from constantly looking to slalom, dribbling too much and getting into duels with every player he faced. It could happen once or twice a season, but not in every game. Rijkaard advised him not to tire himself out so much, but, rather, to pace himself in order to make the difference in the final third. He asked him to get closer to the box.
Although that goal is remembered as a piece of genius from Leo, the sort he had scored many times in the youth teams, in professional football it ended up being the exception that proved the rule. Pep Guardiola also considered that goal to be an accumulation of mistakes in attack (too much driving forward, a lack of collaboration with team-mates, too deep a starting point, poor team positioning), which, in many ways typified the problems that affected Rijkaard’s team.
Leo had dinner with his father and Pablo Zabaleta that evening. And he repeated several times: ‘But I was looking for Eto’o to pass him the ball.’
Rijkaard thought Barcelona would get into the final after that and left Messi out of the squad for the return leg. However, they lost 4–0 at Getafe, beaten 5–6 on aggregate, in the most humiliating elimination of the recent history of the club.
There was still the league to be won. It was in their hands; a few straightforward results would give them the title, and could confirm that, despite the disciplinarian problems, they were still aiming to make history. But that was the year of the Tamudazo: Espanyol striker Raúl Tamudo’s equalising goal at the Camp in the dying moments of the game and Betis’s last-gasp equaliser, both clear lapses of concentration. They handed the league to Real Madrid, who were level on points with the culés but won on goal average.
‘I watched the Espanyol game from the stands,’ says Henk ten Cate. ‘Messi has learned many lessons in his professional life. One of those was losing the championship in the game against Espanyol. Leo lost possession and didn’t track back to recover the ball. He doesn’t make that mistake any more.’
In that Barcelona derby, Leo scored both goals in the 2–2 draw, including one with his hand to make it 1–1. He jumped to head the ball and beat the goalkeeper to it by using his left hand. Moral judgement of the goal draws different conclusions depending on which hemisphere you come from. For better or for worse, guile is considered part of the Latin gene, something that will never be understood by Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.
As someone who knows both worlds, Eidur Gudjohnsen tries to assess it from a footballer’s perspective. ‘I have played with some South American players and it seems to be a part of their culture: they would do anything to put the ball between the sticks. The truth is that it is hard to celebrate such a goal, but we were losing 1–0, we needed the win, so we did celebrate it.’
Maybe the ends justify the means in football. Cheating exists in both the Latin and Anglo-Saxon worlds (isn’t it cheating to raise your hand, telling the referee it should be your throw-in, when you were the last person to touch the ball?). But Leo regretted scoring that goal and has never done anything like it again.
Apart from winning the Spanish Super Cup at the start of the season, Barcelona went off on their summer holidays without any important titles. And with the feeling that a cycle had come to an end.
Sacking Rijkaard and getting rid of Ronaldinho were both considered. In a meeting between Beguiristain, Ferran Soriano, Joan Laporta and Rijkaard himself, the coach spoke categorically: ‘I know what needs to be done, we will do it properly next season, it will go well.’ Having said that, he got up and left. The meeting continued without him: ‘What should we do? Should we back him for another year?’ Laporta insisted that the team, and Frank, deserved it. Out of respect for the heights of the previous year, it was decided not to change anything, although they all knew Rijkaard had lost the dressing room.
But the following season, the faith shown by Laporta and the board of directors was not rewarded.
‘One day Messi scored one of those amazing goals after dribbling past about two hundred players and when he came back to his own half, he looked at me: “Hey, don’t get all cocky,” I said. “I’ve scored loads like that.” He made a face as if to say: “what an arsehole.”’
(Eduardo Iturralde González, former international referee)
‘The thing is … [he smiles] I’ve played with loads of players and Leo is something … very strange, isn’t he?’
(Thierry Henry)
The 2007−08 season was the one of second chances. Ronaldinho intended to contribute more, having begged Laporta to give him one more year at the club. Frank Rijkaard insisted he was committed to halting the team’s downward spiral. The club restored excitement with the signing of a star, Thierry Henry, from Arsenal. Imagine: Ronaldinho, Messi, Henry and Eto’o in the same team. However, they did not play a single minute together.
Other arrivals included Eric Abidal (Lyon), Gabi Milito (Zaragoza) and Yaya Touré (Monaco), who would go on to become one of the main players in another dismal season. In search of a response, the club got rid of Giuly, Belletti, Motta, Saviola and van Bronckhorst.
Gio sent a farewell message to Messi’s BlackBerry. Leo had a photo of himself taken in Times Square, New York, on his profile. Just him, alone. After seeing the photo, van Bronckhorst added a question: ‘isn’t it nice being able to take a photo without anyone around for once in your life?’ Such luxuries would soon be a thing of the past for the Argentinian.
Rijkaard was unable to change the dynamic that year in spite of his assurances. The team went to pieces as early as December, confirmed by defeat against Real Madrid at the Camp Nou by a single goal scored by Júlio Baptista. ‘The coach was too good for that dressing room,’ revealed Edmilson some years later. Frank kept the team as it was, despite the fact that Leo Messi had just about knocked the door down from beating on it so much. He had so much more to offer but was asked to be patient and to continue causing damage on the wing.
Meanwhile, he was starting to become an idol in the stands. ‘It didn’t seem real when we were on our way into the ground and we saw people with his name on the back of their shirts.’ It was like a dream,’ his mother Celia used to say.
‘That was the season when we became really close, lots of confidence in each other. We even had enough privacy to talk about serious things,’ says Silvinho. ‘I was very comfortable, I saw him as an adult and could even speak to him about my frustrations, things I didn’t like, what was happening to me, how I was having a hard time. So I found someone in him who would listen to everything I had to say.’
The boy was becoming a man. But, in the process, he oscillated between the responsibilities of being an adult and the changing ph
ysique of a youth. And his body was rebelling.
2007−08 season medical report
14/09/07. Australia vs Argentina. Muscle niggle in right hamstring.
Five days out.
‘I remember when he came to Argentina to recover from a tear,’ says Pancho Ferraro. ‘He went to Rosario. I was still with the national team. He arrived on a morning flight and we were having breakfast with the boys, the technical staff, Tojo, Fillol, the doctors, and there were six Under 17 players who Tojo managed. The door opened and we saw Messi, his dad and the doctor, who had come from Barcelona. We got up to say hello to them. Messi must have been twenty years old. He sits next to me, I ask him what he wants, “café con leche”, we both order from the waiter. They had everything: pastries, biscuits, jam, dulce de leche. They bring him his café con leche, but we were talking and talking, and he sat there silent. He wasn’t drinking it. I said to him “Leo, drink it” and he said to me “yes, yes”, but he wasn’t drinking it. We were all speaking except him. And a moment later, the second time, I say to him “Leo, what’s wrong?” and he says “may I go and have this with the boys?” I said to him “go, Leo, go”. He got up and went to the other table. It was beautiful. He felt closer to the kids, he was still one himself.’
15/12/07. Valencia vs Barcelona. A femoral bicep tendon tear in his left leg, not the one he injured against Chelsea the season before. Just under five weeks out. He missed, among other games, the clásico at the Camp Nou, which was played a week later.
‘I remember his injury against Valencia,’ says Gudjohnsen. ‘It gave me a very strange feeling. Suddenly it came into my head that he played like a man but was still a boy. He cried in the dressing room. There I saw a boy who could not bear the shock of an injury, who could not live away from the ball.’
04/03/08. Barcelona vs Celtic. A femoral bicep tear of his third proximal in his left leg. Six weeks out.
Gordon Strachan (Celtic coach 2005−09): ‘The scouts had warned us that the lad was a bit special. A bit special, eh? He scored twice in the first leg, one was a beauty, he did a drag back in the area to make an opening, and goal. They beat us 3–2. In the return leg, almost at the end of the first half, he got injured. He was running with two of my players and must have noticed a shooting pain. It happened right in front of me. I saw him crying. I didn’t cry, I can assure you of that. I thought, “thank God, now we can relax slightly, because whoever they bring on won’t be as good as him!”’
Leo left the Camp Nou in tears that night. It was his third big injury in two years. What was happening? Why so many injuries? Was his body changing? Was it something to do with his diet? They told him that it was to do with the shape of his foot. Maybe he was not warming up properly. But no comprehensive study of the situation had yet been carried out, even though the club wanted to protect him and look for the causes. Lots of nonsense was spouted, such as the suggestion that the problem was linked to his hormonal treatment. Puyol reacted by making accusations against the press: ‘You put pressure on Messi to play and now he is injured, but what you have to do is show greater respect for the coach and doctors’ decisions,’ he said in a press conference. The captain was responding to the heavy criticism that Rijkaard received after resting him in the previous match against Atlético de Madrid at the Calderón.
Commitment and discipline were becoming rare commodities in the Barcelona dressing room. Attempts were made to preserve unity, exemplified by Puyol’s attack on the press, but a player doesn’t get injured just because of what is written in the media. Many other factors were at play, which went some way to explaining these sudden and frequent lay-offs.
Joan Laporta received medical reports dismissing the likelihood of hormonal treatment being a cause. This is how former club doctor Josep Borrell explains it: ‘When he arrived at Barcelona we took him for a private consultation with an endocrinologist, and together we decided to gradually lower and then take him off the hormonal treatment. His muscular injuries had nothing to do with that. Messi’s muscular morphology is what it is: short muscles and, based on that, we have to work with him very thoroughly every day, to prevent him from getting constantly injured.’
Leo had spent many seasons in the lower ranks without suffering injuries. His torn muscles and ligaments were a new development, and clearly demonstrated that his body was rebelling, caused by his inability to understand his limitations. The main risk factor with these injuries was the possibility of a setback, and Messi often returned too soon, delaying or even impeding the healing process his body required. Horacio D’Agostino, head doctor of the Argentinian national team, added a factor that everybody preferred to ignore: ‘The question of why Messi’s injuries recur so frequently has a complicated explanation, but for me the key lies in the demands he imposes on himself. More is demanded than he can physically give, he runs more than his body can handle. He’s driven by an obsession to score goals. But how are you going to make a boy of his age understand all this?’
Around that time Jordi Desola, a medical expert in sports injuries, made an interesting analogy on the Catalan radio station RAC1: ‘Messi is an athlete at an extremely high level who keeps putting too much pressure on his body. Anyone who drove their car at 120mph in first gear would see how the engine suffers, but the car does not break down and can be used the day after. If something similar is done with a very sophisticated engine such as one used in Formula One, it would break down. Messi is similar to a Formula One car and, even though he has extraordinary stamina, he pushes it beyond its limits. A bad diet or bad habits could affect his injuries, but that is difficult to determine. The muscles that perform such colossal tasks are very vulnerable.’
Barcelona formed a committee made up of Txiki Beguiristain and vice-presidents Marc Ingla and Ferran Soriano, who tried to find a solution. They told Leo that his muscle mass was formed of explosive fibres similar to those of a sprinter: they give him speed but there is always a risk that they will snap. He had to look after himself, and properly, if it was not to become a chronic problem. Marc Ingla says: ‘The problem is that we could not get him to stabilise, he always had that recurring muscle injury, so we approached the matter in a comprehensive manner. In order to monitor him we developed a personalised stretching routine and asked him to bulk up his muscles. He had to do it every day and be extremely disciplined, so that we could outline a plan to get the most out of him.’
The club was clearly responding to a widespread concern, but its answer was a somewhat conventional one. The club had a nutritionist, who would prepare him a milkshake full of vitamins after training. He hated the milkshake. Juanjo Brau became his personal physiotherapist and also joined him with the national team. He would have a massage before training and the care would continue after training and matches. He gradually learned how to reduce his participation during training in order to be ready for the matches, to avoid new injuries. ‘We would get to the training ground and they would often already be treating him,’ remembers Gudjohnsen. ‘He reminded me of Michael Jordan: if you have a player like him, you have to look after him at all times because you’re going to need him. Nobody had the feeling that it was unfair to treat him differently. Other footballers had their own helpers.’
In any case, muscular injuries are not just coincidence. Twenty-year-old Leo was a youngster who had a fairly unhealthy diet: pizzas and hamburgers, escalopes, too much Coca-Cola, at any time of day. But the feeling in the dressing room was that almost everything was allowed as long as you played well. That was one of the lessons learned from Deco and, especially, Ronaldinho.
Why did you choose to live in Castelldefels?
After visiting a number of places we decided on Castelldefels. Both me and my family were convinced by it. Peace and quiet, the beach, mountains, everything. It’s also close to Barcelona and the Camp Nou, where I go to train every day.
What do you know about Castelldefels and where do you go to shop and to eat?
I know Castelldefels football pitch. I w
ent the day they were playing against Club Vilanova in the third division, an Argentinian friend of mine plays there. I went with Zabaleta from Espanyol. When I go out to eat I go to La Pampa, Ushuaia or some other Argentine restaurant. I love meat. What’s more, my family is able to buy Argentinian produce in the town shops, even though I would like to find out where I can buy sweet ‘ medias lunas’ [Argentinian sweet cake].
(Interview with Messi for La Voz, independent newspaper of Castelldefels, 28 May 2008)
Leo’s path to adulthood on and off the pitch was being mapped out by Ronaldinho, and suddenly all the discipline, effort and sacrifice that had driven him to the top was forgotten as Ronnie’s world opened up new and exciting possibilities and sensations.
From the centre of the whirlwind that was his new life, Leo faced up to his father. Rebellion, finally. At 18 he began to exhibit all the traits of an adolescent. He wanted to get to know life, the one he had not yet experienced, and that wish coincided with his adventures with Ronaldinho: he was eager to be led astray.
In September 2005, Leo Messi bought his first house in Barcelona. Fifty metres from his Brazilian mentor. The reason was obvious and it wasn’t just a social thing. It was also a sort of footballing fertiliser: much easier to grow closer to Ronnie by being his neighbour than far away from him. Zabaleta often came by his beach house, with its two large lounges stuffed with boxes containing shoes or Xboxes, where computer football games were played non-stop and Leo would choose to be Barcelona or Argentina: ‘Sometimes I pick myself. Sometimes I grumble that they do not make me as fast as I really am. But I pick myself and I don’t give the ball to anyone.’
Another guest in that huge house was the Argentinian goalkeeper Oscar Ustari: ‘He loves being with his friends, his family; I’ve always noticed that he says to me: “Aren’t you going to come and see me?” or when I’ve come over to Barcelona with my wife, my mother, the kids, he would say … “don’t go and stay in a hotel, stay at the house, I’ll lend you the car so you can go wherever you want”. And in the national team if he gets to the room first, he’s waiting for me with a mate … you know, stuff like that. It’s good that he lives in the real world. I am very much like him, calm, and I’m not saying to him all the time “you’re the best, you’re this, you’re that”. I ask after him, his family … We hardly ever speak about Leo the footballer.’
Messi Page 37