Messi

by Guillem Balague

  Leo has always considered himself so superior in these actions of speed, skill and dribbling that he always wanted to do them in every move, every game. The best way to triumph in life is by concentrating on your strengths and for that reason Messi understands the game as a succession of dribbles, one versus one, the essence of football.

  Add his intense desire to come out on top and you are getting close to what Leo Messi is about.

  Let me add one more thing to the list proposed by Pedro Gómez.

  11. Serendipity, luck and opportunity

  It has been said that the greatest player of that famous generation of ’87, the one who really excelled at Barcelona, was Víctor Vázquez, a comment that has both something a bit too clever about it while also having an element of truth. He could have been better, but it did not happen. Let him explain:

  –

  Víctor, who makes it, and who doesn’t?

  –

  I think the good players make it, but luck also plays a part. You can have a lot of injuries, or come across a coach who doesn’t like your style. It isn’t that Messi was lucky, it’s that he was the best, and he had it easy because he was always able to do what he does very well. The others, me for example, needed to have some luck. I had an injury, that if only I hadn’t got, but anyway, what can I do? I made my debut in the league with Rijkaard. Later with Pep Guardiola I played a number of games. The last one alongside Leo was against Rubin Kazan at the Camp Nou, which we won 2-0 and I scored the second goal. Pep put me in the side for the match against Shakhtar Donetsk. Two weeks later I injured my knee against Villarreal and I was out of action for 14 months. And obviously I couldn’t get back to the same level. Also, there were many players in my position better than me. Xavi, Iniesta …

  Today, Víctor Vázquez plays at Club Brugge, in Belgium. Quique Domínguez agrees with Víctor: ‘For me when they ask what a player needs to become successful I say that it is like the three legs of a table: ability, dedication and luck.’ A blend of luck and the circumstances generally under the direct control of the sportsman can help him triumph.

  Even a thousand interviews with Leo Messi would fail to go any way towards explaining what it was that drove that ambition, the perseverance, the search for more achievements, the understanding of where to go with the ball. He has no idea how to explain it.

  One thing is certain. As Jorge Valdano says, we never expected to see a player like Lionel in the twenty-first century. ‘We were waiting to see a footballer with more of the characteristics of someone like Cristiano Ronaldo with his natural physique built up with lots of exercise and emphasis on gym work.’ Maybe. In any case, Messi is the result of a bunch of circumstances and coincidences that enabled him to exploit his talent. A combination, that in its supreme expression, is seldom experienced. A perfect storm.

  In our society we enjoy the success of the individual, men and women who have triumphed on their own, who have achieved their own particular ‘American dream’. But those who have arrived at the highest level, as Malcolm Gladwell says, ‘are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages, extraordinary opportunities and cultural inheritances that allow them to work hard and make sense of the world in a way that others can’t’.

  Could there have been other Messis? Perhaps, but those who had the chance to one be might not have been lucky enough to get there. Or, more likely, couldn’t see the opportunity. Or were born in the wrong country.

  One final point. Leo has always been aware of the baggage he is carrying, and he will be a happy man in old age, simply because he is doing everything he can to be the best that he can possibly be. Not like Trinche. Being Trinche is easier.

  What’s difficult is to be Leo Messi.

  7

  Dealing with Maradona

  ‘I already knew he would be representing the national side during the World Cup in Holland, although he could have played with the Under 20 side for another year. I arranged a meeting with him in my room and I told him the news: “The teacher called me.” He looked at me. “Pekerman is the teacher. You are going to be called up for the next full international. This is a secret between you and me, okay? And if the coach knows I’m telling you this, he’ll kill me.” He smiled and left. He is a man of few words. I used to communicate a lot using drawings. I remember drawing him a Formula One car in the 2006 World Cup. He still had many laps to complete. It wasn’t his time to win the race. That is what the drawing represented.

  ‘He didn’t accept it, but he listened and kept the drawing.’

  (Gerardo ‘the Professor’ Salorio)

  Messi’s uncles would often say to him jokingly that he would play in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. ‘They mentioned the date, but only as a joke. I never imagined I was going to play in one, never mind one that was fast approaching,’ Leo recalled years later. But his life with the national team had a rocky start.

  The Argentinian journalist Luis Calvano remembers walking behind Leo on the way to the meeting point of the national squad in Budapest, at the Ferenc Puskás Stadium. It was Leo’s first call-up and he did not know what to do. Other players started arriving from the airport in different groups and some of them walked past the new kid, thinking he was a kitman’s assistant. Messi was waiting for instructions standing by the wall, head down, fiddling nervously with the cord of his shorts. The first to recognise him was Luciano Figueroa. He took hold of him and began introducing him to the squad.

  He made his debut two days later. And was sent off after 90 seconds. After that game, played in the summer of 2005, ‘the Flea’ was a regular in José Pekerman’s squads during the months leading up to Germany. Away from the pitch, in the background, all but invisible to the rest of the group. He knew that, just as had happened in the Barcelona dressing room, he had to go through the same stages with the national side of gaining approval and acceptance. The leap forward he had taken at Barcelona had become, at least for the moment, a step backwards under Pekerman. He realised he was in two different worlds.

  Messi usually sat with Oscar Ustari or Pablo Zabaleta, from the Under 20 World Cup squad, and later with Javier Mascherano, with whom he bonded instantly. ‘The first time I saw him was just before the World Cup,’ says Mascherano. Despite him being injured, Pekerman, who was relying on the midfielder for Germany, asked Mascherano to join the group in Switzerland where Argentina were to play a friendly against England. ‘On that trip we spent a few days together. We first met in his room, he wasn’t one for leaving his room much. In those days he was really quiet, very introverted … We had friends in common and obviously that helped with the conversation. But when you come to a new place you have a certain shyness and it’s difficult until you begin to open up, isn’t it? And even more so when you’re just a boy.’ Leo felt embarrassed; he didn’t want to interrupt the camaraderie. So he spent most of the time in the hotel room. ‘I was also young, I was twenty-two years old, he was eighteen, so, in a sense, we grew up together and became friends.’

  From very early on the president of the federation, Julio Grondona, recognised that ‘the Flea’s’ talent would make him one of the national side’s leading lights. And, what’s more, a leader. All in good time, he thought. The swift organisation of the two Under 20 friendlies had demonstrated the institutional support he was going to receive, and stole a march on Spain in the process. Grondona had to learn to cope with a very unmanageable Diego Armando Maradona, but he would make Leo his favourite son, his creation. ‘I want this to be your son’s side, and I have mentioned that to him, too,’ he told Jorge Messi on one occasion. He was equally frank with Leo: he insisted that Argentina had to be his team and he should be the captain in the future. As is frequently the case in the European footballing culture – and perhaps it is a remnant of that culture – the captain’s armband assumes great importance in the Argentine psyche. It represents the beacon of the group.

  For the 2006 World Cup, Juan Pablo Sorín was captain. And as long as the captain has the support of the senior
players and the most influential ones, the wearer of the armband is the winner in any disputes that may occur. That would explain the absence of Juan Sebastián Verón from the final squad for Germany. ‘The fight between Juan Sebastián Verón and Juan Pablo Sorín halfway through the match between Inter and Villarreal, which was witnessed by millions of television viewers throughout the world, was a naked display of a deep internal wound in the Argentina side,’ it was reported in El Clarín in April 2006. ‘One that leaves Sorín in – and as captain – and Verón out. Everyone around the Inter player is convinced that Sorín is the man principally responsible for the non-selection of Verón in the last call-ups …’

  Verón had been very influential when Daniel Passarella was coach, and an automatic starter under Marcelo Bielsa, even when the side’s captain was the central defender Roberto Ayala. But Verón stopped being called up once Pekerman was appointed coach, and he, unlike Bielsa, who allowed his players to vote, picked Sorín despite pressure from some of his senior players to give the armband to Roberto Ayala. Such are the politics involved.

  And the hierarchy is there to be respected. Leo Messi formed part of the ‘new boys’ group and, along with Oscar Ustari, was the only Under 20-year-old to go to that tournament. They were there to listen and to wait their turn. In the meantime, the final squad was being picked in a very Argentinian way: at a gathering in May, in the Spanish town of Boadilla, Pablo Aimar, who was enjoying a very successful season with Valencia, was missing. Pekerman had no intention of calling him up for the World Cup and justified his absence by citing the player’s physical weakness – in April of that year he had suffered an acute form of viral meningitis. The squad leaders, fronted by Juan Román Riquelme, dug their heels in and their ‘advice’ was finally accepted by the coach. And so Aimar, the only idol recognised by Leo, was called up for the tournament. They would share the same dressing room.

  ‘As I was growing and learning more, I studied his movements, how he played. I followed him,’ admitted Leo who has every Pablo Aimar shirt he has been able to get hold of (Benfica, Valencia, Argentina) in his home. ‘I should be the one doing the collecting,’ says the ex-River player today.

  Despite his tender years, Messi, who had just signed up with Adidas after leaving Nike, was one of the stars of the German sportswear company in the World Cup summer. He featured in an award-winning commercial (‘History is chasing me but I’m quicker’), in which ‘the Flea’ draws a small doll playing football with much bigger dolls, and describes his dream of not going unnoticed despite being the weakest. Huge posters showed his face in the biggest footballing cities in the world, and a special pair of boots was designed for him with two stars and the inscription ‘The hand of God’ and the date 22 June 1986. This marketing approach was not to everybody’s taste in the squad – too much noise for a youngster, some felt.

  In any case, Leo had only just made the World Cup squad. After injuring himself against Chelsea in March, he suffered another setback in April and Rijkaard did not think he was fit enough to play in the Champions League final in May. He certainly wasn’t match fit, but he didn’t want to travel to Germany just to make up the numbers. He wanted to help, even offer something that, in truth, he had no right to expect at his age, and with his physical limitations.

  Some days before setting off for Germany in a combined match between the national side and Under 20s at the Monumental Stadium, Pekerman played him in the last half hour of the game to see how he performed after his 79 days out. It was a way of loosening him up: the coach could see that anxiety was building up. He finished the match and he seemed okay, the manager thought. Leo quickly made his way to the tunnel with his head down. And he started to cry. ‘Have you injured yourself again? What is wrong, Leo?’ the medical staff asked him. Messi shook his head – that wasn’t it, that wasn’t the problem. He hid the tension and remained silent. And then, with a gesture of despair, he came out with it. An inconsolable Leo shouted, ‘I’m a disaster, I can’t play like this!’ It was his pride talking, the need to be on top form before the World Cup. Leo and his eternal discontent.

  As part of his baptism, very clear rules as to who was in charge of the squad were established. In a pre-World Cup press conference in Nuremberg with Roberto Ayala and Gabriel Heinze, an innocuous question (How does the group pass the time?) culminated in a diatribe against the new young players. ‘They don’t say much’, ‘They don’t come and drink mate’, ‘They’re always on their PlayStations’, ‘Our generation has another way of doing things’. The strong group in the dressing room had not readily accepted the call-up of Oscar Ustari, Leo’s friend, which had made him the youngest ever Argentinian goalkeeper to be selected for a World Cup. This had been in preference to German Lux, the River Plate goalkeeper who had won the 2004 Olympic title, keeping a clean sheet in the process, resulting in him being called up for every match in the previous three years.

  According to the Argentinian press there was an incident before the tournament that, reading between the lines, confirmed Leo would find it difficult to impress his new colleagues so early on in his career. In a training session, Messi nutmegged Heinze. In the unwritten code of Argentinian football, something like that had to be avenged: Heinze continually went in hard on Leo. But he was in for a surprise; rather than apologise, ‘the Flea’ looked him straight in the eye and gave him a warning: ‘Don’t do that to me again.’

  The 18-year-old boy, who at times seemed 25 on the pitch and 14 off it, was going to be part of a World Cup squad. ‘We each had a room with a connecting door in between,’ remembers Ustari. ‘One day, I went into mine and he followed me in. There were two beds in each room and he said: “you’re not going to sleep here on your own and me over there, in another room, on my own.” So he slept in my room. And constantly, at all hours of the day, he would play keepyuppies. With anything. With a tea bag! I would carry mate around in little round balls and he would do dozens of kick-ups with them. At three o’clock in the morning! They gave him two little footballs and he was there in bed leaning back against the headboard slowly kicking both the balls in the air, bang, bang, bang. With both footballs at the same time!’

  And he would play on the PlayStation every day. ‘In the training camp in Germany I saw that he would take all the children of the other players to his room to play on the PlayStation, four- and five-year-olds, Crespo’s sons,’ remembers ‘Professor’ Salorio. ‘I’d look at him and … one day I saw that he was giving them sweets, they were all around him.’

  And that’s how he arrived at the greatest show on earth. The World Cup. The one he had dreamed of winning for Argentina.

  Javier Saviola and Hernán Crespo were the two forwards selected to start against the Ivory Coast.

  Pekerman did not play him, and a 2–1 win was a good start even though the performance was far from brilliant.

  Serbia and Montenegro were up next.

  Maradona came down to the dressing room to greet the lads and, taking Leo to one side, said to him, ‘have strength, courage and score a goal’.

  A packed stadium in Gelsenkirchen saw him come on against Serbia in the seventy-fifth minute in place of Maxi Rodríguez with the scoreboard reading 3–0, already reflecting the superiority of the sky-blue and whites who were making the most of the speed and efficiency of their side. His World Cup debut. And at a younger age than Maradona.

  In the 16 minutes that he was on the pitch he provided Crespo with an assist to make it 4–0 before scoring the sixth and final goal himself, to make it 6–0 – the only goal he has so far scored for his country in the World Cup finals. Maradona rose to his feet to give him an emotional salute from the stands.

  A draw in their next match saw Argentina, together with Holland, through to the next round. The result benefited both teams, and when things are destined to end a certain way, that’s generally what happens. Both sides had made several changes to their starting line-ups. Leo started up front alongside Carlos Tévez. Argentina showed, in the words of
ESPN, ‘a little bit of Leo, and a lot of Tévez’ – occasional sparks from the start, and a smattering of dribbles and daring as the game progressed.

  But for last 16 against Mexico, Saviola and Crespo were once again the front two picked by Pekerman. Leo came on in the eighty-fourth minute of a hard game with the score 1-1. Argentina won after extra time. ‘With an open heart, with a suffering ravaging their whole bodies, with a soul that was full of hope and expectation, with sparks of intelligence, with other footballing acts of bravado, Argentina continued along the path, and now look ahead to Germany in the quarter-finals,’ El Clarín reported the following morning in typically gushing style. Leo showed flashes of brilliance with a direct style of play that pushed Mexico onto the back foot.

  The match was played on Leo’s birthday. And also on Riquelme’s, who was nine years older. That night Leo retired to his room but decided to call in on his team-mate’s party. He opened his bedroom door, walked in and Riquelme turned around to him, irritated: ‘Idiot! Don’t you know how to knock! You’re going to have to learn how to knock on a door! Who the fuck do you think you are?’ A pale Messi lowered his head, turned around and left. And so the learning process continued.

  ‘Look, we all saw him as a player who was already different, let’s say.’ So says Javier Mascherano. ‘You could see him and, of course … He turned nineteen at the World Cup, but you could already see he was a footballer who did things differently.’

  Messi wasn’t in the starting line-up for the quarter-final against Germany because Saviola and Crespo continued in that role. He sat on the bench with his headphones on.

  No one talks about whether Leo should have been in the starting line-up or not. It’s what happened during the game that is still talked about today.