In the match at the Camp Nou against the French side, Leo was told to follow the strictest of instructions to be effective in his contributions: ‘Only go for the ball that you can win, pick and choose your runs,’ Juanjo Brau told him. The physical coach knew that he could control and advise on instances when he didn’t have the ball (‘when you don’t have the ball, stay up front, don’t wear yourself out, because if you do we’re not going to be on the pitch for long,’ he told him). Juanjo added another piece of advice that he knew was hardly necessary: ‘Do what you have to do when you get the ball.’ When Leo has the ball he only does what he thinks of at that moment without ever calculating the consequences.
‘We were losing and I remember when he came out to warm up, the atmosphere inside the stadium changed as did the emotional state of the fans,’ says Brau. ‘They were saying to themselves: “now we can win.” Sometimes we’ve got a lot of petrol, but no one else has the spark he adds to it.’
And the treatment worked: he got to play for long enough to change the dynamic of the game.
In the first leg against Bayern Munich, Leo did not break down again as has been stated, but the fact is that there were no miracles. Despite the unorthodox work carried out by the coaching staff in the 21 days since his injury against the French, Leo could not compete at the best level. So, then, why play against Athletic Bilbao between the two semi-final legs?
Coaches will always say that in football you have to win, that you cannot wait for the following week, and getting points at the San Mamés helped them to close in on a league title that was important to everyone: the coaching staff wanted to win the title the year after Guardiola’s departure, the players wanted to show that they could win things without Pep and that self-management, over and above being necessary, was also effective.
After the match against Athletic, the third in three weeks when he should have played none, Leo suffered discomfort, one of the usual consequences of a femoral bicep injury. Even though the muscle had healed, the sudden unexpected surge of pain had not disappeared completely.
Tito and Leo had decided that with a 4–0 deficit to make up, the Argentinian, who still had not played a full ninety minutes since the injury, would only come off the bench if really necessary.
‘I spoke to him a lot,’ explains Cesc. ‘You have to heal this type of injury. I had a terrible year at Arsenal, with seven relapses, and when you find yourself in that dynamic, you’re lost. I told him that he had to cure himself completely or else. But when you’re needed and you play injured but then relapse, you dig yourself into a hole, and the confusion is as mental as it is physical.’ Between games Leo used to say he was ‘de puta madre’ (fucking great). And he trained without problems. But a training session isn’t a match.
‘Who’s going to tell Messi that he can’t play? The coach? I don’t think so,’ the Argentine national team doctor, Homero de Agostino, explained to the Spanish media. ‘Messi has a superlative condition as well as great mental strength that no one can stop. But poor Messi feels obliged to honour all his commitments. He’s incapable of saying no.’
Leo’s injury was handled this way because of the circumstances of the season; it was full of risks and one of those was far beyond just a muscular injury. When a player has so much responsibility, the environment, the club, the coaches paradoxically wear him out more quickly. ‘We cannot allow the situation whereby Leo is always the solution. It isn’t about ability, it’s about wear and tear, because he is human like the rest of us,’ says Juanjo Brau. The whole world thinks itself capable of speaking about Messi, but we often forget that there is another Leo: the one who gets up in the morning. Always to be excellent comes at a huge emotional cost. How long will he last at this level?
Barcelona won their twenty-second league title and Messi’s statistics demonstrated that victory was mostly down to him: he scored 40.5 per cent of all goals and was the top scorer with 45, racking up 61 across the three competitions in which the team participated. For the first time a footballer had scored in every single match in the first half of the season. He had gone past the 345 goals scored by Maradona throughout his whole career. At 25 years old.
Speaking on TV Azteca, Leo asked for understanding of a very difficult year: ‘When Tito came we felt really good, because practically nothing changed. But when he left we noticed the change; not because Roura or the other people could not do it, but because we were missing our first coach, missing the one who had spoken to us from day one.’ Elimination by Bayern, in his opinion, proved that the clubs now knew how to play against Barcelona: ‘For years we’ve been playing the same way and the coaches and rival teams study you. But we shouldn’t drive ourselves mad because of what’s happened this year. We can’t change Barcelona’s style because that is what has always characterised us.’
Tito Vilanova had said in his first press conference after his return from New York that he felt he had the strength to carry on the following season. What he didn’t say was that in January, before travelling to the United States, he had put his future in the hands of the board. If they wanted to look for a replacement he would understand perfectly, he told them. After winning the title, he once again tendered his resignation. President Sandro Rosell insisted on both occasions that if the doctors gave him the all clear, if he wanted to carry on, the job was his.
On Friday, 19 July, Tito Vilanova took training as usual. The players had been called in at half past seven for another one. On that occasion, Tito asked them to gather around before going out onto the pitch. Then he gave them the news: ‘This was my life’s dream, but now I have to leave.’ He thanked them for their work and their help. And then he went home to try to recover from the cancer that assaulted his body once again.
The team’s planned trip to Poland, where they were due to play a friendly, was cancelled. The official announcement was made by Rosell and Andoni Zubizarreta. In the first row of the press room, Carles Puyol, Messi, Pinto and Mascherano sat together, united in misery.
Leo had also experienced the worry and anxiety of a close family member suffering from the same disease. And Tito was a trainer whom he could trust, someone who had been with him in his early development in the team. He felt a debt towards him and wanted to give everything back that he had received from him.
It was not to be.
3. Leo’s Image
In an effort to make the most of ‘the Flea’s’ international celebrity, Adidas decided to organise a visit to London, one of those ideas that gets marketing executives all excited but invariably suffers in the execution. On 15 September 2010, Messi was scheduled to play a football match with a group of 15-year-old boys on Hackney Marshes, in London’s East End. The helicopter would land, Leo would emerge from it and then the coach would bring him on in place of one of the players. The boys had started the game and did not know what was about to happen, but they suspected something was afoot when they saw the Sky Sports cameras arrive.
Leo arrived by helicopter.
He took no more than ten steps before being mobbed by hundreds of fans, who had discovered what was going to happen from the clues that Adidas had given out on their social network channels. Thus Adidas had to extricate him quickly and fly him to the next publicity stunt: giving away football boots at a stall in the famous Brick Lane market, something he did manage to do.
Lastly, he had to go to Tower Hamlets, a multicultural, working-class London borough, where he was to play a five-a-side match with the first nine boys who arrived at the pitch in the shadow of modest tower blocks. Since his security could not be guaranteed, however, it was decided to cancel the final event. Leo and the company organising the event were accused of showing a ‘lack of respect to the fans’; despite this, Adidas managed to attract the world’s attention for an entire day.
In fact, Leo had travelled to Tower Hamlets (his was the van with tinted windows parked near the pitch) but it was soon realised that it would be almost impossible to get him out of there in time to get
him back to London City Airport. The cameraman waiting with the Sky correspondent in the centre circle made some clumsy excuse and left the pitch, an act that almost led to an incident. Soon afterwards, on discovering that Leo was leaving London, the youngsters threw bottles, cans and whatever they could find in the direction of the pitch and police had to clear the area.
It was a risky idea that did not go at all well, and the sponsor learnt from it, albeit after the damage had been done.
There were other image-damaging incidents in that summer of 2013.
At a time when he had already conquered the hearts of Argentinians, after another year of records, titles and praise, Leo suddenly started to appear on the covers of gossip magazines and in the non-sports sections of newspapers. Let’s look at some examples: a man spills the beans on how, supposedly, a few years earlier, Messi had defied Guardiola by drinking a can of some soft drink that had been forbidden, and challenges anyone who doubts his word to take him to court, thereby suggesting that his source was a member of that very squad. Both Leo and Pep, consulted for this book, deny the incident took place, but a denial does fewer rounds than a story about a supposed confrontation between the world’s greatest footballer and the world’s greatest coach.
Another absurd story came to light: an Argentinian magazine published photos from a party in Las Vegas in which Leo is seen burying his face in the large breasts of a stripper; many are unaware that those images were fake, they only remember Leo’s innocent face looking at the camera. That summer a book came out which, according to the Messis, told lies about Pep and Leo, including supposed details over the payment for his hormonal treatment, but with such carefully chosen words that the Messis cannot file a complaint, as they would like to have done.
And then the most serious of all: the Spanish financial authorities accused the family of tax evasion.
Leo’s image was being assailed from all sides.
Leo did not know about it but it was published that the police had been heavy-handed and that, when it had reached Leo’s ears, he had decided to ask to be substituted in the second half and left without even taking a shower. Not true, but the denial coming from the Messi camp did not fill the same newspaper inches.
The following friendly at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was cancelled generating a barrage of accusations. Leo decided not to participate because of the extortionate ticket prices for what was supposed to be a charitable match, but more importantly what was not said is that the promoter, who had organized the travel expenses and fees of the players, did not get enough money from the company that sold the tickets for the event. Somebody tried to be too clever but Messi was blamed after 50,000 tickets had been purchased. Leo expressed on Facebook his ‘disappointment with the organization’, but his image was tarnished once again.
What was going on? The Madrid press suggested that the real Messi was at last being seen. Some people around Leo also began asking themselves if his support for the Catalan language at a Turkish Airlines event was the ‘beginning of the end’ of his love affair with the Spanish people.
The world has surely not become tired of always seeing the same face, the same winners, has it? Now, with Neymar at Barcelona, sponsors and public alike have a new option, which is attractive for that very reason – it presents a different face. Furthermore, Nike was looking to make Neymar its ambassador for its Brazil World Cup campaign, and Leo, although he once wore the very same brand, now wears Adidas. Sponsors, especially the big ones, do not forget such disloyalty.
Leo’s entourage is small and quite low key with regard to commercial interests. Until now they have considered that this was in the best interests of an individual who only wanted to play football and who was completely disinterested in the world of sponsorship and commerce. Consequently, when Leo felt under fire that summer, those looking after his interests struggled to manage the different crises.
‘We have been a family business for some time, but the difference is that the earnings are not for the family, but for Lionel,’ explains Jorge Messi in Sique Rodríguez’s book Educados para ganar (‘Educated to Win’). ‘It is a way of defending his future. It is his business. Everything revolves around him. Everything is in his name. It is our way of protecting him.’ His father is effectively his agent, his brother Rodrigo takes care of his diary and, together with former Barcelona employee Pablo Negre, he organises events and media deals for him. His mother Celia and his brother Matías take care of the Leo Messi Foundation and other personal and professional affairs in Rosario. They have a few lawyers and little else.
‘Messi’s entourage is much more complex than Ronaldinho or Maradona’s in terms of relationships with the press,’ says Ramón Besa of El País. Messi would speak through his agent, Jorge Cyterszpiler or his assistant, Jorge Blanco. Ronaldinho, who kept a certain level of inaccessibility, had family members working as spokesmen. ‘But the people who surround Messi are a mystery, because he is like a child … Who is Messi? To whom do you have to speak to find out what he thinks? His father? Antonella? Getting to Messi is very complex,’ concludes Besa.
Besa recalls that he asked an Italian journalist who interviewed Messi in Barcelona how it had gone: ‘badly, because in order to interview Messi you prepare yourself in the same way that a defender prepares to play against him, and you don’t know how, but he ends up outwitting you; in other words I didn’t get anything out of the ten questions I had asked.’ The journalist is referring here to Leo and his family’s defensive attitude. Messi doesn’t see an interview as a way of connecting with his fans, but a check-up on him as a person. In Messi’s world the word ‘you already know what Messi is like’ is just another way of shutting the door on the interference. His world is a closed one, almost like that of a child, protected by his own family. And he defends that, it suits him, it fits his personality. Furthermore, that mistrust may stem from those people who did get close to him and who ended up trying to take advantage of him. Some of them have been taken to court.
‘Javier Marías says in Salvajes y sentimentales [‘Wild and Sentimental’] that football takes us back to our childhood, but the moment you become a commercial product as an adult, you can no longer carry on behaving as if you were a child,’ concludes Besa, the most perceptive of the journalists covering Barcelona. ‘Has anyone thought about this, about what the Messi world means? I think that they live off the positive dynamic, off the goals, but maybe one day he will not score as many, maybe one day someone will make him realise that no one is writing his side of the story any more.’
Leo’s image is linked solely to his performance, to his results on the pitch. He has never wanted to sell anything that does not fit that natural profile. He does not have a marketing policy, like David Beckham for example, who exemplifies the opposite extreme, in which image is everything.
Esteve Calzada, publicity expert and ex-Barcelona marketing director, gives a clear example of the difference in his book Show Me the Money: ‘When Lionel Messi was called up to the stage to receive his second Ballon d’Or at the FIFA gala in December 2010, he was so surprised that he didn’t know what to say or how to appear in front of the microphones, a clear demonstration that he had nothing prepared. Nor did he acknowledge his supporting team-mates from that year, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta. The following year, on winning the prize again on the same stage, it was very clear that he had conferred with his advisers and prepared a speech in which thank-yous and a special trophy dedication to his team-mate Xavi, who had been nominated again, were to the fore.’
Although Leo acts as if he is the best, he never speaks about himself as such; he always refers to the football team. ‘They have always wanted to be responsible for Leo’s low-profile image, even if they have been able to recruit one of the big advertising agencies,’ says ex-Barcelona financial vice-president Ferrán Soriano. ‘It is like applying a defence mechanism: it’s an “I don’t want anything.” This has the advantage that nobody screws you; and the disadvantage, you don’t maxim
ise the value. He earns twenty something million euros for playing football and for advertising it must be around fifteen or twenty. If you receive forty million a year, why should you want more?’
The Messis are scrupulous with costs. They have a conservative, financial mentality, they don’t waste much, and they track every euro that is spent. ‘They know they can earn more, but it doesn’t interest them,’ concludes Soriano.
Until now Leo has been the face of soft drinks, airlines (the advertisement with Kobe Bryant for Turkish Airlines has exceeded 105 million hits on the internet, one of the ten most viewed in 2012), watches, sliced bread, sportswear and even a Japanese cosmetics brand in whose commercial he had to say a few words in Japanese. And according to a liga BBVA report carried out by Brand Value Solutions, Messi had an 11 per cent media presence compared to the rest of the players; Ronaldo’s was 9.2 per cent. Now that Argentinians have placed him on a pedestal, if he wants to prevent Spanish disapproval from growing, he should focus more on his image. Of course Neymar and Ronaldo have more than twenty professionals looking after their respective images; it is all a system of communication aimed at presenting their best profiles to the world. But is that the solution?
In 2013 the Messi family employed the biggest advertising agency in the world to protect Leo and look for ways of exploiting his personal image.
Another side of this parallel universe to football with which Messi has to fight, whether he likes it or not, is in his dress sense. His friend Domenico Dolce, for whom he has even modelled Dolce & Gabbana clothing, has plenty to say about this. As we have seen, he has worn D&G at the Ballons d’Or and has been a regular customer for some time. Maybe he was chosen as a media icon because he more resembles the man on the street rather than the one with the perfectly toned body typified by many other footballers. Although Leo prefers a casual look, his fashion brand has given him a more sophisticated touch, and the fact that he wore a polka-dot dinner suit to pick up his fourth Ballon d’Or says a lot about the way he has evolved in this regard. Furthermore, if he, with his fairly average physique, was bold enough to wear such clothes, others might be encouraged to do the same. That is what advertising and icons are all about.
Messi Page 67