by Luca Caioli
Any advice for your colleagues?
‘I wouldn’t know … I can only say that defenders need to keep tightly in line, be aggressive, be speedy and hold the position well.’
Chapter 23
Not even a single minute
30 June 2006
There are others who are considered the big stars. Ronaldinho, more than anyone else; according to commentators and fans, he will be the one who will shine the most. Many predict he will be crowned best World Cup player and highest goal scorer. Because – among other reasons – according to the majority of the world’s coaches, players, newspapers and TV channels, Brazil is favourite to take home the title. Betting on Barça’s number 10 is easy and logical. He has just had a spectacular season: Ballon d’Or, Liga and Champions League winner. The only thing that remains in order to crown him king is his second world title. Here is the list of potential candidates: fellow Brazilian Ronaldo, from whom everyone expects the umpteenth resurrection; David Beckham, the pop star of football; Zidane – facing the final challenge of his career. They are closely followed by the likes of Figo, Ballack, Torres, Van Nistelrooy and Del Piero.
In terms of Argentina, the name on everyone’s lips is Juan Román Riquelme. Twenty-eight years old, born in Buenos Aires, an attacking midfielder, he plays for Villarreal and as yet has no World Cup on his CV, but selector José Pekerman has put his trust in him.
The Albiceleste have been built around him and their game largely depends on Riquelme having a good day. He is a silent footballer, charged with the responsibility of leading the team. He needs to be solid, he needs to play imaginatively and make magic, he needs to move between the lines and get the crucial passes to the strikers. And Messi? Well … Messi is in the running in the category of medium-level stars, or rather, promising youngsters. He has been dubbed the new Maradona and the World Cup should be his chance to surprise the whole world at just eighteen years of age, after establishing himself on the international scene at Stamford Bridge.
Along with the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo and the Ecuadorian Luis Valencia, fans have included him in the list of six candidates from whom the best young World Cup player will be chosen (the other three, nominated by FIFA, are Cesc Fàbregas, the Swiss player Tranquillo Barnetta and the German Thomas Podolski). The title was inaugurated on 1 January 1985. The player in question will have to distinguish himself on pitches throughout Germany in terms of style, charisma, clean play and a passion for football. The Argentines want to see Messi in the starting line-up and they have pinned all their hopes on him; they want to see confirmation of all the amazing stories that are told across Europe about the heir to Maradona – and they want that confirmation in the shape of a national shirt. Since the days of the Pibe de Oro (Maradona’s nickname, golden boy) they have dreamt of a different player, a spectacular, magical player, whom they could love and worship the way they did – and still do – Diego. When it came down to it, it was Maradona himself who, a few months previously, asked that the number 10 shirt be given to Messi – a shirt number which the Argentine Federation had retired in his honour.
Leo may have grown up far from his native country, but in the last few months he has returned home in order to recover from the injury he received against Chelsea. He has had time to get some exposure, give interviews and shoot some ad hoc adverts for the World Cup. Both multinational and Argentine companies have bet on him in order to benefit from the effects of a global stage. Not least, German sporting brand Adidas, who have plastered entire buildings from Rome to Buenos Aires via Berlin with enormous posters of his face. On the eve of the World Cup, at least in terms of publicity, he is definitely beating his teammates by miles. He undoubtedly has the highest level of media coverage of any Albiceleste player. But such publicity can generate jealousy – yet another obstacle in the youngster’s path to being accepted in Pekerman’s team.
He has recently been invited into the group, thanks to his success in the Under 20 World Cup. His debut with the main national team is on 17 August 2005. It is during a friendly against Hungary in Budapest, at the stadium dedicated to Ferenc Puskás. He comes on for Maxi López in the 65th minute. And he is on the pitch for little more than 40 seconds. On his second touch, he dribbles the ball past Vanczák. The Hungarian grabs him by his brand-new number 18 shirt; Messi lifts his arm and pushes him back. Bam! He catches the defender full in the face. German referee Markus Merk is in no doubt. He elbowed him. And he pulls out the red card in front of the disbelieving Argentines. Sent off in his first match. Not the scenario that Leo had imagined. He is to spend the rest of the match crying. His coach and teammates think the referee’s decision is excessive, but their words of consolation are in vain.
After an unfortunate debut, there are other matches that offer an opportunity to move on and get into sync with the squad. But it is not easy. As is already obvious, Messi is shy. He hardly speaks to his teammates, or the staff. There is no shortage of anecdotes illustrating this, like the time during training in Madrid when the boss invites the whole squad to a barbecue – an Argentine social ritual par excellence – in order to encourage group bonding. Leo does not open his mouth, not even to ask for some meat. It is a silence that is apparent and worrying to the others. And Messi does not even emerge from his silence in order to conform to expected formalities. At Christmas, for example, when all the Argentine players go over to visit the manager after spending time with their families, Messi does not show up. And the AFA are often unable to locate him.
The lad adheres neither to the team hierarchy, nor to the unwritten rules that are essential to Argentine football. He is not a rebel, he does not behave badly, and he does not do it intentionally, it’s just the way he is. In the training sessions before his debut with the main national team, for example, he finds himself face to face with Gabriel Heinze. He faces up to him one, two, three, four times, repeatedly giving him the cold shoulder. Heinze, now an Olympique de Marseille defender, is reaching boiling point and is about to avenge his wounded pride. Pekerman has to intervene to save the little guy’s skin, and the honour of one of his players. It is a scene that will be repeated with others in Nüremberg, the Argentine team’s base over in Germany. The least one could say about the young Barcelona footballer is that he is shameless. And without ignoring the issue of unwritten rules, which are steeped in history, it has to be said that Messi is young – too young. To draw parallels yet again, at eighteen years of age, despite being an emerging figure, Maradona was not even selected by César Bilardo for the 1978 World Cup. Messi is in Germany, but it should be remembered that no Argentine player since the 1930s has played in the final stages of the competition at only eighteen years old. The lesson that has had to be learned by men who have sat ‘willingly’ on the bench is that it is necessary to protect newly emerging talents at all costs – the weight of defeat must not be allowed to rest on their shoulders. There is actually a risk of harming them. And in these cases, history carries a lot of weight.
So too does the injury of 7 March. Messi is seemingly completely recovered; he has already played various friendlies before the World Cup; but there are those in the dressing room who say his muscles are still bothering him. In terms of his state of mind, he is happy in the lead-up to his first World Cup. In his pre-tournament statements he reaffirms what everyone has been saying: the Brazilians, with his friend Ronaldinho up ahead, are the favourites, but ‘we also have a good team. And the national team is made up of many great players. Of course we are going to take it one step at a time, one game at a time. And there will be excellent opponents and every match will be very complicated. But I believe that Argentina can win the World Cup.’
The Albiceleste is in Group C, known from the beginning as the group of death: Ivory Coast, Serbia and Montenegro and Holland. It will not be an easy ride, especially with the disaster of the Korean and Japanese World Cup weighing on their minds.
Saturday 10 June at 9.00pm in Hamburg sees the first match against the Ivory Coast. During
a training session five days earlier, Messi suffered a contusion, making it difficult for him to play. The manager’s idea is to pace him, allowing him to go on later in the competition, apart from anything because they are not convinced he is 100 per cent fit. In fact, they state: ‘We cannot promise anything that could create expectations. In each successive training session we have seen improvement and a return to form. And he is getting better bit by bit. We are grateful for the effort he has made to be here with us.’ On the bench he goes. From his ‘privileged’ vantage point Lionel watches as Crespo scores his 30th Albiceleste goal with his usual opportunism. He watches as Riquelme, in a moment of divine inspiration, looks into the stands and sends the ball exactly where it needed to go. And he sees the unmarked ‘Conejo’ Saviola punish Tizie with his first touch. He watches as the ‘Elephants’ (Ivory Coast) fight back and try to create chances without getting a goal – they only manage it towards the end, thanks to Drogba as usual – penetrating the Argentine defence, led by the impeccable Ayala. The result: 2-1. The Albiceleste look promising, even without Leo. Commenting on the game, Pekerman remarks: ‘To me, football is always the same. I have expectations of this squad from an analytical point of view, not based solely on desire. We put up a great performance in terms of defence in our first match, holding off dangerous Ivory Coast players. True, we lacked presence. But the good thing is that we never lost our nerve.’ It does not take much reading between the lines to realise that he is satisfied with how things have gone, which is obvious given that, in the second match against Serbia and Montenegro – which concerns him, despite the fact that they have lost to Holland – he has no intention of changing his teamsheet, except to put Lucho González in place of Esteban Cambiasso. In short, at the Gelsenkirchen stadium on 16 June, Messi is on the bench again. He has Carlos Tévez to keep him company, and 65 minutes to witness three goals and wonder how many he could score. Then he is on his feet, in his fluorescent outfit, warming up along the touchline. The warm-up is a promising sign. He returns to the dugout, following gestures and instructions, and finally assistant coach Hugo Tocalli lets him put on the blue number 19 shirt. His World Cup debut comes in the 74th minute. He comes on for Maxi Rodríguez, joining the game at the same time as Carlos Tévez, the other youngster on the team.
In the stands, Maradona lifts his arms in the air, screaming and cheering along with the thousands of Argentine fans. They sing: ‘Olé, olé olé olé, Me-ssiiiii, Me-ssiiiii!’ Someone holds up a poster with the Flea’s face next to the World Cup trophy. Underneath it says: ‘This is my dream.’ Others wave a placard that reads: ‘He’s Argentine and he’s the Messiah.’ The demand of one little girl brandishing a placard – ‘José, let Messi play (please)’ – is finally answered.
Up until now the Albiceleste have been playing well, no complaints, but when the Flea comes on things change: the number 19 forces a team who were starting to rest on their laurels to wake up, he gets them moving again, he makes them start accelerating more and more. They pass him the ball and he’s off like a shot, with the sole objective of making it to the opponents’ goal. He creates quite a spectacle as he skips along. A free kick is taken quickly and Leo is onto it, zooming along on the left-hand side of the penalty area. He reaches the line, lifts his head and slides the ball in front of the goalposts in a perfect position for Crespo who, anticipating the Serbian defence, stretches out his foot and takes the total number of goals to four. In the 87th minute Tévez passes to Crespo, who passes back to Tévez who, after having scored the fifth goal, shows his generosity by sending the ball down to Messi, who is motoring up the right wing. He gets past the defender and scores the sixth goal, sliding the ball between the post and the goalkeeper’s hand. Then he pauses to point to the player who gifted him the goal. Crespo rushes over to hug him, the crowd goes wild.
This time it is a fantastic World Cup debut, although as usual the man in question plays it down: ‘I wasn’t thinking about my debut. I was thinking about winning a match that I really wanted to play in. In all honesty I still haven’t thought about the fact that I’m now a World Cup player and that I fulfilled a dream today.’ And now? Now Pekerman has a decision to make, a dilemma to resolve. ‘His country wants him to play Messi from the start. And not to wait until the 74th minute. And the press, who see what sells, want it too. And, my dear friends, what press and what country wouldn’t want it?’ writes Pep Guardiola in El País. ‘Only he (Pekerman) knows what he is going to do with this genius. No one doubts that Messi will give him the same over 90 minutes that he gives in fifteen. Yesterday was like that sweetie that a mother keeps hidden in her bag, well hidden, ready to give to her child when he won’t stop crying. And it always works, even if only for fifteen minutes.’
At the end of the day the decision is not so difficult, the hot potato burns less because the last match in Group C against Holland is insignificant. Both teams have already qualified for the last sixteen, now they are just playing for first position in the group. Pekerman can kill two birds with one stone: Tévez and Messi in the starting line-up, Saviola and Crespo rested to avoid any yellow cards that could mean missing the next match. In the end, everyone is happy – especially those who want to see the little genius from Rosario play again.
On 21 June at the Waldstadion in Frankfurt, Lionel is awaited by Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini, Franz Beckenbauer and, of course, Diego Armando Maradona, dressed inevitably in his Albiceleste shirt. In other words, the crème de la crème of World Cup football.
Leo is the last to disembark from the team bus, iPod headphones in his ears, the last to change, after having a look at the pitch and chatting with fellow Barcelona players from the orange-clad team (Van Bronckhorst and Van Bommel) and the last to start his warm-up. When the time comes to go on the pitch, he waits respectfully in line. On his feet, he is wearing a pair of Adidas boots designed especially for his World Cup appearance. On them is his name, the sun from the Argentine flag, the phrase ‘The Hand of God’ and a date: 22 June 1986. The following day it will be twenty years since Diego scored two goals against England in the 1986 World Cup, one with the hand and one with the foot.
Expectation is mounting in the stands. What wonders will Lionel have for them this time? If he wreaked havoc in fifteen minutes, who knows what he will do in 90. And even if this isn’t his night, the effect of his presence on the pitch is almost palpable. In the first half he plays along the right wing, marked by Tim de Cler. He has eleven touches, losing the ball once and making seven good passes. In the second half he switches to the left wing, where he is marked by Kew Jaliens. In 23 minutes he only gets three touches, only one of which is played the way it should be. In the 69th minute Pekerman substitutes him for Julio Cruz. There is very little of note: an inoffensive left-footed kick and one or two brilliant passes – one deep to Cambiasso, intercepted with difficulty by Van Der Saar, an incredible ball to Maxi Rodríguez and a beautiful ‘one-two’ with Riquelme with a final shot that ends up going just wide.
It was the most highly anticipated match of the first stage of the World Cup, a clash between two powerful teams with many great precedents (the 1978 final being among those that stand out), which, nonetheless, was disappointing. Some journalists maliciously imply that the number 19’s rather ordinary performance will give Pekerman the perfect excuse to put him back on the bench. And back he goes.
On 24 June, his nineteenth birthday, he is back to being a spectator for 84 long minutes. And this time Argentina are not doing well: Mexico, coached by the Argentine Ricardo La Volpe, have pushed them against the ropes. When Messi comes on for Saviola, the score is 1-1. The game is heading into extra time. And it is then that the boy from Barça changes the team’s rhythm, he gives it the necessary depth and sends the ball from foot to foot, building up to an amazing Maxi Rodríguez goal. Albeit with more difficulties than anticipated, Argentina have made it into the quarter-finals.
In Berlin, on 30 June, they face host team Germany. There are 120 minutes of play, of which L
eo Messi plays not even a single minute. It is a mystery, the polemic of a match that ends with Argentina losing on penalties (4-2, after a 1-1 scoreline at the end of extra time).
Let us rewind the film of that decisive match, in order to understand how it is that the player who could have played a crucial role in winning the World Cup ended up on the bench.
Pekerman replaces Saviola with Tévez in the starting line-up, and Lucho González also starts. Two players who work well with the team – no complaints there. Pekerman is forced to make his first substitution in the 71st minute, when Pato Abbondanzieri is injured in a skirmish with the giant Germans. Leo Franco comes on in his place. The next to come off is Riquelme – ‘he was tired’, says the boss. Cambiasso replaces him. The manager is trying to achieve a balance, or rather, he is trying to bolt the door and defend the scoreline. Argentina are winning 1-0 thanks to a header from Ayala, but the players are continually trapped in their own half and they blame the Germans for the hard blows they receive. In the 79th minute the final substitution is made with Cruz coming on for Crespo, just moments before Klose heads in the equaliser. To rectify the situation would have required speed, skill and creativity, which Cruz does not possess and which Tévez can no longer muster due to tiredness after playing for the length of the match. Essentially, they needed Messi. Popular consensus seems to be that if he had come on, Argentina would have sealed the match before it got to the penalty shoot-out stage. He would have taken charge of transforming the situation.
Why didn’t Pekerman send him on? Why did he choose Cruz over him? ‘In that moment we needed a striker in the box and that’s not Messi,’ he explains in the press room after the tears, after the fight between Oliver Bierhoff, Frings and Cruz, and before announcing his resignation. ‘We were always considering him [Messi] as a good option, I knew we could count on him,’ says the manager. A statement reinforced by his comment that ‘Argentina may have had alternatives, but we could not instigate them’. Hugo Tocalli today confirms that version. ‘In order to counteract Germany’s play in the air it was important to send on Cruz. We were winning 1-0 in a match we were controlling well, in which we had dominated, and then Abbondanzieri’s unfortunate injury ruined all our plans.’ But his explanations do not convince anyone, and one by one various theories emerge on the topic: