Messi (12 page)

Quique Domínguez: The way of competing is also very important, because it is no fun having four goals stuck past you, it’s obviously much more fun to score them. But above all, you have to show that at the end of the game it is just a game – the kids have to shake hands, congratulate the winners, even if you have lost 10–0. Or if you have won, you have to congratulate the losing side: and if they don’t want to shake hands, no problem. We turn round and go home. Sometimes it will be us who will not feel like doing it …

Jorge Valdano: Jorge Griffa was the guru of football development in Argentina and Newell’s followed his ideas, which placed their academy at the top of the scale.

Quique Domínguez: And from Newell’s Leo took technique, craft and his winning attitude. What I always said to my lads was: we go onto the field, we are winning 1–0, we look for the 2–0, we look for the 3–0, 4–0 … and so on unless the ref decides to stop the game. There was a time here when we won 10–0, 15–0 and, of course, the matches used to get to a point when the boys from the other side, maybe after the tenth goal, did not want to play any more; then they put a limit of 6–0. At 6–0 the game would he halted.

Jorge Valdano: But in a way it all ended when Griffa packed up. In recent years some terrible abuses have taken place. For example, the
Barras Bravas
(football’s ultra supporters) were the owners
of the youth players. This alone tells you about the moral bankruptcy that overtook the club, something that has thankfully been remedied under new management.

Ernesto Vecchio: It’s possible that the standard of ‘baby’ football has gone down a bit, but this is because of the change in society. There are boys whose fathers can’t bring them because they are unable to pay. That’s it. Also the children of today are different. They are more rebellious. Answer back. Don’t listen. Before, they were more manageable, now they are more difficult. Another thing that has an effect is that there are not so many new fields available. We lack pitches. Today technology affects children who prefer to be with their computer, PlayStation, the internet and they are not so interested in doing sport. Unfortunately.

Gerardo Grighini: I think the name ‘Machine of ’87’ came much later. I don’t remember anyone calling us that.

Diego Rovira: Newell’s side of ’87. Quique’s side. Quique Domínguez, the father of Seba, the one who plays at Velez, the central defender. In goal was Juan Cruz Leguizamón, who is now at Central Córdoba. At number 5 played Lucas Scaglia, a monster. They called him ‘Pulpo’ (the octopus). These days he is at Once Caldas, in Colombia. Rosso is today at Brescia, Grighini, you have played in Italy. Leandro Giménez, who afterwards went to River, and another Leandro: Benítez. And Leo, Roncaglia and me. ‘The Newell’s ’87 side was invincible,’ people used to say. We won everything in 1999 and nearly everything in 2000. This is how the games went: 8–0, 7–2, we lost count.

Gerardo Grighini: In Rosario they talked a lot about this group because we had Leo, Juan Cruz (Leguizamón), Lucas (Scaglia) … they were very good players. We started on small pitches, seven-a-side. Leo on his own would score three or four.

Diego Rovira: That forward line was tremendous. Leo number 10. At 7, Roncaglia, yes, Roncaglia. Very fast, hit in some great crosses, I remember. Add there Bergessio. What a guy, what a player Bergessio. And up front with the number 9, me.

Diego Rovira: In 1999 we played three tournaments and won them all: I even remember winning all the matches too, like 45 of them, 15 per tournament, madness; all of them, well, except for one: against Central. They were the only side that could give us a
game, although in the return we walloped them, 4–0. They never got close to our goal that day, it was rare that any side got close to our goal.

Quique Domínguez: From Argentina, Leo took the natural technique of the Latin American, like Neymar, like Ronaldinho, Riquelme … the way to position the body to accommodate the ball, to control it, to direct it. From Newell’s he took the winning mentality.

Leandro Benítez (ex-junior player at NOB): He was a sensation, we’d arrive at the pitch and our opponents would say, ‘I wouldn’t give you two pesos for him’, but when he got the ball he skinned them.

Diego Rovira: One time it occurred to one of Quique’s assistants that it would be a good idea to compete against each other to motivate us. The Newell’s of the first half against the Newell’s of the second. At half-time we were winning 3–0. Perfect. And in the second half? Four? So then the Newell’s second team won 4–3. It was a laugh. With Leo, playing football was a laugh.

Ernesto Vecchio: He was a marvel. He was clever, he had a good short touch, he would leave the ball dead, he played for his teammates. Once on pitch one at the Malvinas, the goalkeeper gave him the ball and he went from one goal to another to score a stupendous goal. You didn’t have to show him anything. What can you show a Maradona or a Pelé? The only thing that a coach could do is correct some little details.

Juan Cruz Leguizamón (ex-junior player at NOB): In Europe he became famous for that goal he scored against Getafe, but for us that was normal, we saw him score goals like that as a matter of course.

Diego Rovira: Leo, every time I see him … I smile thinking about the crazy things that he does. He’s a monster. Like the five goals he scored against Bayer Leverkusen: who else would think of scoring five in a match, let alone in the Champions League? And just how does he do it? That’s exactly how it was at Newell’s. Less acceleration, less explosion, but the same.

Quique Domínguez: He had fantastic co-ordination for someone of his age. For Leo it’s like the ball forms part of his body. If it comes high and he has to use his head to control it, he uses his
cheek because he knows that is the best way to cushion it. Perhaps another boy will put his forehead first because he knows it’s a harder part of his body and more used to taking a hit. Why? Because Leo is different.

Gabriel Digerolamo: Technically he was gifted like no boy I have ever seen. He was so good that a lot of times I changed his position so he could adapt to all aspects of playing on the pitch. On one occasion I played him as sweeper, and, yes, it looked like he had been playing there all his life.

Quique Domínguez: I often say that I don’t know who learned more from whom. Leo from us or us from Leo.

Adrián Coria (coach, NOB): ‘You don’t coach your team when Leo’s playing’, they used to tell me.

Diego Rovira: Leo would take on a couple of players and left me one on one. It was always like that. I had to get myself prepared, stopped on the last line of our opponents, and ready: one on one, guaranteed. The other trick we did was the long ball if things got complicated, which they rarely did. Leguizamón, the goalkeeper, would look for me. ‘Bring it down for me,’ Leo would shout. Can you imagine. I was a head taller than my rivals. Easy.

Juan Cruz Leguizamón: At one of the tournaments, if we became champions the organisers were going to give us each a bicycle. We got to the final but we started the match without Leo, he just didn’t arrive … and we finished the first half 1–0 down. Where was he? He got there late because he’d been locked in the bathroom at home and had to break the glass in the window to get out! He got in there in time for the second half and we ended up winning 3–1 … with three goals from Leo. But like I said, millions of games. There were many things we lived together, a whole childhood.

Bruno Milanesio (ex-junior player at NOB): I remember telling my grandmother, who saw me crestfallen, that Leo had sprained his ankle and wouldn’t be able to play the following day. My grandma is a healer and she asked me the name of the boy. ‘Leo, Leo Messi,’ I told her. She never told me what she had done, nor did I want to tell Leo that my grandmother had … well, that she’d healed him … but the following day Leo got up as if nothing had happened, with the swelling on the ankle gone. He played
and we came out champions. Years later I was at my grandmother’s house, and on television there was Messi playing for Barcelona. ‘Grandma, do you remember him?’ I asked her. When she answered, ‘not in the slightest’, I reminded her. Now when she sees Messi on television she smiles and boasts: ‘That boy … I healed that boy once.’

Gerardo Grighini: At that time we did not have to work for the team, not much anyway. It was simple: we just needed to give him the ball and that was it. Game over. He might lose it once or twice, but the third and fourth time he’d score two goals. Guaranteed.

Ángel Ruani (father of ex-NOB player ‘Luli’ Ruani): Maybe people nowadays don’t believe it, but Leo scored about 100 goals per season in all the games we played. If we bear in mind that he came to Newell’s in 1994 and left in 2000, we are talking about more than 500 goals throughout his time with the
Infantiles
, which is totally outrageous.

Adrián Coria: Perhaps he was not aware of it at the time, but in a way it is an advantage to be small – you control the ball better, you’re more agile and faster than the rest.

Quique Domínguez: He passed the ball, but wouldn’t just push it to you, but, rather, lift it up, bounce it up on his toes a couple of times before passing, that kind of thing. Leo is football in its purest sense. Not obsessed with the money, no, football for the fun of it.

Gerardo Grighini: On the Newell’s pitch, the directors would ask him to do some keepy-uppy before the game or at half-time. On one occasion, in Mar del Plata, he did keepy-uppies before the game, and fans would throw money at him, coins. Fifteen minutes would go by and he still hadn’t lost control of the ball. In Peru, I think he got up to 1,200 touches. He was nine years old at the time.

Franco Casanova (ex-junior player at NOB): At the farewell of the legendary Newell’s player and current Barcelona manager Gerardo Martino in the summer of 1996, the Newell’s boys did a lap of honour at half-time. They had been crowned champions. Suddenly they stopped in the middle of the pitch and pushed Leo into the centre circle. The stands raised the roof. ‘Marado,
Marado!!’ screamed the crowd as Leo practised his keepy-uppies.

Nestor Rozín (former director of NOB): For every 100 touches, sometimes he got an ice cream and I think he made 1,100 touches and they gave him 10 ice creams.

Gerardo Grighini: At 11, we went from seven-a-side to 11-a-side. Sometimes both, Saturday the sevens, and Sundays, 11s. To get used to it. And against 11 he stood out even more, he had more pitch, more space. He was fast. Very fast. He got through gaps he didn’t fit into. It was incredible.

Adrián Coria: I played him just behind the strikers, either in a free role or, as it is known, the
enganche
in a 4-3-1-2 formation.

Quique Domínguez: His opponents tried to hide the effect he had on them, but would eye him up and down with a bit of fear. He generated something inexplicable for a kid of 10 or 11 years old.

Diego Rovira: The conversations between the opposing defenders were wonderful: