Messi (2 page)

The three of us met, and afterwards I went to Italy, leaving them to discuss it among themselves and to give me their answer. I think it was Javier who rang me to say yes, Leo would be the captain.

After that meeting we met again in India to play one of the national team’s first games, a friendly against Venezuela, and later against Nigeria in Bangladesh. But if one match symbolised the new era, it was surely the one against Colombia in the South American qualifiers for the Brazil World Cup 2014. We went through a difficult moment in Barranquilla where, fortunately, the lads were able to turn around a match played in suffocating heat. We were losing 1–0 after a goal from Dorlan Pabón that went in off Mascherano. Fortunately Messi equalised before Agüero made it 2–1 near the end.

As I often say, in football there are defining games, matches that provide the lift you need, the push required to get you going along this new road. I think that game was perhaps the beginning, because after that we started to build a close-knit group and, when a group is close, they get results, are happy playing together and achieve so much more. It is the perfect way, the only way, to overcome your weaknesses.

I am asked if that match defined not only the national team, but Leo himself, since it was from that match onwards that he began to be perceived differently in Argentina. It was certainly the start of a change of perception but there was another one as important, on 29 February, the day we played Switzerland away. That was such a wonderful performance. The day Leo scored a hat-trick. It was his first hat-trick for his country. He had done it for Barcelona countless times, but that was his first one in the blue and white of Argentina. Later in the same year he scored three more goals against Brazil… But, yes, that game against Colombia was, from both a footballing and coaching point of view, the confidence boost we needed.

What I can say is that Leo is a very calm person. He possesses natural leadership as a result of the enormous level of ability he has attained, and what is more, his leadership is accepted by everyone.

I like to give all footballers freedom, and that includes Leo. They live with enough pressure as it is, and I prefer to let them move around freely. The captaincy brings with it greater responsibility,
but Leo knows this and has accepted it, and it is helping him to mature and grow. And that is also good for his team-mates.

His team talks and private discussions remain in-house, but I can say that there is undoubtedly a generally happier vibe within the group, a sense of calm that goes beyond work and the job. There is a relaxed and happy atmosphere. It is crucial.

And there you have the mixture you need for Messi to show what he is capable of. Leo has to feel comfortable, and first and foremost he needs to be free. He needs the flexibility to know that he can do whatever is necessary on the pitch at any given moment. In truth, I only discuss the bare minimum with him, merely what is necessary. I don’t want to put any extra pressure on him, because the footballers already know the importance of the games, and of their individual contributions to the side.

When you talk about Messi, you need to talk about his development, because, as they say, the hard bit isn’t about getting there, it’s about staying there. So winning four consecutive Ballon d’Ors is a sign of great progress. Obviously just winning one Ballon d’Or is hard enough, but to win four on the trot is proof positive of just how far he has evolved as a player. During the past few years he has grown to maturity and has developed extraordinary skills that have served to make him increasingly better as a player. It is difficult to maintain, let alone exceed that level of excellence, but somehow he has achieved it.

I am sure that taking over the captaincy of Argentina has served him well in that process. It is necessary to get the confidence of everybody around you to grow as a person and as a player.

The year 2012 was a great one for Leo with the national side, a result of the maturity he has gained as he has grown older. When they say that a footballer has reached his peak, what are you supposed to do? Leave him to his own devices? It is important, for my part, that education and direction continue. No player is ever too good to receive constructive advice and direction.

To illustrate his immense attributes as a player you need only look at the opening match of the 2013−14 league campaign against Levante that Barcelona won 7–0. When Leo goes in to steal the ball he does it with conviction and determination until he succeeds in his objective, as he demonstrated in that game: he stole it and it became
the third goal. I have even seen him score headers as if he were a natural. What he is, in fact, is one of those extraordinary players who only gets better, as difficult as that is.

Barcelona chose to play him in the centre, a ploy we copied in the national side, simply because it worked so well for them. Leo gets more of the ball in that area, and the more he gets the ball the better it is for everyone else. As he is mature, confident, intelligent, he cannot be marginalised on the sides. And with Higuaín and Agüero opening up the spaces for him, and with Di María operating on the wing, Leo can decide from his position in the centre where to take the game. It is clear that with these players Leo has become more powerful, and vice versa.

So that everything works out well, I ask all of the players to make that little extra effort to win the ball back, to help those at the back, to sacrifice themselves more. And Leo has to defend wherever he may be in the play and within the possibilities opened up to him. No one asks him to perform miracles, but the main thing about Leo, and others in the side, is what they do with the ball. This is where Leo’s work bears fruit.

Normally the best players in the world play in the world’s best sides, and they are the ones who have the longest seasons and play the most games. Naturally this sets them apart. What is important is that they get to that stage, at their peak, at the World Cup. Some achieve it, some do not. Now we have a team that is playing well, that gives an appearance of solidity and looks like a team; that is what they showed in a friendly against Italy on 14 August 2013. But the fact of the matter is that any team in which Messi plays is never going to be the same team without him. We have to try to get rid of the notion that we cannot achieve victory without Messi. That obviously affects morale, and on that day, despite Leo’s absence, we played a great game. There is no doubt though – yes, we can survive without him. But he is irreplaceable. And no, there is no contradiction in what I am saying.

Messi is our symbol, our standard-bearer. An extraordinary player who plays in an extraordinary team. Maybe the greatest player of all time.

Introduction

Where’s Leo?

T
hat was the question on everyone’s lips in Leo’s classroom at the Juan Mantovani Middle School. His school was situated in the district of Las Heras in the south of the Argentinian city of Rosario, close to his home. Leo had missed a week of school and, apart from brief illnesses, he rarely did that. His desk stood empty, and at playtime, when someone got a ball out, the game seemed even more confusing. There is no football pitch at the Juan Mantovani and there are always too many kids for the small, cramped playground. It did not encourage spacious, expansive games and, with Leo absent, even less so. It had been some days since he had been seen.

It was September, three months before the end of the academic year which in Argentina begins in December. Exams were set around that time and Leo couldn’t be present. Someone asked on his behalf if he could do his exams on another day or if he could be given work while he was away.

No, sorry.

Has Leo come in today?

His team-mates at Rosario club Newell’s Old Boys (NOB) where he played in the lower ranks were asking the same question. He’d missed a number of training sessions at the Malvinas training academy, and he wasn’t he around for the match at the weekend either. ‘Hepatitis,’ said someone at the club. ‘He’s got hepatitis.’ Ah, that’ll be it. Nobody really knew what it was, but it sounded terrible, something that if you caught it meant that you certainly couldn’t play football. ‘Yes, the Maestro has hepatitis.’ That’ll be it.

The Maestro. Messi had at other times also been
el Piqui
(Titch) at school, but was ‘the Maestro’ to his adolescent peers (as others among them were ‘Clark Kent’, ‘the Galician’, ‘the Greyhound’, ‘the Korean’ because of his haircut): no one had Christian names and surnames in Argentinian football. And that’s how the official squad list was written. Name, date of birth, height and nickname: ‘the Mouse’, ‘the Bitumen’, ‘the Short One’ …

Where has Leo gone?

Adrián Coria looked after this diverse group, Leo’s first 11-a-side trainer, but he too knew nothing of the boy’s whereabouts. Strange to disappear in September. And more than strange, a problem: winning without Leo would be much harder. Someone telephoned Quique Dominguez, his previous coach at Newell: ‘No idea, I don’t know where he is.’ But he assumed that something was happening: he was always a reliable boy but when he had gone for a trial at River Plate just over a year earlier he hadn’t said anything then either. Had River finally taken him on? Someone said he had hepatitis.

The Messi family got a phone call some days before. ‘Come now, bring the boy.’ They had waited so long for this day, and now, suddenly, everything was happening in a rush. They had to prepare to go to Europe.

Newell’s were not told. Not a single coach, technical director or player in the club knew what was going on. Neither Leo nor his dad, Jorge, always looking after the career of his kid, wanted to tell anybody. It was not difficult to keep their own counsel: they are both discreet, equally reserved. Cast in the same mould.

With a sense of premonition the Rosario newspaper
La Capital
devoted an entire page to the youngster. The first one. It was 3 September 2000. ‘A Very Special Little Leper’ read the headline, ‘Leper’ a sobriquet shared by all his team-mates at the club that had once, in the 1920s, played a charity match to raise money for a leper clinic. And on one side a smiling Leo, head tilted, wearing an NOB shirt. He will always be a Leper, a passionate supporter of Newell’s, the club that was ‘everything’ to him in his youth, where he had just won the title in his team’s age group, a source of pride to him. And with his quiet voice (it was difficult to get the boy to smile for the camera), he shared with the journalist interviewing him some of his
dreams. He wanted to be a PE teacher. And to play in the first division, naturally.

And get into the Argentine national youth team. It was a long way away, but yes, of course, to get into the national side, a dream. He liked chicken. His favourite book? Errr … the Bible. The first thing that came into his head. He isn’t one for reading books. If he hadn’t been a footballer what other sport would he have chosen? Do I have to answer that? I don’t know, handball maybe. But, yes, he saw himself as a PE teacher. It was the only class at school that he enjoyed. He could be a PE teacher.

It was the newspaper supplement devoted to the
rojinegros
(the red and blacks, the colour of the NOB shirt). The text began: ‘Lionel Messi is a player from the tenth division and is the ‘
enganche
’ [player ‘in the hole’, playmaker] of the team. As a boy, not only is he one of the finest prospects from the Leprosa Academy, he also has a tremendous future ahead of him, because, despite his size, he manages to go past one, two players, dribble, score, but above all he enjoys himself on the ball’.
Gambetear
(to dribble),
enganche
, the words, the concepts, all very Argentinian. Leo was not the cover star of edition 97 of that supplement. That was left to Claudio Paris of the first team who had decided a few days earlier to stay with the club.

A black and white photocopy of the article made its way across the Atlantic.

Jorge and his son Leo, and the friend who was travelling with them to Ezeiza airport, discussed the article as they made their way from Rosario to Buenos Aires. The journey of three and a bit hours seemed longer than that as they travelled along a straight, boring road featuring little else but valleys and traffic signs. Leo gazed out of the window from the back seat.

It was 17 September 2000. A Sunday.

From Ezeiza, with the knowledge only of those closest to them and the school principal, they left for Barcelona.

A 24-hour journey lay ahead of them.

‘[The first journey] was good because it was a completely new experience for me. I’d never flown before, never undertaken such a long journey and I enjoyed it all, until the aeroplane started to move about a bit …’ (Leo Messi in
Revista Barça
).

Memory can play tricks with you. In truth the flight experienced
a lot of turbulence. When the first meal was served Leo didn’t eat, sleeping instead, stretched out over three seats. In his short trousers, with his skinny little legs. He felt nauseous, his stomach was churning. He slept fitfully, and felt sick.

Years later, and with great frequency, he would feel the same nausea before running onto the pitch and would sometimes ask himself if that feeling of sickness he had experienced on that flight really had been caused only by turbulence.

The party arrived in Barcelona at midday on Monday, 18 September, seven months after taping a home video that demonstrated in some eyes that Messi was the new Maradona, and in others, more familiar, closer to him, that his was a natural talent that could help him make it as a footballer, if everything went according to plan.

Someone brought Messi a kilo of oranges and some tennis balls. They asked him to practise with them for a week. Seven days later they recorded the VHS tape which showed him making 113 touches with an orange. With the tennis ball it was easier: 140
jueguitos
, as they say in Argentina, 140 touches in the keepy-uppy.

There was a table tennis ball lying around. ‘Give it to Leo.’ They gave it to him. Twenty-nine touches in a row. You try it. See if you can reach three. This Leo had an advantage over you: he spent all day, every day, with the ball. Between games, during the game, at home, in the school yard. Every blessed day.