Messi (22 page)

As matters continued to worsen, María Sol celebrated her sixth birthday. The family made a brave effort to make her day special, but it was clear that the child was unhappy, as the realisation dawned on her young mind that the world could be a hostile and unforgiving place. Both Celia and Jorge agonised to see her cry when she had to
go to school. Seeking reassurance, Celia attended a parents’ evening at the school and, asking if it would be possible during the meeting for the teachers to speak in Castilian, was told bluntly, ‘Wait until the end and we’ll explain it all to you.’ They were reaching their limit, or so it seemed. Leo remembered that period in an interview with the Argentinian magazine
Para ti
in July 2005. ‘[María Sol] did not adapt either to the school, or to Catalan.’

Years later, in 2009, ‘the Flea’ did an interview with the Argentinian television station TVR. He was asked how he was getting on with learning Catalan. Messi admitted having difficulties initially but said he thought that he’d learned enough at school. ‘Now it’s easy,’ he said. The presenter asked him to say, ‘Good night, I am Lionel Messi’ in Catalan, and Lionel, feeling under scrutiny, challenged and out of his comfort zone said, ‘
Bona nit
…
y
’. The audience laughed at his inability to finish the phrase.

Curiously, the first public political statement made by Leo Messi was an honest defence of Catalan. On 6 December 2012, he did a show with his sponsor, Turkish Airlines, the company having appointed him one of their international ambassadors. The show was presented by this author. As often happens at such events, rules and boundaries were established between Leo’s press chief and the representative of Barcelona’s media department prior to questions from the press. No one counted on the fact that one of the journalists present would ask about the changes that the Minister of Education, José Ignacio Wert, was seeking to introduce in his Education Act, considered in Catalonia as an attack on the Catalan language. In this matter, FC Barcelona had issued a communication vindicating the use of Catalan in the educational system. ‘The Catalan language and its teaching in schools forms part of our identity and is a key element for social cohesion and the harmony of our people.’

On hearing the question, I looked at Leo’s head of press and Barcelona’s representative. They looked at each other from a distance. They had a couple of seconds to react before Messi answered. I got a nod from Leo’s media man. Go ahead, let him talk. Leo, an expert in dodging all manner of questions, had not prepared a reply. He said that since he had arrived in Catalunya he had, ‘grown, studied and learned in Catalan’ and that he had never had ‘any problem’
with it because, ‘the more languages a boy knows, the better for him’. An answer considered exemplary by all those around him.

Nevertheless, eleven years earlier, the strong sense of remoteness and the general sense of alienation from this new culture, meant that half the Messi family wanted to go back to Argentina (and stay).

So, as has been seen, at the end of a difficult season Leo and family returned to Rosario for the summer. When they met at the house in Las Heras, there was no avoiding the big issue: María Sol was going to stay in Argentina. Nobody wanted to see her cry any more. Leo had to decide what he wanted to do next.

Jorge Messi recalls it in
Informe Robinson
: ‘One day I asked Leo: “well, what do you want to do? Because the decision is yours, if you want to come back to Argentina, then we’ll come back”.’ Jorge offered his son his unconditional love, his total support. The objective was clear: Leo wanted to be a footballer and Jorge wanted the consequences of his decision, whatever they may be, to be seen not as a defeat, but as another step towards the finishing line and a happy ending. Leo must have known that there were no guarantees that he would triumph. Not one. But he found himself at a crossroads and, having just reached 14, had to make a decision: either they all returned to Argentina or the family split.

‘Leo looked at me,’ continued Jorge, ‘and then said: “No, I want to stay, I want to play football in Barcelona and want to play in the first division for Barcelona”. That was Leo’s decision, it was his decision: nobody forced him into anything. That’s why I stayed with him. Celia stayed in Rosario with the children.’

The Messi/Cuccittinis were going to part company.

They wanted to believe it would only be a brief separation. They must have imagined that they would get together again before long. When you are aware that things are transient, you undoubtedly develop a greater mental strength. The Italian grandparents of Jorge and Celia knew that they were leaving their families for ever, that they were abandoning Europe, never to return. The Argentinian families who emigrated to Europe at the beginning of this century parted knowing that they would do everything possible to be reunited with their loved ones. And the Messi/Cuccittinis were clear
that they were going to manage it somehow. You have to try to understand the thought process that led them to decide to separate: people like this have a different vision from most of us. Who would be separated from their wife or husband and three of their children, in order that another one of their offspring might make a success of himself in a sport that devours dreams?

Jorge admitted on
Informe Robinson
that his wife would have preferred for them all to come home and that, in Barcelona, ‘for the children, it was as if they had changed ship and wanted to return. The truth is that several negative factors conspired to come together at a very critical time.’

Remember the Italian origin of the family in which everything revolves around
la mamma
. Leo was about to be motherless, with only his twice yearly visits and contact via telephone and the internet. Jorge stayed in Barcelona to look after Leo. Rodrigo would join them a few months later, but for the time being there was just father and son in the four-bedroom flat on Gran Via Carles III.

Leo adores his mother but his father is the one who tells him yes or no. The relationship is different to most as he also manages his affairs. He is a father who is a manager, a manager who is a father, with all that that entails. But Leo will never forget that the one who sacrificed his life was his old man.

Celia, Rodrigo, Matías and María Sol were going back to live in Rosario. Returning to Rosario? It was better to think, as Napoleon had at Waterloo, that they were not retreating but merely advancing in another direction. Was Rosario the point of arrival or the point of departure? Whatever it was, back in Las Heras they began to feel at home again.

‘Both of us boys had girlfriends and we stayed in Argentina,’ remembered Matías in the
Informe Robinson
programme. ‘In that we were conscious of the fact … that we were leaving him alone … While he always says that the family is the most important thing he has, that we always helped him, that might be true; but at that moment, I, particularly, from my point of view, think that I left him on his own, you know? That’s why I don’t like to remember that time too much …’ And his last words come out falteringly. Put yourself in Matías’s shoes for a moment: he had also been left, without a father figure and without a brother whom he adored.

Rodrigo was equally sincere: ‘We didn’t adapt very well. It was a problem, we were united but one person did something and the others did nothing. Therefore we all suffered in different ways. Unfortunately we ended up parting, but we’re always coming and going. We travelled twice a year.’

Rodrigo’s dream, his idea of becoming a professional footballer abandoned partly because of the lack of opportunity but also because of the lack of ambition needed to succeed, was to become a chef. He returned to Barcelona with his girlfriend Florencia to help his dad, Jorge, and Leo and enrolled on a cookery course. Ultimately his presence in the city would bring great familial comfort to Leo. Subsequently, Rodrigo sometimes seemed like the father and Leo one of his sons. Confusingly, the roles had changed.

Jorge Messi has admitted that if he had to make the decision all over again, to relive the whole story, he would never have let the family split up.

Around this time, Messi was on the point of going to Real Madrid.

In that same summer of 2001, Barcelona had a new general manager, Javier Pérez Farguell. In August, with Messi returning from Rosario fit and ready for the new season, Barça complained, this time via the players’ status committee at FIFA, that Leo’s transfer documents had still not arrived from Newell’s, and without them his chances of playing would be seriously impeded. Meanwhile, Farguell glanced over Leo’s first contract, drawn up some months earlier, and was perplexed to note that he had been guaranteed 100 million pesetas per season, an excessive amount for a youngster who could not be fully used yet. The decision had not been his and he now saw fit to rescind it.

A new contract for a lesser amount was renegotiated: the club would instead pay 20 million pesetas per season (€120,000). To be fair, Barcelona had been stung in the past, paying huge wages to young players, especially to Haruna Babangdida, who made his first-team debut at only 15 and was loaned to Terrassa in the second division four years later, where he was lost to elite football, and to the winger Nano, both of whom earned the same wages as a player with Barcelona B. The club was understandably reluctant to make the same mistakes twice. It was explained to Jorge Messi that there
was a salary cap for the youngsters in the academy and they could not go above those limits. No salary caps or limits had been mentioned in previous negotiations.

Several meetings ensued as they tried to reach an agreement but it was not possible to bridge the gap between the old contract and the new. The club proposed gathering together all those responsible for bringing Leo over, sitting them round a table with all the directors and thrashing the matter out. These comprised Minguella, Joan Lacueva, Jaume Rodríguez from Barça’s Human Resources department, Joaquim Rifé, the players’ liaison Carles Naval, managing director Anton Parera and agents and lawyers. Inevitably they reached an impasse, as both sides refused to compromise. One of the directors could not understand why Jorge and Leo would not accept the club’s offer and asked, ‘Who does he think he is, Maradona? Let’s close this now and he can go back to Argentina.’

That single statement sums up the attitude of some of the club members and illustrates perfectly the apparent lack of care and urgency over the previous few months. The Messi side looked on, appalled. The club clearly had no appreciation of the sacrifices the family had made. It seemed senseless now to continue betting everything on one card.

Negotiations seemed to have broken down irretrievably.

At the other end of a phone was Jorge Valdano, then sporting director of Real Madrid who confirmed that the ‘Whites’ would be prepared to pay 20 million pesetas a season, and maybe more. But he didn’t want to go to war with Barcelona. If the player wanted to come along as a free agent, he would be welcome.

There was no official offer from Real Madrid, but neither was one needed; everyone knew the conditions. ‘I think we’ll go to Madrid,’ someone in the room was heard to mutter.

Finally arms were twisted and a deal was struck, but in the process relationships were broken. Jorge Messi found out that there were some people whom he had trusted who had deceived him, a revelation that would have dire consequences. Writer Roberto Martínez says in his book
Barçargentinos
: ‘Jorge Messi, sick and tired of waiting for a communication from the club that never arrived, firstly asked for the situation surrounding Leo and his family to be resolved quickly. When he saw he wasn’t getting any response he
met with the new general manager to discuss whether he would be staying at Barcelona or returning to Buenos Aires. He got a shock. Pérez Farguell told him that some of those who had organised Leo’s trip from Rosario were asking Barcelona for an enormous sum of money and the club could not pay this amount for a boy of 12. Surprised, Leo’s father explained that all he was interested in was a job, somewhere to live with his family and the payment of Leo’s treatment.’

Leo’s representatives had told Jorge that Leo would earn 100 million pesetas a year and Jorge himself would have a paid job. The first never happened, and the second took months to be confirmed. Jorge found out that there were issues about commissions that led to a breakdown in trust that would never be repaired. From then on, Leo’s father took charge of all his son’s affairs, a decision that led to legal proceedings brought by one of the now redundant intermediaries, still ongoing, and which have already, on two occasions, been judged in favour of the Messis.

‘So Pérez Farguell,’ continues Roberto Martínez ‘agreed to the family claim and formalised a new agreement. Jorge Messi reveals that “in reality the sum of €3,900 a month was for a job for me. Also Lionel received a variable sum dependent upon when he played and whether or not he won or drew. And the amount went up or down according to what level he played at.”’ The new contract was signed on 5 December 2001, nine months after the first one. So Leo, still without the international transfer documents, would, in an unprecedented move, receive a wage as if he was a Barcelona B player and Jorge also got a loan to do some building work on their flat in Barcelona, an ingenious way of compensating the family.

Finally everything off the pitch seemed resolved. There was no need to return Valdano’s call.

In
El Gráfico
, years later, Leo explained how he felt as a 14-year-old when he was left alone with his father in Barcelona. ‘When I left, I cried a lot, I cried for everything that I was leaving in Argentina, but at the same time I had a dream and I knew it was for the better.’ Sometimes he hid quietly in his bedroom. ‘I locked myself in my room and cried. I didn’t want my father to see me.’

The youngsters at Barcelona used to go through the same routine
that they still follow to this day: a bus would pick them up at the gates of La Masía, they’d go to school, eat together and then train, and then a few of them would rest in their rooms while the majority would be at the country house opposite the stadium, a home to hundreds of kids before the new Masía was inaugurated in 2011. Leo would sometimes go from school to home to eat something his father had cooked for him, watch television for a while, play on his PlayStation, or take a nap and then walk to training. Usually alone.