Messi (30 page)

In the stand, Jorge and Celia were in tears.

‘The truth is that we did cry. For us this was a dream come true, because we never believed that he would make his debut on that day,’ remembered Jorge Messi on
Informe Robinson
. ‘We thought he was joining to make up the numbers. And then they call him up to warm up. No, surely not. And when he came on, well, yes, the truth is that we wept. I believe it was a reward, the reward for the sacrifices he had made.’

Fernando Navarro, who left the pitch with a very serious expression on his face and hardly looking at the debutant, made history without really wanting to: ‘When I see the pictures on the telly, when Messi replaces me … I was actually quite pissed off. I had been out for a year with an injury and I was upset about coming off. But, okay, with hindsight Leo is now, what, the best player in the world or the best ever? And he came on for me! But, remember, at that point I was being replaced by a Junior.’

Leo could have scored two goals. Shortly after coming on he had his first chance, a loose ball that the goalkeeper got to first, but the second one was a much clearer opportunity: he stole the ball off the keeper, and with an open goal he thought he had less space than he actually did and passed the ball to Oriol. He should have shot.

‘Of course I remember that pass; what he did that day he used to do in the youth teams. Some of us weren’t surprised,’ points out Oriol Riera.

A bit later he tussled for the ball with a defender, lost control on a pitch that wasn’t smooth and ‘the Flea’ fell over.

‘It seemed as if he had been playing with us all of his life, his movement was so natural. The first time the ball came to him he created a scoring chance. The second time, he nearly scored,’ remembers Ten Cate. ‘If you are fifteen or sixteen years old in a game like this against Porto, at the opening of a new stadium full of people, and you do all that, it’s because you are something special. Frank and I looked at each other. “What the fuck? Did you see that?”’

‘Yes, he did two or three good things,’ confirms Txiki Beguiristain.

‘I was nervous, I spent the whole match on the bench, I thought Rijkaard would give me a debut of about ten minutes,’ says Ginard, the only one of the four Juniors not to play.

On the bench, Leo was the talking point, as Fernando Navarro recalls: ‘We were amazed by his personality, his dribbling, his maturity. He was sixteen and I don’t know anybody who doesn’t get nervous in his debut with the first team. But the guy took the game as if he was in the youth ranks, as if the Juniors were playing.’

Barcelona lost 2–0 but Rijkaard approached the youngsters to congratulate them on their debuts. So did Navarro and the senior players. ‘Do you know what? I never again mentioned to him that I was the guy who came off when he made his debut – and I have played
against him a few times with Mallorca and now Sevilla. It is ten years since that day. On the anniversary I will be in all the news bulletins – I will have to ask for copyright!’ Leo commented to Jordi Gómez and Oriol Riera that he would have preferred to have celebrated his debut with a victory. ‘Shame about that first chance,’ he told them.

At the press conference, Rijkaard mentioned him: ‘He created two chances and nearly scored. He’s got a lot of talent and a very promising future.’

‘I remember that when he went past the press area he went with his head bowed, crouched, almost too embarrassed to look you in the eye,’ says journalist Cristina Cubero. ‘I have always said that he has all the strength he needs on the pitch, but off it he shrinks.’

This is what he said to the journalists: ‘I always wanted to make my debut for the first team and now my dream has been realised, I hope that in the future I will be able to carry on playing for the first team … All of a sudden I’ve been given the opportunity I’ve been waiting for for so long …’

‘Mourinho? No, he said nothing, he knew nothing about the lad,’ says Ten Cate today about that long-ago game.

After the match, there was a certain euphoria among the technical staff. Henk, Txiki and Frank talked about Leo.

‘Did I think he’d get where he is?’ asks Oriol Riera. ‘This is a question they have asked me lots of times over the past years. No one could have imagined that he would get to where he is now, even less so in such a short time.’

Gio van Bronckhorst, at the time with his national side, Holland, received a phone call that night. ‘I’ve seen a player … he’s incredible, a colossal talent. He will be the new Ronaldinho.’ It was Ten Cate. ‘I hadn’t seen him play, but when Henk told me how good he was I had a look at videos on YouTube. Just watching him run with the ball you knew that he had something special.’

It was a happy Leo who returned home with his parents and Rodrigo. They arrived at Via Gran Carles III at five in the morning.

Messi gave that light-brown number 14 shirt to his mum. Now framed, it hangs in her house in Rosario.

Monday, 17 November 2003

The family woke up late the following day, but they sat down together to eat. The Milanese was seasoned with happiness. Before lunch Leo sent a few emails to various friends. ‘I’m really happy how everything went, everyone treated me really well, but now I just hate it that people have started talking about me. I hope they do talk less. Even though everything was really good.’

Tuesday, 18 November 2003

Pere Gratacós got together with Frank Rijkaard, as he usually did on Tuesdays.

Xavier Ginard spent three years playing in the lower ranks of the Barcelona side before returning to his native Mallorca. He now plays in Spain’s second division B. Jordi Gómez is at Wigan. Oriol Riera is now at Osasuna, having scored a hatful of goals in Spain’s second division.

And about Leo, Barcelona coaches agreed there was no way of
stopping this little bull. The time had come to put him permanently in the ring. In the hundred years of FC Barcelona’s history only two footballers had made their debuts younger than Messi: Paulino Alcantara in 1912 and the Nigerian Haruna Babangida, who played at the end of the Nineties under Louis Van Gaal.

Leo started training daily with Barcelona B and sometimes he joined the first team. In the positional plays and the
rondos
he was not scared of facing older players. Leo was settling in, finding his feet, and, what’s more, in a confident and bold manner. There are few things that determine a footballer’s place in the game’s hierarchy better than the
rondo
. The manner in which they demand the ball, if they return it quicker than the rest, if they keep themselves out of the middle, if they show their talent or not, if they try hard to get control of a tricky ball – all these things define their position in the group. Sixteen-year-old Leo had just two weeks to demonstrate exactly who he was. In the event, he became one of the ‘bosses’ of the
rondo
, according to his coaches.

In any case, Gratacós knew that Leo had a particular style of playing, and felt that he carried the ball too much. And he tried to correct it, just as others in Barcelona’s lower teams had. ‘It’s a team game, Leo. When you have the ball, look for the pass; when you don’t have it, make yourself available so you can also participate …’ his coach would shout at him. ‘And then, suddenly, he’d go round three of them, dribble the ball past the goalkeeper and score and so … what could I say?’ admits Gratacós. ‘There were training sessions that made my jaw drop. He always wanted to win, during training, in the short games. His motivation was extraordinary. I sometimes said to him: “if you have the same passion in the matches as you do in the training sessions, then no one can beat us.”’

On 5 March 2004 he was called up for the Barcelona B squad to play against Mataró. Pere Gratacós takes up the story.

‘We’d gone to train at the park next to the Diagonal and we were walking down towards the Mini Stadium. I walked next to Messi. I looked at him and said, “Leo, how are you?”

‘“Fine, fine, Boss.”

‘“You’re playing on Sunday.” He just looked at me. “You’re playing, and don’t worry, you just have to play the same way as you do at training.”

‘“Okay, okay, Boss.”

‘“And don’t worry if for whatever reason you don’t play well or things don’t work out, don’t worry about it. The following Sunday you’re still going to start. And if you don’t play well in the next game, no problem. But if, after four games, you haven’t improved on your first game then I’ll send you back to the Junior team.”

‘“Okay, agreed, Boss, thanks a lot.”

‘“You’re much stronger, I see you now almost at the same physical level as the rest, which was the thing that was worrying me most. Play just the way you’re training.”

‘“Okay.”

‘Of course, he was used to playing with the under-16 or under-17 side and scoring three or four goals a game,’ Pere Gratacós remembers. ‘With Pep Boada’s third division Barcelona C side he’d score one or two, which is already quite a feat. And when he started to play for us it raised the bar even more, it’s another division higher, bigger people, more experienced. Messi began to acquire more physical attributes to get away from defenders, but he still lacked something to be able to compete on an equal footing. So then … The first game came, against Mataró, and he was so-so; he probably touched the ball twice, not much more.’ It was the twenty-eighth weekend of the season, he started, played for most of the game and was substituted in the ninety-first minute, replaced by Sancho, and he also received a yellow card. Barcelona won 1–0.

The following game was away to Nàstic of Tarragona. From the stands, a member of both clubs, Alfred ‘Chip’ remembers:

‘Messi was very well known in the lower ranks of Barcelona FC at that time. Like Gerard Deulofeu most recently, for example. That season I only went to see one of Gimnàstic de Tarragona’s games. On television I had just seen a young Argentinian boy make his debut with the B side, who looked to me to be technically gifted and very classy. If I remember correctly he had gone through loads of stages in a very short space of time. I had a lot of fun at that game: to all the people who asked in the Tribune [VIP] section of the New Stadium [at Gimnàstic] why I had come that day I gave the same answer: “Leo Messi: remember his name, because he is going to play for the Barcelona first team, and he is going to be a star.” Leo only played the first half because Pere Gratacós substituted him at
half-time. Someone was sent off and the game became very aggressive. Despite having quite a good first half, with flashes of class, I think Gratacós subbed him to protect him, because Leo was only sixteen years old.’

And that is true: that game against Nàstic was eight days after his Mataró debut and Leo did not play the second half of a match that finished 0–0. Gratacós continues: ‘The second game was a bit better, but only a bit. The third game, he improved but didn’t score and Leo normally made the difference when he scored. At the moment he was neither making the difference, nor scoring goals. And he was anxious, accustomed to making his mark wherever he went. With us he wanted to, but couldn’t.’

Leo felt that he was not passing the test, that things weren’t going well; he came onto the pitch anxious and returned to the dressing room disheartened.

‘Leo, don’t worry, play the way you train, don’t worry, the goals will come,’ Gratacós said to him.

‘We got to the fourth game, against Girona. And Messi scored. He was the best player on the pitch. We went down to the dressing rooms, we looked at each other, we hugged. And I told him, “I will see you tomorrow in training”,’ remembers Gratacós. ‘He played with us five games that season.’

Or that is what has been said up to now, but it is not exactly what happened. As so often occurs, legend rewrites history. That game was won by Girona 1–0. The following season, in the second league game, Barcelona B met Girona away and Leo’s team won 1–2, with Leo scoring his first goal with that side, after having played a total of seven games.

Gratacós did not make anything up. The shadow of a legend clouded his memory and, recalling those days years after they took place, a new, more rounded story took root. Memories acquire a life of their own sometimes. I am sure we prefer the made-up version of his first goal for Barcelona B. It’s not what happened, but the choice is yours.

Gratacós soon realised that Leo’s performances would improve or not, depending upon who was playing alongside him in attack. Towards the end of that season, but especially the following one, when Leo played 17 games for the B team, always in the starting
eleven, Pere was clear in his own mind that, in order to get the best out of Leo, rather than matching him up with forwards who were hell-bent on scoring, it would be better to place him with quality players like Joan Verdú and Sergio García who enjoyed playing with mobile forwards such as Leo. He may have been four years younger than them but already the three spoke the same footballing language. And so, gradually, Gratacós began to adjust the team, very much with Leo in mind.