Messi (33 page)

And the transatlantic journey of a video tape.

Claudio Vivas, Marcelo Bielsa’s assistant with Argentina and Athletic Bilbao, is also from Rosario and knew the Messi family, before even Leo started playing. His father, José Vivas, founded the Newell’s Old Boys football academy. A certain Rodrigo Messi was shining in his division alongside the
Negro
Sebastián Domínguez who eventually became an international. It was with the young sides at Newell’s that Claudio began as a coach. In the club’s ’87 category there was a ‘dwarf’ whom everyone was talking about and, during the time that Leo was being coached by Claudio’s friend Gabriel Digerolamo, these days a kinesiologist, the young coach would go down to the Malvinas to see their games that featured the
up-and-coming star. ‘It was a pleasure to watch him,’ says Vivas today.

The years passed and Marcelo Bielsa called Vivas to ask him to accompany him on his adventure with the national side, and, after having renewed his contract with the AFA in 2002, both set out in October on a tour of Europe to speak with all the international players they would be counting on. Marcelo wanted to explain to them why he had renewed his contract and what his plans were. In Barcelona he met up with the Barcelona goalkeeper Roberto Bonano and Espanyol’s central defender, Mauricio Pochettino, and Claudio asked them, in passing, how Leo Messi was getting on.

‘He’s murdering them in the Youths, Claudio,’ said Bonano.

Vivas wanted to know more. Marcelo and his assistant were staying at the Princesa Sofia hotel close to the Camp Nou and when their presence became known a number of friends and agents came by in search of a few moments of their time. Such as a certain gentleman called Jorge, an Argentinian who worked in the office of Josep María Minguella. The stranger asked for Vivas at reception and he came down to meet him, although the conversation was at first cold and stilted. Jorge was an agent, the type of person the Bielsa team would normally avoid.

The video was 12 minutes long and showed the best of Messi playing for Barcelona in a level against boys two years older than himself. Vivas wanted to analyse everything, the good, the bad and the indifferent, his positioning on the pitch, the quality of his rivals and his team-mates, if he was selfless, if he was a long-distance or short-burst player, what he did with the ball, and what he did without it. He needed a wider context and he got this when he saw all the games on the tapes that arrived at his hotel a few hours later.

Vivas put on the first tape. A few seconds passed. ‘This … this … this is the
dwarf
from the ’87 generation that Gabriel used to run!’

Jorge explained to him that the Spanish selectors were prepared to give Leo’s father money so that he would play for Spain, but his family only wanted him to play for Argentina, as did the boy himself.

Up to that point Marcelo Bielsa had no idea what moves Vivas had initiated, but his assistant felt that the matter was now sufficiently important to be shared with his boss. ‘Go ahead, Claudio, don’t waste any time. But let me see something,’ said Bielsa. He was surprised. ‘We can’t lose this boy,’ was the conclusion.

From his Barcelona hotel room, Vivas phoned Hugo Tocalli who worked with junior Argentina players and at that time ran the under-17 side.

Vivas could not understand his reticence. He was sure of Messi’s extraordinary talent, but he didn’t insist. There were other important matters pending for him and Marcelo. On his return to Buenos Aires on 22 November, Vivas turned up at the under-17 training camp and gave Tocalli the evidence.

Vivas insisted, so much so Tocalli thought, incorrectly, that he had some vested interest in the matter. Vivas was hurt: he was only defending the interests of the national side; what were they thinking? Round about the same time, Carles Rexach, the football director at Barcelona, had called the Spanish Federation to push the possibility that Leo might play for La Roja.

Tocalli continued to delay his analysis. In addition to any
suspicions he might have (all totally unfounded) he wasn’t sure that it was necessary to bring a 16-year-old boy from the other side of the ocean with all the costs, doubts, acclimatisation issues and numerous other inconveniences that it entailed.

Vivas felt frustrated. Marcelo knew Claudio well so when he saw him unsettled he felt they needed to chat.

A bit later, Hugo Tocalli received ‘advice’ from those above him in the federation that he should have a look at the tapes. And act upon what he saw.

Tocalli was just about to leave for Finland to take part in the Under 17 World Championships with some of the players who would later win the Under 20 World Championships (Biglia, Ustari, Garay). He had a look at the tape. ‘The video was only five or six plays on synthetic pitches and you could see that he was a special boy with a tremendous change of rhythm and the ball stuck to his body. He went from zero to 100 metres in three seconds. I was surprised by the way he took off,’ remembers Tocalli.

Tocalli called the Argentinian coach José Pekerman, at that time sporting director of Leganés in Spain, and asked him for information about Leo. ‘A genius,’ was the answer. At the same time Tocalli met up with Julio Grondona, the president of the AFA, to whom they had already spoken about the boy. It wasn’t necessary to call Leo along to train with Bielsa’s side. Grondona and Tocalli decided to organise immediately two friendly internationals, against Paraguay and Uruguay, so he could put on the Argentina shirt, both matches with international referees, so that they could sign an official form that would then be sent to FIFA, thereby preventing Spain from taking Messi from them. They had to make discreet and urgent contact with the Messis.

An administrator at the AFA started to look for Jorge Messi’s telephone number. He tried ten numbers before he got the right one.

Found him. Tocalli spoke with his father, and then with Leo. They both said yes in seconds; there was no question, Leo wanted to play with Argentina. Thanks for the call, you have made us very happy. Tocalli explained that he couldn’t call him up for the 2003 Under 17 tournament because he had already named his squad, but that he could count on playing for the Under 20s very soon.

Leo wrote about the episode in a letter to a friend on 17 November 2003: ‘Hi, Fabi. I’m writing to you because I told you when I heard from the national side I would let you know. A couple of hours ago, Tocalli called me and my old man and he congratulated me for everything that had happened so far and that they were going to call me up for training with the kids from the ’85 and ’84 generation. For the next South American tournament. He told my dad that he had seen many videos of me but he hadn’t called me for the Under 17 World Cup because he thought I was too small (so he said). But he said that he saw me recently and now he thinks I’m okay. Okay, Fabi, I send you a big kiss. Ciao.’

In the Finland Under 17 tournament, which took place in August 2003, Argentina lost in the semi-finals to Spain, for whom Leo’s team-mates in the junior Barcelona side were playing, with Fàbregas scoring twice in a 3–2 win. The two sides were sharing a hotel and after the match Tocalli asked Cesc about the ‘dwarf’. ‘Leo? He’s a monster. Extraordinary. They wanted to put him in our side,’ said the Catalan midfielder. ‘If he had played today, you would have scored loads of goals against us and come out as champions. We wanted him to play for Spain, but he says he wants to go with you.’

Claudio Vivas never mentioned anything to Leo about his battle, the video, the doubts. He didn’t think it was right to. Messi, Vivas believes, would have played for the national side, sooner or later. Maybe it would have been delayed a bit, but …

He would never have looked good in a Spanish shirt … or happy.

‘Hello, Fabi, how are you? Well, I’m writing to you to answer all you asked me. The truth is at first I was very happy, appearing in the paper and having the radio call me. But now they’re breaking my balls. I can’t wait for when all this is over and they’re not talking about me all the time. Anyway as far as this dressing room is concerned, I can tell you that everything is really “super-cool” and I have loads of things to tell you, but I’ll tell you them when I’m over. I’ll explain how everything has gone, step by step. I think everything has gone really well, but now I’m thinking about the next match on Saturday, hoping that I play well and we win. That’s what my old man and Coloma tell me.’

(Email sent by Lionel Messi after his debut for Barcelona against Oporto, dated 20 November 2003)

He was coping with a season in which he was achieving all his objectives well ahead of schedule. He made his debut for the Barcelona first team after changing his levels no fewer than five times. He was called up by the Argentina national squad for a couple of friendlies. And he was making friends in Barcelona, if only a few.

The 17-year-old Leo travelled to Buenos Aires a week before the first friendly, against Paraguay, and was presented to the group before the first training session.

Leo stood to one side, head bowed.

This is how Pablo Zabaleta remembers it: ‘We started to warm up, a little game on a small pitch and you could see it. This bloke is different.’ The truth is, Leo was skinning all of them. ‘In the first session he left us all with our jaws dropping. With his change of pace he left all of us defenders nailed to the floor.’

Leo was one of only two foreigners in the group along with Mauro Andrés Zanotti, who played with Ternara in Italy. And just as with that first trial organised by Charly Rexach, his team-mates were a couple of years older than him. In addition to Zabaleta, in a
team hastily thrown together so that he could put on the Argentina shirt, there were also Ezequiel Lavezzi from Estudiantes of Buenos Aires and recently signed by Genoa, and Ezequiel Garay. The players had no inkling of the reason for the friendlies.

‘When he walked on for the warm-up, he did so with the usual humility that characterises him,’ says Gerardo Salorio, the team’s physical coach known as ‘the Professor’. ‘And the first thing I said to him was: “if you want to play here the first thing you’re going to have to do is take off your ring and get your hair cut, maestro.” He half looked at me … he didn’t say anything.’ At that time Salorio was working with the senior teams and was asked to help out with the new technical staff of the Under 20 side. He wanted to set the ground rules from the first day, what he called
bajado de linea duradura
, which effectively translates as ‘my way or the highway’. Leo was irritated.

‘I went in too hard, as if they were senior players. I shouldn’t have,’ Salorio remembers now. ‘A few minutes later, I looked at him and said in front of the whole group: “Leo, I need to apologise to you in front of everyone, I went too far with you, I was out of order. I shouldn’t have done it, you didn’t know the rules, I apologise in front of everyone.” And then he looked at me and smiled as if to say: “he’s human, this bloke.” And that was my first meeting with him. He isn’t one to talk much.’

The 29th of June, the day of the friendly against Paraguay, arrived. It was a cold night at the recently revamped Argentina Juniors stadium, renamed the Diego Maradona after the famous number 10 who had made his debut there in 1976 against Talleres. The admission charge for the game, of little interest to fans, was a newspaper, and it would finish up at the Garrahan Children’s Hospital that was collecting paper to raise funds. Only 300 people were present to see Messi’s debut.

‘Now, you would think that the whole world was at the stadium that night if you believe everybody who says they were there,’ says Salorio.

Argentina’s starting line-up was: