Messi (38 page)

Oberman was from Argentina Juniors and, celebrating after the
final, a thought crossed his mind. ‘We were playing with a kid who was at one of the most important clubs in the world and he treated us as if he had come from any team from the same level as us, always with humility; with frustration as well, because he would become annoyed during games sometimes, or he would moan when you wouldn’t pass to him or something … I always tried to follow his instinct, and always with the greatest of respect. It was a great pleasure to play with him.’

Gustavo Oberman would not play for his country again. His son is five years old and a fanatical supporter of Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo. When he told his son that he had played with Messi, the kid wouldn’t believe him:

And Oberman would put on the video of the goal that he scored against Spain after a pass from Leo, just at the point where the commentator begins to pick up the pace: ‘… Gago, Messi, Oberman … goaaaaaal!!’

(
Gente
magazine, July 2005)

Leo emailed his mother after winning the title. ‘Mama, I can’t believe what is happening to me. I have to pinch myself to make sure that I am awake.’ He returned to Argentina a hero, the footballer the nation had been waiting for. His name appeared the following day in
L’Équipe, La Gazzetta dello Sport, El Mundo Deportivo
and
AS
.

‘I learned to love the national side when I was sixty years old. When you hear the national anthem, it kills you. It was a great source of pride to be able to have coached all of the side to victory, not just Messi and Sergio Agüero,’ says Ferraro today. ‘It was the high-point of my career. Only five coaches in the history of Argentina can say, “I was champion of the world”: Menotti, Bilardo, Pekerman, Tocalli and me. There is a poster in Ezeiza aiport where you can see all the coaches who were champions of the world and you can see my photo there hugging Messi and Ustari. It was the best moment of my life.’

The idea was to return to Buenos Aires, each to their own homes and their own battles. When they arrived at Ezeiza the players were surprised to see hundreds of supporters waiting to greet them. And television cameras, radio microphones, photographers. As they came out of the arrivals hall everyone was looking for Leo, drowning in a sea of journalists. His uncle, Claudio, and his father, Jorge, had come to pick him up in the van and decided to accept an invitation from a well-known television programme. After it, by which time it was the early hours of the morning, Leo fell asleep in the car taking him to Rosario along with Formica and Garay, who were playing for Newell’s at the time.

What happened next is well documented by Toni Frieros in his biography of Messi. Cintia Arellano, Leo’s school friend, had alerted the young people in the neighbourhood to prepare something, to collect some money to decorate the streets with bunting
and paint. ‘Leo, Our Nation’s Pride’ was daubed in white paint in front of the door of Cintia’s house. A banner from one side of the street to another said simply, ‘Welcome, Champion’. They waited until midnight for him to arrive, with drums and fire crackers at the ready. Along with three television cameras. The cold was getting to them and the wait was becoming longer and longer. Most people eventually went to bed.

At about five in the morning they heard the van approaching. The camera lights were switched on. Confetti was thrown across the van. There was shouting: ‘Leo’s coming, Leo’s coming.’ What was arriving was in fact a tired, cold, young man. He wanted to go to bed. But he reacted immediately: greeted everybody, kissed everyone, gave interviews.

The boy who had left five years earlier in tears had returned, champion of the world.

  
4
  

Frank Rijkaard: The Rise

(Henk ten Cate)

D
uring the 2004−05 season Barcelona continued the necessary restructuring that would ensure that the ball would inexorably find its way into the path of Ronaldinho. Frank Rijkaard approved the departure of Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert, Michael Reiziger and Phillip Cocu, while Luis Enrique and Marc Overmars decided to retire. It was the end of an era, and the youthful push of Joan Laporta’s board brought with it a return to general optimism at the club. With the money recouped from transfers out, players of great quality and personality arrived: Deco (from a Porto side that had just won the Champions League), Ludovic Giuly (Monaco), Belletti (Villarreal), Edmilson (Lyon), Henrik Larsson (Celtic), Silvinho (Celta) and Samuel Eto’o, for whom Barcelona had to pay €12 million to Mallorca and the same amount to Real Madrid. In this list you could see the nucleus of a new Barcelona which, from that moment on, looked to a midfield combination of Rafa Márquez, Xavi and Deco (Iniesta was at the time the fresh pair of legs), and a skilful and productive front line in the shape of Eto’o, Giuly and Ronaldinho. Good results and the extensive makeover were also celebrated when
Ronaldinho was named FIFA Player of the Year in December 2004. But what was still lacking was a title that would rubber-stamp the certain feeling that, at long last, Barcelona was emerging from five years in the wilderness.

Leo Messi had made his first-team debut in the friendly against Porto in November 2003, but since that heady opener the doors of the Camp Nou had remained closed to him. Was that talented 16-or 17-year-old kid of no use to Frank Rijkaard despite the fact that he seemed to be progressing very fast? Doubts were being heard from the club and also from the player’s family – why was he not playing? How was he taking the lack of chances in the first team? In what would have been a confusing time for any adolescent, never mind one on the fringes of the elite squad, the club proposed that Leo should be examined by an Argentinian psychologist picked by Josep Colomer, the director of the academy at the club.

The role of a sports psychologist is a difficult one; he is seen by the players as a ‘grass’ and yet some of them take on that role as part and parcel of belonging to such a prestigious institution. The footballer is promised total discretion, but the enduring suspicion that any work done begins from a skewed standpoint is never far from the player’s thoughts. Colomer’s proposal was initially accepted by Leo, but it wasn’t long before he told the club that he had no wish to carry on talking with somebody whom he did not trust. And that trust was well and truly broken when the doctor brought in a group of psychology students to see how well he was working with the player. All that was serving no purpose for Leo, who stopped attending the meetings. He believed he could cope with all the pressure that came from being just a step away from the first team – mostly because he did not feel it.

His physical development continued: from August 2003 to April 2004 Leo put on 3.7 kilograms, primarily in muscle. The diminutive Leo was now a thing of the past. It was a growth strengthened not so much in the gym, but, rather, in the coaching sessions and his continued presence in the starting line-up of Barcelona B. The faith shown by Josep Colomer and the insistence of other coaches such as Guillermo Hoyos, Alex García, Tito Vilanova and Pere Gratacós was giving him confidence, too, the most important vitamin in a player’s development. ‘When he stops progressing, we’ll stop him
there, whatever level he’s at. But why stop him before he’s reached that level?’ the director of youth football told Leo’s dad.

Those were the days when, it seemed, if a footballer did not sport a beard and a moustache, he didn’t play in the first team. What had happened in Porto was a product of necessity rather than clear strategy; it was almost impossible for a youngster of his age to make it into Rijkaard’s team. So, Messi thought, perhaps they think I have reached my limit. For now, he had to carry on working hard in the B team run by Gratacós.

Gratacós knew that Frank Rijkaard relied on players in his squad who were tried and tested and of great quality and who were blocking Messi’s path, but none the less, in his side, Leo was a budding star and he began to pick him regularly. Thus a chink of light began to appear through the cracks of the Camp Nou gates. In exceptional circumstances, they prepared a training regime specifically designed with his physical characteristics in mind and he began to combine his training sessions with the B team and with Rijkaard’s side. The Dutchman told the player’s family that he saw in Leo some ‘extraordinary characteristics’ but insisted in ‘going bit by bit to exploit them at the appropriate time’.

Gratacós also knew that his obligation was to instil in the player certain things he had not yet incorporated into his game and that were necessary to enable him to fit in with the second division B side. But it wasn’t that easy to make him change some of his worst football habits. On more than one occasion the veterans of the side (rarely older than 21) would moan at the coach that Messi lacked the defensive work required of him. ‘He doesn’t press,’ they said to him. Pere was well aware of it and would remind the Argentinian in training sessions that the game still went on even after he’d lost the ball; but he also told his charges, in private, that they should not forget what he brought to the team: ‘No, he doesn’t press, but what about what he does when he’s got the ball? Don’t worry, lads, we’ll work on it.’

The leap for the 17-year-old was proving arduous. Compared with his stellar rise in the junior ranks, Leo seemed baulked in the first months of this new campaign with the B team. Despite playing every minute, in the first 12 games Leo scored on only five occasions, including one against Girona in the second game. He was
finding it hard to get away from defenders, to make a difference.

The team was also spluttering. In September, the Barcelona B side went to play against Zaragoza B. Technical staff thought they had given the right instructions to ensure a positive outcome, only to finish the wrong side of a convincing 3–0 defeat. Leo left the pitch upset and as soon as he was back in the changing room he began to cry. His reaction surprised Pere Gratacós: ‘Bear in mind that he had played well! We had to cheer him up, we told him that he had to persist, to get better, and that we had to convert this defeat into something positive.’ He was the only
blaugrana
who did cry in that fifth league match of group three of the Second Division B. For most of them, it was a game just like any other.

Messi trained every day with Gratacós, apart from once a week when he joined up with the first-team squad. This one day a week became two, and then three. The doubts expressed by Rijkaard’s technical staff began to disappear, although the Dutchman was still reticent. ‘He’s going well, he’s good, but certain aspects of his play must be improved,’ he answered when asked about Leo. He didn’t want to rush things. Rijkaard’s assistant, Henk ten Cate, thought he was ready. And then one day in October, Ronaldinho and Deco said to both of them that they were wasting time: ‘Gaffer, he should be here, playing with us.’

Ten Cate, the ‘bad cop’ to Rijkaard’s good, was responsible for keeping Ronaldinho on the straight and narrow, and generally counterbalancing with strong words and the stick what his analysing, decision-making boss did with the carrot. They worked well in tandem.

When Barcelona were looking for full-backs with the ability to go up and down the pitch, with personality and understanding of the football style needed, Gio van Bronckhorst fitted the mould admirably and was signed from Arsenal after an initial loan spell. Dutch footballers were all the rage at the time, being of similar upbringing to that of Barcelona youth players. Gio, today assistant manager to Ronald Koeman at Feyenoord, and Henk, whose last job was as coach to the Dutch side Sparta Rotterdam, met in the summer of 2013 in a restaurant in Rotterdam to reminisce about the arrival of Leo Messi into the first team.

Gio still talks about Leo with the smile of one who knows he has shared a changing room with perhaps the best ever representative of his profession. Ten Cate says that in 20 years’ time he will look back on his career not just as ‘the coach who had Messi’. No way. Henk was just a coach. Period.