Messi (53 page)

During the magnificent era of Pep Guardiola, Barcelona went in search of a way to find the La Masía formula, looking to bottle success and to discover new jewels, more titles. But a poor harvest from the academy, following the arrival of Pedro and Sergio Busquets in 2008 (only Thiago has got close to becoming a regular), suggests that perhaps what occurred between 2008 and 2011 was unique and unrepeatable.

Trying to structure success is an intangible, opportunistic job: the function of La Masía is to provide a good base for a football philosophy, but to explain success in a successful era, to try to codify it and repeat it, forgetting the spontaneity of where it all came from, is to ignore its elusive essence. Football is not mathematics.

So, on the pitch, what has been the main contribution of FC Barcelona to Leo? The placing around the Argentinian of some extraordinary players (eight world champions) who have matured and worked around Leo, especially Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta, the three of them peaking at the same time. In the past few years, Barcelona has had players who have kept possession close to their opponents’ area giving more options to release the talent of the Argentinian, and who have known how to return the ball to him. If Messi had not played for a team of the standard of Barcelona, especially in the midfield, he would not have become the team player that he is, because the ball would not have come back to him with the ease and quality with which it is returned, nor with the specific tactics needed to allow him to play his game.

‘Leo happened upon a spontaneous generation with Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, Busquets, Piqué, as did the famous Santos in Brazil, or the Ajax of Holland,’ Fernando Signorini adds. ‘And it is highly unlikely that it will ever be repeated. Some players, very good players, are products of apprenticeships, but he is pure instinct. And after that, yes, almost certainly with the help of Guardiola he began to read games better and to make fewer errors. And nearly all his interventions have resulted in favour of the efficiency of the team: as an individual he makes his contribution to the team, and that’s rare these days. Players like him, in this atrocious era of the cult of the individual, with this iniquitous system that we have been plunged into, do not understand what it means to form part of a group, they fail to realise that they are one more brick in the pyramid that has to be built to make a great team.’

And what would Xavi or Iniesta be without Messi? The three of them have respected each other from the very first day because they knew that together they would be able to win more than they would apart.

Over many years, Messi did not have the same facilities with the Argentinian national side that he enjoyed with Barcelona: at
Barcelona he was considered a great player from the start, as well as an idol of the masses, but in his own country he was not considered to be the most important element of the team, nor was he installed as leader till recently. So when the ball left Messi it did not return to him, and it was the others who determined the play. Finally, with Alejandro Sabella in charge, the side has learned to return the ball to him and let him express himself.

After some years of uncertainty, Barcelona’s greatest assistance came from off the pitch rather than on it, with the arrival of Joan Laporta. As Messi grew as a player, the club looked to help him financially, to give him security, a crucial requirement for elite footballers, not just from the financial aspect but also for the status and sense of hierarchy that the contracts offer them. ‘When he became a professional,’ confirms ex-vice-president Ferran Soriano, ‘we improved his contract many times without him asking, to match his contributions on the pitch, but also so that he could feel relaxed and be sure that we were always going to value him.’

This is a great achievement for a club that has in the past crushed some of its greatest players: after five years, Johan Cruyff left Barcelona in 1978 by the back door following a misunderstanding with the board. Diego Maradona moved to Napoli after two seasons having failed to produce what had been expected of him. The Brazilian Ronaldo was there for just one year. Ronaldinho, so successful at one point, went into freefall, so much so that he left the club with no wish to carry on playing professionally. ‘Barcelona has been intelligent enough always to come forward and say to Messi, “don’t suffer, we’ll sort things out”,’ insists Soriano. ‘I think he gets the money he could have earned somewhere else. And that doesn’t always happen, especially with a player from the lower ranks, who usually earns less than one who has been brought in.’

The hypothesis of a Leo playing somewhere else is an attractive one – after all, Leo did not spring from La Masía: he is an adopted talent who did not want to change his style. Leo has had offers, or, at the very least, close encounters with clubs like Arsenal, Juventus, Inter and Real Madrid. And his talent, despite injuries, probably would have exploded wherever he went. Every conversation for this book that has finished with the question ‘would Leo have triumphed away from Barcelona?’ has been answered affirmatively, albeit with
different emphases. ‘Yes, he would have,’ confirms Charly Rexach. ‘But maybe not to the same extent, because here he touches the ball much more than he would have in another team.’

Jorge Messi, interviewed by
Kicker
, is of a similar mind. ‘Maybe it would have been a little bit more difficult [to go so far as a footballer], but I think yes, bearing in mind the attributes he has. With his technique, he’d go boom, boom, boom and the ball would be in the net. But in Barcelona he faced a tactical plan, a different way of playing and a different philosophy.’ The former president of Barcelona Joan Gaspart concurs: ‘Messi on his own is already an exceptional player. If in addition to that, timewise, he coincides with a Xavi, an Iniesta, a fundamental part of his game, this adds up to much more. But on his own he would still have triumphed with any team in the world.’

‘Ah, he would also have triumphed in Argentina!’ adds coach Claudio Vivas, but Signorini disagrees: ‘It was definitely better for him that he ended up at Barcelona, because he could have been harassed by the
barras bravas
[the organised, fervent and sometimes virulent set of Argentinian supporters]. I can picture it – “dwarf, I’m going to cut your throat, son of a whore …” every name under the sun, spit at him, break the windows of the team bus … Can you imagine what would have happened to him?’

When Leo was reminded that in England some say that it remains to be seen whether or not he would be capable of doing it on a cold, rainy Wednesday night in Stoke, he laughed. If you had given Picasso another pencil he would have been just as creative. ‘Messi is first and foremost an extraordinary talent, practically unrivalled. He would have developed anywhere, but he planted himself on fertile soil, within a system, where he was cared for and nurtured with affection,’ adds Ferran Soriano.

Pep Guardiola designed a dressing room made to measure for Leo and he looked for allies to play the way he likes to. But in Pep’s last year, and with Tito Vilanova, it became more difficult to maintain the balance of a group that on occasions appeared overcommitted to Leo, with players, as well as coaches, distancing themselves from their responsibilities, the most worrying consequence of the formation and protection he received at Barcelona.

‘He came with a very individual game to which Barcelona added
the team game, which helped him with the possession game played at a very fast pace, which suited him,’ explained Gerard Piqué during the summer of 2013, before the arrival of Tata Martino and Neymar. ‘But it’s true that in the past few years the attacks always finish with Leo. We play in a way that we have got used to and that always finishes with him. I think that’s good because we use it to maximise the skills of the best player in the world. But to be honest, when he isn’t there we get badly penalised.’

SKILLS NECESSARY TO ‘WANT TO LEARN’

2. Restlessness/motivation

Leo is a clever bloke. That’s how Charly Rexach defines him. He has learned how to play. He knows how to pick what he has to do at every moment. He speaks little but listens a lot. And that triumph is just another event, another step. Without realising, he does precisely what Rudyard Kipling counselled in his poem ‘If’ – he meets ‘with triumph and disaster and treats those two impostors just the same’.

He keeps his eyes wide open and his mind constantly absorbs knowledge. Among the elite it is much easier to get to the top than to continue improving, and only the chosen few are capable of maintaining the motivation after having triumphed – Leo knows that if he doesn’t try to get better, he gets worse.

‘Without challenges to face, you will stop giving your best, you will get comfortable and the inertia that keeps you successful will begin to make you weaker,’ explains Pedro Gómez. ‘Your output will diminish without you really noticing. One day you’ll
wake up and you will realise that you are becoming unfit to stay with the elite.’ Messi has no doubts: ‘I am my fiercest critic.’

To keep going forward once you have reached such heights you have to have a love, a passion for the game unlike any other. As the producer of massive film successes
The Sting
and
Jaws
, David Brown said: ‘success isn’t so much about doing what you want, as it is liking what you’re doing.’ When someone is motivated principally for themselves, rather than financial rewards or social standing, they acquire a long list of psychological benefits: the struggle is less hard, persistence is a pleasure.

Leo’s motivation also comes to him from an extremely powerful source. Messi is a Christian, although not an actively practising one. And he is convinced that there is another life after this one. That’s why every time he scores he thanks his grandmother for what she did for him. Celia is with him at the most intimate of moments. She continues to inspire him.

3. Ambition, competitiveness and focus

In the Seventies Gordon Training International published some theories that time has diminished somewhat, but can still help us to understand four basic types of footballer. They called it the ‘four phases of apprenticeship’. The kid, when he strikes the ball against the wall or in the schoolyard, isn’t aware of how little he knows, how good or bad he is (unconscious incompetence). When he sees someone doing things with the ball that he can’t, he recognises his incompetence and consciously learns new skills in an academy to improve his performance (conscious incompetence). Finally, after a lot of practice, footballers are able to understand their ability and carry it out at a high level. They acquire the level of competence that permits them to become professional, a state in which the majority of footballers lead a comfortable life (conscious competence). There is one final, higher level, a group of malcontents who don’t believe they’ve made it merely because they have become professionals, and in this group you’ll find Lionel Messi.

This final group, the privileged few, are those who never have enough, who don’t believe that they’re the best, who want to keep on working to reach the maximum level. They have practised so much that their abilities have become instinctive reaction and the practice of them easy (unconscious competence).

‘Leo used to say with confidence that he wanted to be the best. And he didn’t say it with any arrogance, rather as something that was going to happen in the future,’ explains Víctor Vázquez. ‘Cesc, Piqué or I could say it, but we had the fear of knowing that there were players in our position who played our type of game, but not with Messi, because with Messi there is no other like him. They are special players.’

Having clear aims and objectives helps you go far: if you don’t know precisely where you want to go, you’re never going to get there. And Messi had it clear. He didn’t want to be famous, a star. He wanted to be the best footballer he could be. ‘We all want to win,’ reflects Gustavo Oberman. ‘But certainly he, with the qualities he has, will want to win more than the others. A half-good player will want to win a game; he wants to win the tournament, the Ballon d’Or. If I was Messi I’d also want to win it,
but I’m not as good as that, so I limit myself to what I can win.’

Oberman continues: ‘He also wanted to win during practice, when playing the mini games, and he’d battle for dead balls as if it was a match. Perhaps another type of player, with the same qualities as him, will play more calmly in training because he doesn’t have to demonstrate it, but he, like Kun Agüero and many others, oblige us to play to our maximum, because if you don’t play to your maximum with players like this it is very difficult to stand out: he clearly has all that deep inside.’