Messi (9 page)

Leo left his neighbourhood for the first time at the age of 11. It was a Saturday in spring. He caught the bus with his friend Diego Vallejos, who is, incidentally, the brother of Matías’s wife. He was from the same neighbourhood. The two youngsters made their way half an hour out of town to Villa Gobernador Gálvez, in the south of the city.

To visit his grandmother’s grave.

Leo was at Grandoli from the age of five to almost seven. In that team of ’87 he wore the number 10 and his cousin Emanuel was the goalkeeper. Two things in particular kept repeating themselves during this period: they won practically everything that was going and, well, Lionel always had the ball.

Each practice, each game, was the most important ever, and before every practice, every game (and each one was the most important of all), Leo prepared in the minutest detail and without any assistance from anyone. First the boots, cleaned with water then a cloth and a brush. Then the ankles were bandaged. He was like a professional, small and deadly serious.

Salvador Aparicio was his first trainer and in his sessions he made them jog, then asked them to loosen up a bit and then introduced the ball. In those days the entire enterprise consisted, really, of playing
playing and playing.

Salvador, ‘Don Apa’, had a wonderful story – he was not the man who discovered him, rather the conduit for an unstoppable talent. The former railway worker who died of a brain fissure in 2009, aged 79 (according to some people, you could hear the air escaping from his head), never presumed to be any more than that: ‘I didn’t discover him. But I was the first person to put him on the pitch. I am proud of that.’

Don Apa, like hundreds of anonymous trainers and technical directors, convinced dozens of children from the neighbourhood, aged between 4 and 12, to come off the streets for a while and spend time with Grandoli where they would learn a certain order and happiness. His are the videos of a Leo, small and going at full pelt in his red and white shirt, dribbling around defenders, getting the ball in his own box and taking it into the opposition’s, scoring, then collecting the ball from the net to put it back on the centre spot to start all over again.

‘He scored six or seven goals every game. He positioned himself in the middle of the pitch and waited for the goalkeeper to kick the ball. The goalie kicked the ball, one of his team-mates would stop it, he would then take it off him and set off on a dribble. It was something supernatural.’ This is how Don Apa, in various interviews, remembered Leo. ‘When we went to a pitch, people would crowd in to see him. When he got the ball he owned it. It was incredible, they couldn’t stop him. Against Amanecer he scored one of those goals like you see in the adverts. I remember it well: he dribbled past everybody, goalkeeper included. How did he play? Like he plays now, with freedom. He was a serious boy, he always put himself beside his grandmother, he was quiet. He never protested. If they whacked him, sometimes he would cry but he would always pick himself up and carry on running.

‘Every time I see him play I start to cry. When I see the Maradona-type goal he scored, the one he got against Getafe, I remember when he was little, so little …’

David Treves, who replaced Don Apa, is today president of Grandoli. He proudly displays the trophies won by the club and the team photos. Messi is the one wearing the shirt that is too big for him. ‘It was very rare for a boy of his age to do all this,’ confirms
Treves. ‘It was said that we had the next Maradona. The best footballer in the world began here, and his first football shirt was ours.’

‘He would get the ball and the move would finish with a goal. He made the difference even if they kicked him. This is how it is: if you’re small and you play well, they break you.’ So recalls Gonzalo Diaz who played with Leo during the time he was at Grandoli, and naturally won everything.

Matías Messi finds it easy to put into words those days when he himself had dreams of becoming a footballer. And he, like all the Messis and all the other anonymous spectators, believed they were witnessing something special. ‘Very often there were problems because of this, because he played so well. So well, in fact, that some coaches of the other boys sent their team out to bring him down – if they couldn’t get the ball off him by fair means, they’d get it in other ways. It was something that you had to see to believe. There were even players on the other team who would applaud some of his moves. “What are you doing?” the rival fans would ask.’

Sometimes it seems that many of those recollections reflect the Lionel Messi of today rather than those of the little boy who played good football; certainly a tireless scorer of goals but, at the time, a footballer of individual brilliance rather than a team player, and there is a big difference. They do not speak of a child, rather of a child who has become the greatest footballer in the world. It isn’t the same thing. It is easy, with hindsight, to idolise those who succeed. And for this reason it’s difficult to find anybody who would dare to add a qualifying ‘but’.

Anyway, at Grandoli there were many others who showed promise. ‘I have seen several who could have been like Messi but they did not have the perseverance in training,’ says Gonzalo Diaz.

Ah, perseverance. Without it, you cannot be a footballer.

Jorge Messi also dreamed of becoming a footballer, but after four years at the NOB academy, just as a player starts to blossom, when the first team beckons, Jorge left to do his military service, and on his return he married. When Jorge was 29, the age when most footballers reach their peak, Leo was born.

Jorge has always had very fixed ideas, but he teaches by example rather than by word. His philosophy is simple: work hard, be persistent,
show humility and you can achieve your goals. Maybe that is why Leo is not seduced by the celebrity culture, is not dazzled by those great names in neon lights. In any case for Jorge, as with the overwhelming majority of the Argentine people of his generation football was the inevitable and irresistible face of Maradona, videos of whom Jorge treasured and played frequently to his sons.

Leo’s father therefore passed down to his sons an appreciation of the one man who rose above the rest to lead his side, who caressed the ball as he was looking for the next pass, and who had the power in his feet to create a symphony of answers. For Lionel, and for many of his generation, that type of player could be seen in the shape of Pablo Aimar, the ex-River player. Lionel has said many times he did not have any football idols as a kid, but he liked to see Aimar. Is it true that he had no heroes? Don’t we all have some point of reference? When he was asked at the age of 12 to name his idol, he said he had two: ‘My father and my godfather, Claudio.’ In that same interview he confessed he considered humility the greatest of all virtues. Something with which his father would agree.

Leo, like his brothers, shared his father’s passion for football. Jorge is a reserved man, even a little distant at times, and also a decent central midfielder, as little Leo would see when Dad played games with his workmates at the Acindar factory. He understood football, a game he loved. The Messis came down every weekend to Grandoli to watch Matías and Lionel play, and one day a club director asked Jorge if he would take charge of the kids born in 1987. He thus became Leo’s second coach. ‘We were part of the Alfi league, one of the independent competitions that play in Rosario and the municipality. There were different categories up to 12 years old, and the youngsters always played on a seven-a-side pitch,’ Jorge told Toni Frieros.

He trained three times a week with simple, individual exercises, always with the ball to improve technique, and the occasional tactical exercise which the youngsters learned quickly, like little sponges, eager and delighted to soak up Jorge’s instructions. Leo never did any specific work, he never spent his afternoons passing the ball with his right foot, or dribbling around stones with his weaker leg. His father never asked him to. He simply played and Jorge endeavoured to respect that free spirit in the weekly training sessions.

It was 1994. Leo was six years old.

Jorge Messi’s side never lost a game in his only year as their trainer. ‘We won the league and all the tournaments we entered, even the friendlies. Maybe it’s a bit crude to say this, but the side caused a sensation because of the high standard it reached and in that team Leo shone out like a beacon,’ he has told the Argentinian press. ‘In this team – and I don’t want to overdo it – practically everything that is good he did. The goals, the dangerous situations, the one player who made the difference was him, the one who excelled was him. OK, I’m his father, he is my son, and I’m not saying it for that reason, but because that’s how it was,’ he told the magazine
Kicker
.

The journalist interviewing him followed a line of questioning that might seem banal but is none the less fascinating: ‘Lionel, the footballer: who did he take more notice of, Jorge Messi the trainer or the father?’ Jorge answered: ‘He was always very disciplined in his play, always obedient and did what was asked of him. He always took notice of what I said to him as a trainer. Even today he is like this. Like when Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona put him on the right. He always complied with what the coach asked of him, he always played where he asked him to, it didn’t matter who it was. And he never complained. That’s how it always was.’

‘In life there are three elements: mission, vision and values,’ adds the prestigious Argentinian sports psychologist Liliana Grabín. ‘The legacy you inherit from a father is the way he walks the path, the values he transmits. Leo carries with him the strong personality of his mother and the calmness, tolerance and forbearance of his father: a strange combination; ying-yang, I suppose. But he also passed onto him humility, self-sacrifice and tenacity.’

But the son is also the result of his father’s vision. Jorge once said that to hear your name being chanted is the greatest thing that can happen to a human being. If this is your dream, then you pass it on. Jorge had a vision. When he saw Leo play and understood that he had talent, his attitude was that of a proud father who wanted his son to stand out from his peers. A son always wants to please his father, and will always try to continue pleasing him. The vision, the attitude. All this marks the journey. Jorge lit the way: you
can
be a footballer.

‘The family had the values, the vision is the future, and the mission
is the playing of football. Jorge had vision, the family had vision. Obviously he had a talent, and the mother and the father had the vision to continue the path that allowed him to explore and develop his talent,’ explains Grabín.

Afterwards, Jorge, in his role as trainer, adviser and even as manager, helped Leo negotiate the road. A dad
and
a manager, then. He gave him very little praise in comparison to the universal adulation he received; rather, he gave him perspective. And, when necessary, he reminded him of the values that he considered ideals. At all times he kept his son’s feet firmly on the ground, particularly when it looked as though too much success might distract him and lead him to lose sight of the bigger picture, which would happen, as we shall see.

Jorge, therefore, has from the start been father, guide, mirror, mentor, counter-balance, Leo’s hero. The man he has to follow, occasionally rebel against, but the one who has to be recognised as his companion along the road. Someone in whom Leo places absolute trust and unshakeable faith.

It was Jorge who decided that they had reached the end of the road with Grandoli. The whole family went to watch matches involving Matías and Leo, but on one occasion he was unable to pay the two pesos’ admission. He asked them if, just this once, they would waive the admission fee. They said no.

Leo played that afternoon, but it was the last time he wore the Grandoli shirt.

Teacher Mónica Dómina has her recollections. She had Leo in her class at Las Heras school between the ages of six and eight, in the first, second, third and fourth grade, the first years of primary education.

‘… the thing is he was a very quiet boy. Unfortunately you always remember those who misbehave, those who bring you problems. But he was quiet, polite, and sometimes very introverted with feelings that he did not want to show. He was a protected child, because with his classmates like Cintia, they bonded together, they went into the same grade and she was like his mother, she was twice as tall as him because he was very, very small, he looked like a kid in kindergarten. And he had such a cheerful little face … the same as it is
now. You feel like hugging him! And back then, even more so. Back then the teacher was like a second mother. It isn’t the same feelings that the teachers have nowadays … yes, these young girls haven’t got the same maternal instinct. We used to do it a different way, I would sit him on my knee, look after him, and now these things don’t happen. And he was one of those who was like a baby, a little baby, you felt like picking him up and sitting him with you and chatting to him.

‘He was very easygoing, but he hardly spoke at all. But one thing that I do remember very well: I tried to get him to speak. I did this in the free time and during special lessons when we were doing stuff like drawing. That’s when I had him close to me, but he wouldn’t say anything. Only “yes, no”, he wouldn’t say anything else. But when I asked him questions about stuff in my field, like maths or comprehension, he would answer and that set my mind at ease.

‘Generally Leo sat in the first row in the classroom, but he was very shy, and it was difficult for him to take part in class, he did his work but didn’t take his class by storm. He was doing well, doing what work he had to pass tests and always handed work in on time.

‘We, the teachers, tried to help him and he did what he could; but it was not that he was incapable. No. It was that he didn’t want to, because he had another interest, all he wanted was the ball.

‘He was a normal boy, but not excellent. He was responsible, he did his work as well as he could. He did not study a lot. In the seventh grade he got a good report. The head teacher let a newspaper take a photograph of the book in which the marks were recorded and there you could see all of the marks. He was one of the best in PE, and did well in handiwork and music. In comprehension and mathematics, he did just enough, seven, that was a pass grade, so he was so-so.