Messi (19 page)

‘Hey, brilliant, I said, much better. This made me very happy, very happy. We knew where he had landed, we knew that he wasn’t at a club that was going to use him, as is the norm in football – they give you a contract and then they use you. Barcelona are light years away from us. Barcelona are the kind of club that gives you everything, but then don’t use you: “you have your beliefs, your dreams, your way of doing things, we will pay for your treatment, we will protect you.” That is what he was going to get. We were told that they had also given work to the father; but they probably said to him, “well, work out later if you will actually go to work or not”. Both parties planted and watered the tree and now they both share the benefits. Thank God he landed where he did.

‘I assume,’ insists Quique Domínguez, ‘that the Newell’s president would have said, “How? Leo Messi played for Newell’s? Let’s go and ask Pupo. Pupo! Was it you? Yes? Get out then! How could you let a player like that go?” It wasn’t that he, Pupo, didn’t see him. Pupo used to watch the training sessions! He was the technical director of the youth set-up. He was the one who decided
where players went, not the coach; it was he who decided. The president had enough with the first division, I am sure he didn’t know Leo.’

Many in Rosario repeat the story that, actually, the president of Newell’s, Eduardo López, did nothing to stop the departure of Lionel either. ‘No problem, Messi can go. We keep the best one: Gustavo Rodas.’ Rodas made his debut at 16 for Newell’s, wore the number 10 with the Under-17 national team and was champion of the South American tournament in Bolivia. He was called up by Argentina again but did not join them. He couldn’t settle at NOB and tried his fortune at Tiro Federer, El Porvenir, Cúcuta (very modest semi-amateur clubs) and moved to Peru, where he played for Bolognesi and León de Huánuco. Nobody knows where he is now. Perhaps Rodas could have filled the void left by Leo in terms of talent, but, since when has too much talent been a problem?

Eduardo van der Kooy, journalist and co-author of
Cien años de vida en rojo y negro
(‘A Hundred Years in Red and Black’) with Rafael Bielsa, the brother of the well-known coach Marcelo, goes further: ‘Leo left Newell’s because the mafia that controlled the club during that era did not believe that something so great, so brilliant, could be contained within a physique so small. He left because they abandoned him when his body needed both spiritual and material assistance. But Newell’s still consider him theirs and Leo feels that it is his club. Oh, that he could return, albeit with grey hair.’

Newell’s is a historical institution traditionally nourished by its junior ranks, in whom they take great pride. But they are also exporters, a club that sells those academy players they look after with so much care. In 1988, NOB finished as champions, having produced every player who started that season, every substitute and all the coaches, the only time this has happened in the history of Argentinian football. ‘And from that point on, a process of fourteen years of destruction began, a personal project that had the help of the judiciary and other parts of society that permitted one man to destroy the club.’ That is how one well-known, but on this occasion anonymous, Rosarian refers to Eduardo López, the then president of Newell’s and head of gambling syndicates in Rosario, with casinos and other businesses, some of which brought him to the attention of the police. Others talk about more direct
responsibility: for example, Sergio Almirón, former Newell’s left-winger, 1986 World Cup winner and sporting director during that era. When Jorge called him looking for help, he was either unavailable or the appointment would be cancelled at the last minute, or he would give him 40 pesos for a treatment that cost twenty-five times that amount. And this only when Almirón was feeling generous. Another member of the Argentinian club who never supported Leo.

The presidential elections of 2008 allowed a change at the helm of the club. López stood twice, winning once and losing fourteen years later. In between, he arranged for elections to be suspended, for the lists of candidates to be challenged, or for the justice department to fail to authorise the voting. Since 2008 the club has tried to return to the way it once was: in 2013 Newell’s became champions again, with Tata Martino in charge, just before he went to Barcelona.

When Celia, Leo’s mother, declared in 2010, ‘I speak for myself, not my husband: for me, Newell’s doesn’t exist’, she was referring to the old Newell’s. The current board is very close to Jorge and to Leo, so much so that the Messis have even invested, so it is said, in a new gymnasium for the Sports City and a number of other projects. There are some who can see Jorge as a club director and Leo wearing the red and black shirt. One day.

Leo’s departure has left scars, as Wright Thompson explained on a website. ‘ For years he [Ernesto Vecchio] resented his former player. Something happened here at this school, a bit of magic, and Vecchio played a role. Many people did. There should be some acknowledgment. Instead, they’re known as the shortsighted fools who let a legend walk away. The former Newell’s team official in charge of Messi’s growth hormone payments still carries around receipts, which seem like forgeries, trying to prove that he didn’t make the dumbest decision in the history of professional sports.’

And Leo? When he was asked in 2009 how he felt about Newell’s, he chose to be diplomatic. ‘Angry, no, because I’m not like that. I have a lot of love for the club. I went to the pitch as a small boy and dreamed of being on it one day.’

*

So there it is. In Rosario, Leo had been surrounded by the people who valued him, who protected him, people who encouraged him and who helped him grow. All of them wanted to see him come out on top. All bar a few at the place where he played, his club. ‘When we found out that the club was not going to pay for his treatment we were very sad,’ remembers Cintia Arellano. ‘When the boys from the neighbourhood said their goodbyes, I was with him. He hugged me and said, don’t cry, don’t cry.’

People who knew him well wanted to give him a send-off. They were leaving, surely never to return. We’re staying here, said his friends, his family. You’re very brave. Good luck to you.

‘We left the neighbourhood, Las Heras, and all our friends, all our people, came out to say their goodbyes,’ Leo told Cristina Cubero in the Catalan newspaper
El Mundo Deportivo
in 2005. ‘They were all in the street. The whole family was going, my parents Jorge and Celia and my brothers Rodrigo, Matías and my little sister María Sol who at that time was five years old. That day we were so sad that my brother Matías and I cried, we cried a lot. It was a very gloomy journey; we missed our family, my uncles, everybody.’

Today, more than a decade later, he remembers the trip as if it were a dream, but at the time it was terrible – they were going to what seemed like the other side of the world, with the sound of his very roots being torn up playing in his ears. It happens with every departure, and it is a powerful echo.

‘He left, and from one day to the next we knew nothing about him,’ remembers Gerardo Grighini. ‘Maybe his neighbours knew. He is a very reserved person, not someone who finds out about something and has to go and tell everybody. And probably his father, his mother, told him, don’t say anything. What’s more, he had gone to River Plate, he had been at River for a week and later on he went to Barcelona. We didn’t know anything about River or the trial at Barcelona either; we found out about it afterwards when he was in Spain.’

‘I went to greet him at his hotel when he came with the national team to Rosario to play Brazil, but he couldn’t come down to reception,’ Vecchio remembers. ‘His parents came down, and I spoke to them for quite a while. The only thing I managed was to say hello
to him when he was sitting in a group. He saw me and smiled … I cherish that memory.’

Ángel Ruani, the father of ‘Luli’, Leo’s friend, recalls the following: ‘The last time I saw him was with my son and a few friends on New Year’s Eve 2005 when they came home at about five in the morning. They woke me up to wish me Happy New Year. Bighearted, no?’

And Nestor Rozín: ‘You keep in your heart, in your mind, the good things that he did, and the day I have to go, maybe one or two will know in their minds and in their hearts that I helped him a bit.’

‘I had not seen him for a while and we met at the Copa América in Venezuela, in 2007. He came up to greet me. That was rewarding, he was the same kid I had in the ninth and tenth teams. He came over and gave me a hug … You should remember this: he’s the same person I knew when he was a nipper.’ This is Adrián Coria, who, as assistant to Martino with the Paraguayan national side in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, saw him again after that affectionate meeting. Coria was walking onto the training pitch just as Argentina were leaving. From a distance, Leo saw him, took off his top and gave it to him. Adrián has put it in his office in Rosario.

The boy Leandro Giménez, who had a trial with Leo at River, never saw Leo in person again after he left Argentina. Nor has he spoken to him. ‘He gave me his telephone number when he went to Barcelona, but I never called him. I don’t know why. Before the last World Cup I left him a message on Facebook. I told him that he was a source of pride for all Argentinians. He was grateful for all the messages he received. But I also got a Like from him,’ he smiles. Today, aged 24, Giménez lives in Buenos Aires and works with a foreign trade company. He doesn’t want to play any more, except with his friends on Saturdays. He ended his footballing career a disillusioned man.

Grighini, who spent six years in Italy, went to see an Inter–Barcelona game but did not ask Leo for a ticket. Or a shirt. Earlier, he had seen him at an airport, ‘but he wasn’t yet famous. At that time, as we had distanced ourselves from each other and we didn’t communicate on a day-to-day basis, he was that shy boy once again. He would answer: “yes, no, it’s going well, what do you know, Barcelona …” I’m talking about when he was 16 and had only just
started to play. For me we would have to speak on a daily basis or maybe after a few hours together everything would click again and we could go back to “you remember when …” and all the anecdotes. But at the beginning, if you hadn’t seen him for a while, he was reserved, distant. But of course he is an idol to me. For me the matter of a shirt is different, I’m not interested, I’m more interested in sharing a meal, or going out for a bit.

‘I went to England, to Everton, in June 2005,’ Grighini continues. ‘But after that I had a bit of bad luck: I had a very bad car accident, we hit two lorries. I only fractured my fibula but my friend, the player Julio González, was travelling with me and could have lost his life. He had multiple fractures and they amputated his left arm. He returned to playing a bit later, how cool is that! Later I tore my cruciate ligaments, three times in a row, and I was out of the game for three and a half years. I came out all right but destiny and life mark you and if they tell you that football is not for you, then you have to follow your life in another direction.’

And Diego Rovira: ‘I had to tell my parents, so I did, after supper. In fact, it wasn’t so much me coming up with any big news – I just confirmed what they guessed all along. Mum, Dad, I am leaving football. That was March 2011. Yes, I am quitting. They had supported me, bankrolled me. My dad said something very obvious: it is a shame, son. And it really was. He knew how hard I had tried, he was the one who had watched me in hundreds of games, with Leo at Newell’s … they still call me the number 9 who played with Leo.’

It’s very difficult to make it in football.

The last farewell, that of Quique Domínguez: ‘A while ago we played a qualifier for the 2014 World Cup, Argentina−Uruguay in Mendoza and Chile−Argentina in Chile. My eldest son Sebastián, Maxi Rodríguez (“the Beast”) and Leo were called up. The three of them in the same squad! And now they were going to meet. Maxi had to leave the squad because of an injury and return to Rosario and my son Sebastián said to me: “the Beast is coming back, look for him because he’s got something for you. I don’t know what it is, but he told me to warn you because he has a present.” It had been more than 20 years since I had last coached the Beast, and 13 since I had trained Leo. Maxi brought me a shirt. Signed by both of them, by Leo, by himself. There are people who say to me, “How ungrateful,
you never hear from them.” No, things happen naturally when you feel them. And that day they thought it was a good idea to send me a shirt. I am very thankful.

‘I feel,’ Domínguez says, ‘one drop of sweat, only one, from every game that Leo plays is mine, it tells me that I have something to do with Leo’s life, but I don’t ask for anything back, I don’t ring him, I don’t need all that. I saw him one day on television on a programme that honoured him, I was there and I said hi to him. But if Leo closes his eyes and you ask him, “remember the people who passed through your life” … roll of drums … Quique Domínguez will be there, briefly, in passing … this to me has a much greater value than any shirt …

‘No, I am no longer coach.’

Is that Leo Messi, the one talked about by Domínguez, or Grighini or Rovira, the real one? Or are they seeing the Leo they want to see? With this Argentinian fascination for the Messiah, for the one who has the gift, the special one, it becomes difficult to separate image from reality, especially when the country was and still is in turmoil. It is in times of crisis when the need for heroes intensifies.

This stage of his life was coming to a close for Leo, but it never totally ended for those who had been close to him. He stayed with them, in their minds and hearts.

Jorge, by the way, never collected his final pay cheque from Acindar.

Part Two