Messi (25 page)

‘In the 3-4-3, before Tito, Leo played wide, but with the new coach Leo and I began to play as striker or in the hole just behind; bit by bit we developed an understanding,’ explained Vázquez. ‘We worked well together. If we needed more speed up front, we’d put Messi as striker because he was the fastest, and you could pass the ball to him. If in another game the defenders were more aggressive, I’d be up front and Messi would play behind. And Cesc behind both of us! Mad!’

‘Tito was the first to play Leo in a particular position on a regular basis,’ remembers Charly Rexach. ‘Tito came to tell me that he
had a bloke in his team who was gifted, a phenomenon. “Oh, yes, I know who you mean,” I said. People sometimes think a well coordinated team happens by accident, but that one was full of very good players and Tito knew a lot about football. And it was his tactically intelligent brain as a footballer that he brought to coaching. From then on things really began to motor for Leo. When Messi was small he was entertaining to watch because he scored more goals than the rest, because he would go around three or four players, and also because he would sometimes overegg the pudding. And we thought, when he grows we’ll tell him to stop milking it and pass the ball more. But you had to let him grow his way. And Tito was the first to make him go into a game, with a footballing plan, a tactic. And Barcelona generally has one advantage: it’s better than other teams, so it can play as it wishes. So you can try players in different positions, experiment a bit more.’

‘Tito would talk to us about all the other sides as if they were excellent,’ explains Junior player Julio de Dios to Jordi Gil in his biography of Cesc,
Descubriendo a Cesc Fàbregas
(‘Discovering Cesc Fàbregas’). ‘He would have all the data relating to all of the other Juniors: if a forward had so many goals, or if this player was fast or had a particular technique. Speaking to us like this about our opponents meant that we were always on our toes and motivated. He gave us just enough information to make sure we weren’t overconfident, but at the same time he drove us mad with the blackboard and his strategy. None the less we beat them all!’

Tito Vilanova knew that he had something special on his hands: he loved Piqué’s leadership qualities and the quality and competitiveness of Cesc. And Blázquez, and Vázquez, and defender Marc Valiente. But Leo had something else. ‘I never saw a boy as demanding of himself as he was,’ says the former Barcelona coach. ‘Sometimes he would play a fantastic game but would then leave the pitch angry with himself because he thought he could have done better.’ That’s how practically all of them were in that Junior B side, but Leo pushed himself to the limit.

After that game at Can Vidalet, Leo played six more matches and celebrated winning the league, his first title with Barcelona.

‘You looked forward and you saw Messi,’ remembers Víctor Vázquez, who has continued with his career at Bruges. ‘And you
said, “fuck me, mate, I know we’re going to do something good here”. And you also had Cesc behind you, and you said, “something’s going to happen, you’re going to pass the ball, Cesc is going to give you a good pass back, you’re going to combine well together and it’s going to finish up a goal”. We were so much better than any other side. Never have I seen a team as superior as we were at the lower levels. Sometimes at walking pace we would win 10–0 and the gaffer used to say: “hey, do some running!” And we used to answer him: “What have we got to run for?” It’s just that it wasn’t necessary, you passed the ball, and in three or four passes you were where you wanted to be.’

‘They were an extraordinary group, with some very competitive players, true winners. At just fifteen or sixteen years old they had the maturity of people of twenty-two or twenty-three,’ says coach Alex García, who inherited the group from Tito the following year. ‘Everyone knew that Messi, Piqué and Cesc were different. They were the mainstays of the team and they accepted it. It’s easy to say now with hindsight, but the fact is you could see that no other team had players of this quality.’ Cesc is honest: ‘In any case, if at that moment they had told us that one day all three of us would form part of the Barcelona first team, the three of us would have said that that was impossible. Perhaps one or two, but three?’

‘I said to Leo one day that I could quite happily sit down on the bench and leave him to enjoy his football; the truth is that I saw a Maradona in him,’ recognises Tito.

‘Leo had qualities that were totally different from ours,’ recalls Cesc. ‘And as much as they say that I was good, or that Piqué was this, or whoever was that … the truth is that we all had characteristics very similar to all the others. We were better, because we were better, but we didn’t have anything markedly different; he, though, had qualities that set him apart. You know he’s going to go to your left, but he still goes past you. You see it a thousand times on television and you say “how is it that they don’t get the ball off him and he always goes to the left?” Even knowing and anticipating that you still can’t. Seriously, I’m telling you, he is gifted.’

‘I was the director of the Villarreal football school.’ This is Juan Carlos Garrido, the former boss of the Castellon club. ‘Our paths would cross when he played against my sides and I remember that
he used to win games on his own. There was a tremendous difference between him and the rest of the players. The first time I saw him was at a summer tournament organised by Villarreal: for 14-years-olds. The final of this tournament was between Barça and Villarreal. Half-time arrived and Villarreal was winning 1–0 I think, and then Messi came on in the second half. The game finished 1–3. Messi scored all three goals. It was like a revolution, something extraordinary.’

The president, Joan Gaspart, would occasionally spend Saturday mornings by the pitches next to the Camp Nou, watching whatever match happened to be going on, either by himself or accompanied by Charly Rexach. ‘I never said “that number 10 is one of a kind and is going to be the best player in the world”. I never said it. That he was very good, yes, but no more. I never said it, and it never entered my head that he would get to where he has got. But he got the ball and he would do things different from the rest. And it was strange because he was a very shy young man, but when you saw him on the field he was the leader of the pack. And, what’s more, he liked to milk it. If he could dribble round three, better than two. He was fast and there was something “hard-nosed” about him – he wouldn’t run away from the physical battle, wouldn’t get scared after a tackle. He was one of those types of boys who leaves a great impression on you.’

That youth team trained, like the majority of the sides in the academy, on the pitches next to the Mini Stadium, about 500 metres from the Camp Nou and the space next to La Masía where the senior players trained. Rarely did their paths cross, however, even though three of them were Leo’s fellow countrymen: Juan Román Riquelme, Roberto Bonano and Javier Saviola.

Riquelme had tremendous quality, an attacking midfielder who dictated the pace of the game, albeit sometimes with a certain coldness. But he played at the Camp Nou. With the big boys. And with the national side. Juan Román was, then, in Leo’s eyes, one of the greats. When their paths did cross, at barbecues organised by Minguella at his home in Barcelona, for instance, Leo would somehow become even smaller and he would stare at him with his head bowed, eyes like saucers, the top of his head just reaching Riquelme’s chin – with the apparent awe of a penitent in the presence of his god. For
their part, Saviola and Bonano would stop and ask him how things were going and from time to time invite him for an ice cream and chat for a while. When Leo needed them, following a stroke of bad luck the following season, they were there for him.

FC Barcelona’s first team was, a year after the departure of Luis Figo and Pep Guardiola, suffering from lack of leadership. The money that came in from the sale of the Portuguese midfielder had been spent badly on players who failed to make the grade (Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars, Alfonso Pérez, Gerard López), and others who made little impact, like Riquelme and Saviola. Carlos Rexach, on the sidelines, never really managed to convince the fans, and the team, with Rivaldo and Kluivert as its stars, were left the wrong side of the title doors, finishing fourth in the league and ending up as Champions League semi-finalists, having lost to Madrid. The institutional crisis, with Joan Gaspart receiving little support from the faithful, would eventually translate into five years without a single league title.

In those early days, Leo still changed in a corner of the dressing room, away from the rest. His team-mates kept their distance, not knowing what to say to him or how to draw him out. There seemed to be an invisible, protective wall around him.

During breaks in training, Leo would have a drink of water by himself, a ball tucked under his arm or resting by his feet. Always near. He entertained himself with little touches on the ball while the others talked about their plans for the day, or about school, or about their girlfriends.

He was the first to shower, when there was no one else in the dressing room. Or the last. But normally he’d get there first, change in five minutes and then rush to meet his father who was usually waiting for him outside. His team-mates thought he didn’t want to shower with them at the same time, that he was wary of them. Too wary.

Sometimes he said goodbye, sometimes he didn’t. Usually it was a raise of the hand, and a quiet ‘see you tomorrow’.

It wouldn’t be long before the veterans in the group approached the new boy from Argentina.

Unsurprisingly, Gerard Piqué was the first to approach him. A
typical practical joker, he hid his clothes while he was showering, moving them to another hook. Leo returned with a towel around his waist and couldn’t find his things. He became nervous, agitated. Five or six of the boys began laughing but they quickly returned his clothes before things got out of hand. ‘Where are you from? What brings you to these parts?’ asked Piqué. ‘You can talk to us, nothing’s going to happen to you, we won’t bite.’

‘Sorry, I’m just quiet,’ replied Leo.

Piqué had opened the door for him. From that moment on he spoke more. But not much more.

‘We thought he was a mute,’ says Cesc, laughing.

‘Messi is very shy, and I think he always will be, even though he is a bit better now. He is very respectful of people. There are those who say it’s because he is the best player in the world, as if he is super-important and has an inflated opinion of himself. But I think that this is more the case with players like Cristiano Ronaldo. Not Leo, though. He’s more of an “I don’t feel comfortable here, I wonder what this person is going to say to me” type of person.’ This is how Víctor Vázquez, who tried to discover if they shared any common interests, remembers it: ‘We tried to get him united with the group but he was more “no, I don’t fancy it, I’d rather go home”. He was the type of boy who just wanted to be with his family. He wasn’t like the rest of us. We could spend an afternoon laughing and joking, or at the cinema, or at El Corte Inglés, or just hanging out in the neighbourhood where anything could happen.’

Leo did not live at La Masía, so he missed the nightly goings-on on the second floor where the bedrooms were situated and where the boys met to study. Or, rather, where they were meant to study. Sometimes someone would turn off the lights. Then some unfortunate, usually Piqué, whose cheekiness had done more than enough to deserve it, would get slapped on the back of the head. It was all done in fun and Piqué enjoyed it and laughed along with the rest of them. But that wasn’t Leo’s scene.

‘He was very shy,’ the full-back Oriol Palencia recalled in Jordi Gil’s book. ‘He went out, played, and nothing else. He wasn’t one of those types that puts himself in the forefront and says things like “come on, give more to the team, we need to work harder, come on guys” or stuff like that. He was much more in the background, but
playing he was in a completely different class. In the
Infantiles
A group it was a bit more difficult for him because his physical shortcomings were more noticeable. He was very good, fast, skilful. But shorter. And as he responded to the physical conditioning, at Junior level he was explosive. But a whole year went by before he opened his mouth, or so it seemed. It was when we went to play a couple of tournaments with the Junior B side that he really opened up.’

His family insist that Leo is not shy, he’s just reserved. This is worth reiterating because the difference is crucial and it is something he learned at home, a code of behaviour instilled in him in Argentina: he would speak, if necessary, on the pitch, respect the group and take on whatever role was assigned him. No more. His attitude was extreme, but in many ways also reflected his immigrant status. He was, after all, a stranger in a strange land.

The consequences and effects on any youngsters forced to leave their country and adapt to a strange new environment are too numerous to mention. One constant, though, is their ability to mature faster than their indigenous peers. Threatened by an alien culture and maybe a new and baffling language, they feel vulnerable and, like any creature plucked from its natural habitat, quickly develop survival skills that often show themselves in a lack of trust, at least until new friendships are forged. Often the best form of self-protection is the simplest. Merge into the background. Offer no threat. And, if you’re lucky enough to have them with you, enjoy the protection of a loving family.

The pressures heaped on young footballers aiming for the top make them age before their time, as they miss out on the natural developmental and emotional growth of childhood. They are entering a cutthroat, adult world and are suddenly exposed to a level of pressure that many 30-year-olds would find daunting. Even more so for the young migrant footballer. The child remains, though, locked inside the man-child, and every so often his plaintive cry can be heard…

This makes them complex, and for many people hard to understand. And sometimes it creates instability.

‘Leo is smart, he knows when he has to be good, when to joke, when to be serious,’ explains Cesc. ‘I notice these things a lot. Many of us here are, at times, out of control, loose cannons who say things without thinking … but Leo is very smart, he knows how to handle
himself, how to pick the right moment. We know how he is on the pitch, but in his house, or in the dressing room, he always knows what he has to do and when he has to do it.’