Messi (57 page)

‘Technique has its limits, and that is given by co-ordination,’ says Quique Domínguez. ‘Everything else can be taught, everything can be learned, but you need to go beyond the technical level to be a great: Leo gives you a handshake and talks to you, but you can see that, secretly, he is looking for the ball. You have to have that passion, you have to have that commitment.’

10. Genes

There is no gene that makes a child a genius. No one is born a genius. There’s a lot of training and some innate properties that help you rise to the giddy heights. Perhaps, as some scientists suggest, the relevant genetic connection is the compulsion to achieve those goals.

‘Who are these people who leave their footprint on humanity, in football, science, the arts, culture?’ asks sports psychologist Liliana
Grabín. ‘They are unique personalities, unrepeatable, they leave a legacy behind, there’s no doubt about it. They did not mean to lead anything and that’s why they leave a legacy. They are maestros. Science, historically, still doesn’t know where it all comes from.’

Leo Messi has a unique mixture of gestural speed (that’s to say, the speed of his movements) and skill. There are a few in the world with his characteristics. Marco Reus of Borussia Dortmund, for example, is fast with the ball at his feet and very skilful with the same gestural speed as Leo, but with a larger stride. But he is worse in the overall calculations, because he has difficulty in stringing together successive dribbles, while the Argentinian can put together three, four or more if he comes out from the last one with the ball under control. Messi’s legs move faster than any other footballer and this gives him an advantage: the rhythm in his stride, which is essentially natural, is also unique: 4.5 strides per second, better than the 4.4 strides of Asafa Powell, the Jamaican sprinter who broke the 100 metres world record in 2007. The skill to carry out the smoothest of touches, one after the other, assisted by this gestural speed, gives him another advantage. And the ability to turn at full speed (a mixture of co-ordination and speed) is another physical attribute that helps him shake off his opponents.

‘This is natural,’ says Fernando Signorini. ‘You won’t achieve this even if you invent 800,000 different co-ordination exercises because, as Panceri [Armando Panceri, Argentinian footballer] says, the unexpected doesn’t arrive as a result of specific planning.’

Leo arrived at Barcelona where they look for a profile of a footballer different from that of their rivals (Espanyol, Real Madrid): technical ability. Often those players (at 10, 11, 12 years old) are technically able but with a much better co-ordination than their tallest companions, and shine out because they are able to keep the ball and dribble better than the rest, proof of good coordination. The small boys therefore mature and evolve quicker and are more technically competent. Along the way ‘the Flea’ developed body strategies and rapid movements to compensate for his physical shortcomings, and to avoid an opponent bringing him down, to be able to nullify the advantage that a bigger boy, who was able to cover the same distance but in fewer strides, would have.

Or put another way, while gestural speed has its origins in genetics, it is improved and expanded with practice. In the street, in the football school.

With the passing of the years, many, tall or small, get to the same level from the point of view of co-ordination and technique. In Leo’s case he has added a new dimension to an extraordinary level of excellence. And that isn’t genetic; rather, it is the product of passion and perseverance.

Leo has always considered himself so superior in these actions of speed, skill and dribbling that he always wanted to do them in every move, every game. The best way to triumph in life is by concentrating on your strengths and for that reason Messi understands the game as a succession of dribbles, one versus one, the essence of football.

Add his intense desire to come out on top and you are getting close to what Leo Messi is about.

Let me add one more thing to the list proposed by Pedro Gómez.

11. Serendipity, luck and opportunity

It has been said that the greatest player of that famous generation of ’87, the one who really excelled at Barcelona, was Víctor Vázquez, a comment that has both something a bit too clever about it while also having an element of truth. He could have been better, but it did not happen. Let him explain:

Today, Víctor Vázquez plays at Club Brugge, in Belgium. Quique Domínguez agrees with Víctor: ‘For me when they ask what a player needs to become successful I say that it is like the three legs of a table: ability, dedication and luck.’ A blend of luck and the circumstances generally under the direct control of the sportsman can help him triumph.

Even a thousand interviews with Leo Messi would fail to go any way towards explaining what it was that drove that ambition, the perseverance, the search for more achievements, the understanding of where to go with the ball. He has no idea how to explain it.

One thing is certain. As Jorge Valdano says, we never expected to see a player like Lionel in the twenty-first century. ‘We were waiting to see a footballer with more of the characteristics of someone like Cristiano Ronaldo with his natural physique built up with lots of exercise and emphasis on gym work.’ Maybe. In any case, Messi is the result of a bunch of circumstances and coincidences that enabled him to exploit his talent. A combination, that in its supreme expression, is seldom experienced. A perfect storm.

In our society we enjoy the success of the individual, men and women who have triumphed on their own, who have achieved their own particular ‘American dream’. But those who have arrived at the highest level, as Malcolm Gladwell says, ‘are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages, extraordinary opportunities and cultural inheritances that allow them to work hard and make sense of the world in a way that others can’t’.

Could there have been other Messis? Perhaps, but those who had the chance to one be might not have been lucky enough to get there. Or, more likely, couldn’t see the opportunity. Or were born in the wrong country.

One final point. Leo has always been aware of the baggage he is carrying, and he will be a happy man in old age, simply because he is doing everything he can to be the best that he can possibly be. Not like
Trinche
. Being
Trinche
is easier.

What’s difficult is to be Leo Messi.

  
7
  

Dealing with Maradona

‘I already knew he would be representing the national side during the World Cup in Holland, although he could have played with the Under 20 side for another year. I arranged a meeting with him in my room and I told him the news: “The teacher called me.” He looked at me. “Pekerman is the teacher. You are going to be called up for the next full international. This is a secret between you and me, okay? And if the coach knows I’m telling you this, he’ll kill me.” He smiled and left. He is a man of few words. I used to communicate a lot using drawings. I remember drawing him a Formula One car in the 2006 World Cup. He still had many laps to complete. It wasn’t his time to win the race. That is what the drawing represented
.

‘He didn’t accept it, but he listened and kept the drawing.’

(Gerardo ‘the Professor’ Salorio)

M
essi’s uncles would often say to him jokingly that he would play in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. ‘They mentioned the date, but only as a joke. I never imagined I was going to play in one, never mind one that was fast approaching,’ Leo recalled years later. But his life with the national team had a rocky start.

The Argentinian journalist Luis Calvano remembers walking behind Leo on the way to the meeting point of the national squad in Budapest, at the Ferenc Puskás Stadium. It was Leo’s first call-up and he did not know what to do. Other players started arriving from the airport in different groups and some of them walked past the
new kid, thinking he was a kitman’s assistant. Messi was waiting for instructions standing by the wall, head down, fiddling nervously with the cord of his shorts. The first to recognise him was Luciano Figueroa. He took hold of him and began introducing him to the squad.

He made his debut two days later. And was sent off after 90 seconds. After that game, played in the summer of 2005, ‘the Flea’ was a regular in José Pekerman’s squads during the months leading up to Germany. Away from the pitch, in the background, all but invisible to the rest of the group. He knew that, just as had happened in the Barcelona dressing room, he had to go through the same stages with the national side of gaining approval and acceptance. The leap forward he had taken at Barcelona had become, at least for the moment, a step backwards under Pekerman. He realised he was in two different worlds.

Messi usually sat with Oscar Ustari or Pablo Zabaleta, from the Under 20 World Cup squad, and later with Javier Mascherano, with whom he bonded instantly. ‘The first time I saw him was just before the World Cup,’ says Mascherano. Despite him being injured, Pekerman, who was relying on the midfielder for Germany, asked Mascherano to join the group in Switzerland where Argentina were to play a friendly against England. ‘On that trip we spent a few days together. We first met in his room, he wasn’t one for leaving his room much. In those days he was really quiet, very introverted … We had friends in common and obviously that helped with the conversation. But when you come to a new place you have a certain shyness and it’s difficult until you begin to open up, isn’t it? And even more so when you’re just a boy.’ Leo felt embarrassed; he didn’t want to interrupt the camaraderie. So he spent most of the time in the hotel room. ‘I was also young, I was twenty-two years old, he was eighteen, so, in a sense, we grew up together and became friends.’

From very early on the president of the federation, Julio Grondona, recognised that ‘the Flea’s’ talent would make him one of the national side’s leading lights. And, what’s more, a leader. All in good time, he thought. The swift organisation of the two Under 20 friendlies had demonstrated the institutional support he was going to receive, and stole a march on Spain in the process. Grondona had
to learn to cope with a very unmanageable Diego Armando Maradona, but he would make Leo his favourite son, his creation. ‘I want this to be your son’s side, and I have mentioned that to him, too,’ he told Jorge Messi on one occasion. He was equally frank with Leo: he insisted that Argentina had to be his team and he should be the captain in the future. As is frequently the case in the European footballing culture – and perhaps it is a remnant of that culture – the captain’s armband assumes great importance in the Argentine psyche. It represents the beacon of the group.

For the 2006 World Cup, Juan Pablo Sorín was captain. And as long as the captain has the support of the senior players and the most influential ones, the wearer of the armband is the winner in any disputes that may occur. That would explain the absence of Juan Sebastián Verón from the final squad for Germany. ‘The fight between Juan Sebastián Verón and Juan Pablo Sorín halfway through the match between Inter and Villarreal, which was witnessed by millions of television viewers throughout the world, was a naked display of a deep internal wound in the Argentina side,’ it was reported in
El Clarín
in April 2006. ‘One that leaves Sorín in – and as captain – and Verón out. Everyone around the Inter player is convinced that Sorín is the man principally responsible for the non-selection of Verón in the last call-ups …’

Verón had been very influential when Daniel Passarella was coach, and an automatic starter under Marcelo Bielsa, even when the side’s captain was the central defender Roberto Ayala. But Verón stopped being called up once Pekerman was appointed coach, and he, unlike Bielsa, who allowed his players to vote, picked Sorín despite pressure from some of his senior players to give the armband to Roberto Ayala. Such are the politics involved.

And the hierarchy is there to be respected. Leo Messi formed part of the ‘new boys’ group and, along with Oscar Ustari, was the only Under 20-year-old to go to that tournament. They were there to listen and to wait their turn. In the meantime, the final squad was being picked in a very Argentinian way: at a gathering in May, in the Spanish town of Boadilla, Pablo Aimar, who was enjoying a very successful season with Valencia, was missing. Pekerman had no intention of calling him up for the World Cup and justified his absence by citing the player’s physical weakness – in April of that
year he had suffered an acute form of viral meningitis. The squad leaders, fronted by Juan Román Riquelme, dug their heels in and their ‘advice’ was finally accepted by the coach. And so Aimar, the only idol recognised by Leo, was called up for the tournament. They would share the same dressing room.