Messi (85 page)

23 April 2013. Messi rests for three matches and is in the starting line-up against Bayern (4–0). It’s the time to find out whether or not the self-management plan has worked.

Defeat is unavoidable and confirms the team has lost its competitiveness.

27 April 2013. Leo plays for half an hour against Athletic Bilbao, provides an assist for Alexis and scores an extraordinary goal. In the tightest of spaces he gets away from his opponents, who seem to appear from everywhere but are unable to stop him before shooting from the edge of the area with a placed shot, accurate and out of goalkeeper Gorka Iraizoz’s reach. ‘How did he do that?’ asks Athletic’s Ander Herrera. ‘He had his back to me and he just did a tremendous turn. I was marking him and he just went. Next time I see him I’ll ask him to explain it to me properly.’ Claudio Vivas, assistant to Marcelo Bielsa with the Basque side, saw something more than just an accurate shot. ‘The frustrations of the season were all reflected in that goal.’

Barcelona draw the game 2–2.

But muscular injuries are very delicate, and can be quite treacherous. Was it the correct decision to play against Athletic with the league so close? Wouldn’t it have been better to take a chance with a game of greater importance, to save him for the return leg of the Bayern semis? Did he get injured again at the San Mamés? The staff and the player took the decision for him to play to get back to match fitness.

30 April 2013. Leo Messi announces: ‘We need the Camp Nou to be a pressure cooker. We will only be able to get close to the comeback if we all believe in it.’

1 May 2013: An hour before kick-off a rumour circulates that Messi will not be in the starting eleven.

Vilanova justifies Leo’s absence, explaining that he had felt something strange at the end of the game at Bilbao. ‘On Monday he didn’t train and this morning, after training, after talking to the doctors and the physios, I spoke with him when he arrived at the hotel. Given how he was, there was a risk that it would break. And he didn’t feel comfortable and, in that condition, he was not able to help the team.’ Leo sat on the bench just in case Tito needed to risk him for a place in the final.

5 May 2013. Match against Betis. Messi reappears in the hour of need. He comes off the bench in the fifty-sixth minute, with the score at 2–2. He soon makes his presence felt and scores twice on a difficult night for Barcelona (4–2). This is, without doubt, Messi’s league.

12 May 2013 Leo goes off in the sixty-seventh minute of the match against Atlético de Madrid in the Vicente Calderón, after once again feeling a niggle in the femoral bicep of his right leg. Tito has already made three changes so Barcelona play the rest of the game with ten men. Barcelona nonetheless win 2–1.

So what was going on with Messi’s injury?

Leo knows his body well and also his Achilles heel – the injury to the femoral bicep. He knew that he was doing something that was working against his recovery, but the team’s need made him push himself to the limit. The same injury in a player who doesn’t need explosive pace, who has less muscle wear and tear, can clear up in two weeks, but Leo has physical characteristics that rely on a very high usage of muscular energy.

Since tearing the muscle in the away leg at PSG, Messi had undergone treatment with Juanjo Brau that did not correspond to the injury – he should have had different work on it and much more rest. The two of them dedicated between seven and eight hours a day to getting fit for the game that was being played eight days later. They were never in any rush to go home. The objective of the exercise was that he should be able to play at least 15 minutes and 35 in the best-case scenario.

In the match at the Camp Nou against the French side, Leo was told to follow the strictest of instructions to be effective in his contributions: ‘Only go for the ball that you can win, pick and choose your runs,’ Juanjo Brau told him. The physical coach knew that he could control and advise on instances when he didn’t have the ball (‘when you don’t have the ball, stay up front, don’t wear yourself out, because if you do we’re not going to be on the pitch for long,’ he told him). Juanjo added another piece of advice that he knew was hardly necessary: ‘Do what you have to do when you get the ball.’ When Leo has the ball he only does what he thinks of at that moment without ever calculating the consequences.

‘We were losing and I remember when he came out to warm up, the atmosphere inside the stadium changed as did the emotional state of the fans,’ says Brau. ‘They were saying to themselves: “now we can win.” Sometimes we’ve got a lot of petrol, but no one else has the spark he adds to it.’

And the treatment worked: he got to play for long enough to change the dynamic of the game.

In the first leg against Bayern Munich, Leo did not break down again as has been stated, but the fact is that there were no miracles. Despite the unorthodox work carried out by the coaching staff in the 21 days since his injury against the French, Leo could not compete at the best level. So, then, why play against Athletic Bilbao between the two semi-final legs?

Coaches will always say that in football you have to win, that you cannot wait for the following week, and getting points at the San Mamés helped them to close in on a league title that was important to everyone: the coaching staff wanted to win the title the year after Guardiola’s departure, the players wanted to show that they could win things without Pep and that self-management, over and above being necessary, was also effective.

After the match against Athletic, the third in three weeks when he should have played none, Leo suffered discomfort, one of the usual consequences of a femoral bicep injury. Even though the muscle had healed, the sudden unexpected surge of pain had not disappeared completely.

Tito and Leo had decided that with a 4–0 deficit to make up, the Argentinian, who still had not played a full ninety minutes since the injury, would only come off the bench if really necessary.

‘I spoke to him a lot,’ explains Cesc. ‘You have to heal this type of injury. I had a terrible year at Arsenal, with seven relapses, and when you find yourself in that dynamic, you’re lost. I told him that he had to cure himself completely or else. But when you’re needed and you play injured but then relapse, you dig yourself into a hole, and the confusion is as mental as it is physical.’ Between games Leo used to say he was ‘
de puta madre
’ (fucking great). And he trained without problems. But a training session isn’t a match.

‘Who’s going to tell Messi that he can’t play? The coach? I don’t think so,’ the Argentine national team doctor, Homero de Agostino, explained to the Spanish media. ‘Messi has a superlative condition as well as great mental strength that no one can stop. But poor Messi feels obliged to honour all his commitments. He’s incapable of saying no.’

Leo’s injury was handled this way because of the circumstances of the season; it was full of risks and one of those was far beyond
just a muscular injury. When a player has so much responsibility, the environment, the club, the coaches paradoxically wear him out more quickly. ‘We cannot allow the situation whereby Leo is always the solution. It isn’t about ability, it’s about wear and tear, because he is human like the rest of us,’ says Juanjo Brau. The whole world thinks itself capable of speaking about Messi, but we often forget that there is another Leo: the one who gets up in the morning. Always to be excellent comes at a huge emotional cost. How long will he last at this level?

Barcelona won their twenty-second league title and Messi’s statistics demonstrated that victory was mostly down to him: he scored 40.5 per cent of all goals and was the top scorer with 45, racking up 61 across the three competitions in which the team participated. For the first time a footballer had scored in every single match in the first half of the season. He had gone past the 345 goals scored by Maradona throughout his whole career. At 25 years old.

Speaking on TV Azteca, Leo asked for understanding of a very difficult year: ‘When Tito came we felt really good, because practically nothing changed. But when he left we noticed the change; not because Roura or the other people could not do it, but because we were missing our first coach, missing the one who had spoken to us from day one.’ Elimination by Bayern, in his opinion, proved that the clubs now knew how to play against Barcelona: ‘For years we’ve been playing the same way and the coaches and rival teams study you. But we shouldn’t drive ourselves mad because of what’s happened this year. We can’t change Barcelona’s style because that is what has always characterised us.’

Tito Vilanova had said in his first press conference after his return from New York that he felt he had the strength to carry on the following season. What he didn’t say was that in January, before travelling to the United States, he had put his future in the hands of the board. If they wanted to look for a replacement he would understand perfectly, he told them. After winning the title, he once again tendered his resignation. President Sandro Rosell insisted on both occasions that if the doctors gave him the all clear, if he wanted to carry on, the job was his.

On Friday, 19 July, Tito Vilanova took training as usual. The players had been called in at half past seven for another one. On that
occasion, Tito asked them to gather around before going out onto the pitch. Then he gave them the news: ‘This was my life’s dream, but now I have to leave.’ He thanked them for their work and their help. And then he went home to try to recover from the cancer that assaulted his body once again.

The team’s planned trip to Poland, where they were due to play a friendly, was cancelled. The official announcement was made by Rosell and Andoni Zubizarreta. In the first row of the press room, Carles Puyol, Messi, Pinto and Mascherano sat together, united in misery.

Leo had also experienced the worry and anxiety of a close family member suffering from the same disease. And Tito was a trainer whom he could trust, someone who had been with him in his early development in the team. He felt a debt towards him and wanted to give everything back that he had received from him.

It was not to be.

3. Leo’s Image

In an effort to make the most of ‘the Flea’s’ international celebrity, Adidas decided to organise a visit to London, one of those ideas that gets marketing executives all excited but invariably suffers in the execution. On 15 September 2010, Messi was scheduled to play a football match with a group of 15-year-old boys on Hackney Marshes, in London’s East End. The helicopter would land, Leo would emerge from it and then the coach would bring him on in place of one of the players. The boys had started the game and did not know what was about to happen, but they suspected something was afoot when they saw the Sky Sports cameras arrive.

Leo arrived by helicopter.

He took no more than ten steps before being mobbed by hundreds of fans, who had discovered what was going to happen from the clues that Adidas had given out on their social network channels. Thus Adidas had to extricate him quickly and fly him to the next publicity stunt: giving away football boots at a stall in the famous Brick Lane market, something he did manage to do.

Lastly, he had to go to Tower Hamlets, a multicultural, working-class London borough, where he was to play a five-a-side match with
the first nine boys who arrived at the pitch in the shadow of modest tower blocks. Since his security could not be guaranteed, however, it was decided to cancel the final event. Leo and the company organising the event were accused of showing a ‘lack of respect to the fans’; despite this, Adidas managed to attract the world’s attention for an entire day.

In fact, Leo
had
travelled to Tower Hamlets (his was the van with tinted windows parked near the pitch) but it was soon realised that it would be almost impossible to get him out of there in time to get him back to London City Airport. The cameraman waiting with the Sky correspondent in the centre circle made some clumsy excuse and left the pitch, an act that almost led to an incident. Soon afterwards, on discovering that Leo was leaving London, the youngsters threw bottles, cans and whatever they could find in the direction of the pitch and police had to clear the area.

It was a risky idea that did not go at all well, and the sponsor learnt from it, albeit after the damage had been done.