Probably the most painful memory of Lionel Messi’s career is the 2014 World Cup. In fact, the final of that World Cup left him on the verge of eternal glory with the National Team. The new book by journalist Ariel Senosiain, “Messi, the incomplete genius”, reveals some questions about the figure of the Rosario star.
With the words of 68 interviewees, among which those of Jorge Messi, Sergio Agüero, Javier Mascherano, Lothar Matthäus and even Alejandro Sabella, and the foreword by Martín Caparrós, the work of the editorial El Ateneo portrays interesting chapters in the life of the emblematic Argentine footballer. His affectionate relationship with Julio Humberto Grondona, who defended him tooth and nail during his stay as president of the AFA, until his reactions after the defeat with Germany at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro. A text that delves into and helps to understand the national star who will probably dispute his last World Cup in 2022.
The sentences of the leaders who supported Grondona in the Argentine Football Association describe the respect that existed between the president and captain of Argentine football: they said that Messi appeared surprisingly at Don Julio’s wake, cried him in the drawer, slept on the premises from Ezeiza and early in the morning he returned to Barcelona. “I loved him like an uncle or a grandfather,” says Héctor Domínguez, former treasurer of the AFA. “I adored him because he solved all his problems,” says former manager Juan Carlos Crespi in unison.
Humberto Grondona, Julio’s son, shared another detail that shows the affection his father had for him. After the celebration of the 27th anniversary of La Pulga, the priest of the AFA greeted him and spoke about him to everyone: “I made a sign for him to finish. It was long gone. It’s that I loved him. They actually loved each other. ” Humberto was in charge of the U-20 sparring in the World Cup in which he established a great relationship with Messi. And he involuntarily registered a cabal with him: “I’m not asking for photos, but before the debut against Bosnia I asked him to take one. And it was customary in the preview of each game. He even looked for me in the preview of the semi against the Netherlands; He told me something that surprised me that it came from him: ‘You never have to improvise’. Incredibly I do not know what happened that we did not remove any before the final “.
When Messi was a teenager who was beginning to talk in the Barcelona youth teams, Omar Souto was the AFA employee who was entrusted to contact him to recruit him for the Argentine team. He knew him almost from scratch and in the book he reveals: “When Leo loses, he dies. He cries, he does not speak, he shuts himself up. The worst defeat of all was the final in Brazil. I was devastated. “
There are two former teammates who also give voice to the emotions that he reflected after the 0-1 with the Germans. “I don’t want to get inside Leo’s head before a final. It is enough for me to remember the anxiety I had the night before playing against Germany to imagine how he must have been. It is logical that Leo suffers if we spend years saying that he would not be able to overcome Maradona if he did not win a World Cup … Although we had given everything in coexistence and on the field, the dressing room after the final is the worst memory that I have from my career. Leo’s face that night is indescribable. And her cry after the game was our image. We were flagged behind him. Even today I would give up a lot of mine in exchange for Leo being able to win that World Cup ”, is the crude story of Fernando Gago.
