A spring evening at the Nou Camp, the floodlights blaze over a cup semi-final between Barcelona and Getafe. Up in the media box, Joaquim Maria Puyal is on air for Radio Catalunya, his eyes set on the halfway line as Barcelona regain possession. He punches out his words staccato, quickening, until he needs just the one. “Deco to Xavi, Xavi to Messi. Messi, Messi, Messi and still Messi, Messi, Messi . . . ” By the time Puyal launched his “Gol-Gol-Gol!” serenade, there had been 18 consecutive Messis in the commentary.
Within 24 hours there would be a multitude of Maradonas. Messi’s run had started in the same area as Diego Maradona’s famous run against England at the 1986 World Cup. It would finish with a similar, angled conversion. In between, Messi twisted around, skipped over or outpaced five challengers. Rounding the goalkeeper made six. Puyal’s colleagues in the Catalan press gleefully labelled it goal of the 21st century, their art departments superimposing the route taken by Maradona in Mexico onto the dribble of Messi over 60 metres of the Nou Camp.
A month earlier, Messi scored a hat-trick against Real Madrid at the same stadium. The following summer he would finally complete the business of being a teenager. After so much so young, his 20s, all 10 months of them so far, have made life seem more arduous. Messi will line up against Manchester United on Wednesday in a Champions League semi-final in front of a crowd of close to 90,000 who expect a virtuoso goal, or imagine it’s time for another hat-trick, and at the same time shift uncomfortably in their seats if he seems to strain to reach a ball, or suffers a heavy collision. Messi has become a fragile messiah for an anxious club. For two separate periods this season he has been out through injury. In the 14 matches he missed, Barcelona won just five.
Messi returned last weekend as a substitute after five weeks out injured and made a similar cameo appearance in last night’s goalless Catalan derby with Espanyol. He came on at half-time and two slaloms into the Espanyol box immediately altered the tempo, the second snuffed out by Carlos Kameni in the Espanyol goal.
Barça’s performance in front of a far-from-full Nou Camp lacked sparkle and left leaders Real Madrid to take an eight-point lead into their match against Racing Santander tonight.
Even so, Messi’s inclusion last night will have offered hope for the clash with United. When he last hobbled off the field with a thigh problem, he cried, a reminder he is still very young. Since he emerged in the Barcelona first team, he has developed his upper-body strength noticeably, but is still small for a modern footballer — 5ft 7in — and it needs to be remembered that his career has been a courageous battle against the limitations imposed by his size.
He explained as much last Thursday, when he devoted a fund- raising afternoon to meeting children in Barcelona who suffer from Fragile X syndrome, an inherited mental impairment with similar symptoms to autism. It was a commitment he felt personally. “I know how important it is to have a helping hand,” he said. “In my childhood I had difficult times because of hormonal problems. If I hadn’t had support, I wouldn’t have been able to fulfil my dreams.” Those dreams would be shared strongly by Jorge Messi, instantly recognisable as Leo’s father, with their shared jaw-line and prominent nose. Jorge is a dad who pushed his third son’s career with the kind of vigour that sport encounters in figures such as Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena.
The young Messi, however, needed extra help while growing up in Rosario, Argentina. On his first day at school, he was excluded from the playground kickabout on account of his height. He took to the pitch anyway and dribbled so brilliantly that he was first-pick from then on. His brother, Rodrigo, nicknamed him “The Flea”. It stuck, and he would soon be taking his place among the bigger beasts, promoted into teams made up of older boys.
He then joined the junior ranks of Newell’s Old Boys, the club where Maradona wound down his career, and from Jorge acquired a hunger for the facts and figures of the game. So when a recruiter from the famous River Plate, of Buenos Aires, turned up at the christening of Leo’s sister, Marisol, the Messi family sensed that here was the breakthrough. Leo was 11, and travelled to the capital for a medical. A week later, at River’s HQ, Jorge was told: “Your son has unbelievable skills, but a problem has emerged. He has a hormone deficiency, and according to our analysis, he will grow no taller than 1.40m (4ft 7in). He has almost stopped growing.”
There was a treatment, Messi’s father was told. It cost $900 a month, an expense neither River Plate nor Newell’s would take on. Jorge and Celia Messi, a factory worker and part-time cleaner, already struggled to meet the costs of a family of four children and besides, Argentinia’s economy was crumbling. It was a crisis. “I needed medical treatment and it couldn’t wait,” recalls Messi. “I was 1.32m (4ft 4in) tall and 11 years-old. It wasn’t an issue of vanity.” To look at the 20-year-old Messi is to be assured that this is not a man troubled by vanity. He wears his hair in a floppy mop, dresses in faded jeans and whatever tracksuit or T-shirt his sponsor hangs on him.
The family savings would be put into the course of injections needed by Messi, and contacts sought with clubs in Europe who might then take on the costs of an extra- talented young player. The Messis had relatives in Catalonia, so Jorge and Leo travelled over and managed to get him recommended for a trial with Barcelona. The rest is well known. On his first outing in a baggy Barça shirt, he scored five times. “In two minutes, I saw his speed, his skill and decided we would sign him,” says Carles Rexach, the technical director at the time. “He will become the best in the world.” If it weren’t for Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi might be claiming that status already. If not for his absences this season, he might not be trailing just behind Ronaldo as the leading scorer in the Champions League. The nature of those injuries concern Barcelona. In the past two years he has four times had problems with his thigh muscles and doctors concede his unusual growth pattern may be a factor.
Did it feel like a pressure to be Messi, standard-bearer of the post-Ronaldinho Barcelona? “It’s not something I think about,” he says. “I feel relaxed, and I’d like Ronaldinho to stay, but I’m focused on an important Champions League semi-final.”
Barcelona-Manchester United would be “really attractive games to watch,” Messi added, his determination to finish on the winning side sharpened by the fact that he missed the final, won by Barcelona, two years ago. And no, he insisted, it would be wrong to reduce Wednesday’s contest to a duel between the game’s two most exciting wingers. “Ronaldo is a very great player, but this is a match between two powerful teams. It’s not a game between Cristiano and me.”
TV match
Barcelona v Man Utd
Wednesday, Sky Sports 2, 7pm; kick-off 7.45pm
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