BackTracing Lionel Messi in sleepy Rosario
In his hometown in Argentina, the world's top player is as low-profile as in the rest of his off-field persona
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Rosario, Argentina: He is everywhere—in every child on every dirt strip used to play football, in the families bonding on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, in the tranquil, gentle air of this sleepy town. And he is nowhere; no special monument, no tour of his childhood haunts, no billboard with his face that you wouldn’t find in Buenos Aires. Typically self-effacing Lionel Messi, perhaps. In his hometown, Rosario, Messi is as low-profile as in the rest of his off-field persona. And that tells the story.
My mission was to spend 24 hours in Messi’s hometown—not with the expectation of gaining any special insight but to illustrate, for my own personal satisfaction, the thousands of words I’d read about his youth in this university town, before he moved to Barcelona to shatter every record and win over a billion hearts. The psychoanalysis was for those with the luxury of time; for me, it was about putting images to text.
The start is ominous; scheduling issues mean I reach Rosario on a Sunday afternoon. Not quite the best time to start proceedings anywhere in South America, where the respect given to afternoons will please any Bengali worth his rice-fuelled blood. Not much point going to house, school or club today, the chirpy souls at the youth hostel tell me. So off I head instead to the Monumento a la Bandera—a homage to the national flag, which was first hoisted in Rosario in 1810 during the war with Spain. On the way, round the corner from the hostel, is the house—surprisingly grand—where Che Guevara was born. Both are signs of Rosario’s propensity to throw up characters or incidents that defy the type.
The next morning I set off to map Messi’s childhood. It will be tough, the girl at the hostel tells me; language will be an issue, the neighbourhoods can be tough—she’s from that area—and the cabbie will definitely take you for more than a ride. I convince her that I am loco, and there is no point being rational. The cabbie is a bit nonplussed when I tell him, in sign language and with the destinations written down in my notebook, of how his next two hours will plan out.
Then we turn right, a couple of lefts, and pull up in front of a nondescript two-storeyed house. No. 525 is not much different from the other houses on Calle Estado de Israel; less unkempt, perhaps, and it has a fence and a security camera, and an extra floor. Nothing else, not even a name or number, to show that the world’s best footballer (all right, officially second-best) spent the first dozen years of his life here. The house, seemingly unoccupied, still belongs to the family though. ESPN’s Wright Thompson writes of how, on one of his visits here, he saw three young men standing and chatting outside the house. They turned out to be two of Messi’s brothers and a cousin, drawn there by nothing other than the pull of the house.
Most writers on Argentinian football suggest that, unlike in many other countries, players here are not from the poorer sections of society (Diego Maradona and Carlos Tevez are notable exceptions); in fact, it is the lower-middle class, with its access to good food and nutrition, that dominates the supply chain.
The school, when we get there, is again nondescript but it has two advantages; the first is a sign clearly marking it out: No. 66 General Las Heras, indisputably the school Messi attended till around age 12, where he had some of his happiest memories. My luck is in, there’s even a janitor sweeping the frontage. I explain my quest. With a practised hand she indicates that the money pic is around the corner. And sure enough it is—a couple of murals, one of which has Messi’s face and the image of a child in Newell’s colours. Back to the front; there’s a tiny yard visible, that’s where Messi would have honed his close control skills. Guillem Balague’s biography has a wonderful quote from Diana Torreto, who taught Messi aged six, about how the other boys would complain that he never passed the ball. Not adding, of course, that they couldn’t get it off him either.
It’s time to go; to leave Malvinas, to leave Rosario. Did I get what I came for? This I know for sure: Despite the manic Monday morning, I left Rosario with a sense of calm and contentment that I didn’t have coming in. Of all the pictures and all the frames complementing everything I knew about Messi, that one fit the best.
Jayaditya Gupta, executive editor of Espncricinfo and a columnist for Mint, will be writing from South America for the duration of the World Cup.
For more stories from Brazil, go to www.livemint.com/worldcup2014
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