In his first interview as world champion, he avoided the demagogic temptation and preferred self-criticism.
43 days have passed since he lifted the World Cup and he became (they consecrated) the best soccer player in the World Cup in Qatar. 43 days of glory that will continue until eternity: no one will be able to take what he has achieved from Messi.
He hadn’t spoken until now, and he did. Credit to Andy Kusnetzoff and his Urbana Play radio team. It was the interview that everyone wanted and they got it. Voucher.
And it’s worth listening to Messi at the peak of his career. He deserves to be heard for what he says, but also, and perhaps more, so keep quiet So it avoids.
“From that day everything changed for me”, said. And the definition measures the conquest, but above all it reveals its internal demand.
Because what has changed for him? Not economics, a variable that does not even appear in this equation. The sporty? Before Qatar he had won 41 titles. The World Cup is the most important, it is known, but nobody could say that it was not a “winner”.
Then? What changed is intimate and at the same time decisive. What he defines as “everything” seems to be his own voice.the feeling of relief of those who finally turn off their internal demand.
Such an imperative does not seem fair, surely it is not. However, sport, and especially football, build (we build) these poisonous misunderstandings, with labels of “winners” and “losers” as repeated as they are arbitrary and empty of truth.
If we know how to read it, Messi should represent a turning point in the collective ability to reflect on footballers, their triumphs and their defeats.
“The gesture that I made to my family of ‘That’s it’ It was that the suffering had ended, of many disappointments, of lost endings, of being close and not happening. I had received a lot of criticism of all colors and I knew that my family suffered much more than me. Unfair things were said, which went beyond football and that was what bothered me and hurt me. It was closing the circle, we won the Copa América, the World Cup, that’s it, there’s nothing left”.
In the previous paragraph a key to what Messi saves is guessed, of what dribbles. In an almost countercultural gesture in Argentine soccer, no revenge appears in him.
Does not say, “You also have it inside…”. don’t yell, “they keep sucking it”; does not point with the finger “you are against me”.
He does not identify enemies, surely because he does not assume them as such, and in that decision avoids a rift that would be activated -and with what energy- with half a word from him.
And there is more. What was it that all of us, or almost all of us, applauded? What finally identified him as “Argentine”? What he confirmed as one of us? What even deserved the punctual adhesion of the vice president, who wrote: “And a special greeting after his Maradonian ‘andá pa alla bobo’, with which he definitely won the hearts of the Argentines”?
No one would get the back of such a caress. However, he said: “I didn’t like what I did.” He avoided the demagogic temptation and dared to resignify what is “Maradonian” and even what is “Argentine” (associated with defiant aggression) that the vice president herself identified as necessary to win hearts.
To the rich history of Argentine soccer, the National Team added the third World Cup. Maybe Messi can leave something else. The possibility of rethinking categories that his career has shown to be false and destructive. The problem is that now it depends on us.
