“Leo and Barça need each other, they are like a movie love”

How did the idea of ​​publishing an updated version of your first book come about?

— Look… it is born from the euphoria, from the enthusiasm of seeing that he has won the World Cup. I sent a Whatsapp to my publisher, proposing it. And he told me I could go ahead. The next day we called each other to talk about it calmly and it turned out that it made sense, all of it.

The risk of publishing a book about Messi with the active player was this, that he was able to continue to be the protagonist of surprising events.

— Yes, even when I wrote the first edition I already understood the book as one working progress. That is, as long as he continues to play he is one working progress, because I don’t stop following him as an admirer. Now, in the first book I imagined the end of the story. The image I had in my head was the one that 99% of Barcelona fans imagined: a happy ending in Barcelona. All glorious and very beautiful.

And it wasn’t like that.

— And, therefore, it was clear that the book had to be updated. But it was also necessary to do so because in the chapter on the World Cup in Russia I raised the possibility that he would win then. And obviously, it didn’t happen in 2018. Then we had to add the chapters of Barça’s departure and the World Cup in Qatar. And two other things had also happened that seemed important to me. The death of Maradona, which served to define the collective imagination about Messi, and the decline, as I like to call it, of Cristiano Ronaldo. In addition, the book has been translated over the years in different countries, where updates were requested, such as goal data. In other words, part of the work had already been done.

Four years ago you said that narrating fragments of Messi was quite a challenge. That he was a creator of language in which, deep down, it was best to see him live, instead of narrating him. How do you write such a book? How did you do this time?

— I locked myself in the Empordà for three weeks and watched all the World Cup games again. I considered the part of the World Cup like a diary, for example. For me, writing about him is a way to relive everything that I have experienced and that has excited me. All in all, it has this point of sadness to know that it is all coming to an end.

And how did you experience Messi’s departure from the club, could you imagine?

– No, I couldn’t. I remember arguing that he should stay, even going against logic. I was doing so much. If necessary he was ready to put the future of the club at risk. Do you know how I found out that it was official that he was leaving? Well, for some Argentines. I was in a farmhouse in the Empordà, with almost no coverage… and I started receiving messages. I had gone to Buenos Aires to present the book and had made contacts and friendships. And they wanted to know what I knew about the subject, what I thought about it. And I didn’t understand what they were asking me. Drama? What drama were they talking about? I was completely out of this world. I remember looking for the spaces with coverage to look for information on the internet. And end up talking to an Argentinian radio station at two in the morning. I lived those days in complete disbelief, trusting that there would be a resurrection. I believed there would be a miracle. It hurt to see that it was Barça that could not offer him a contract. And when he left it was when we saw the deadliest Messi. It was very symbolic as it had all started with a contract on a paper napkin and she was leaving wiping her tears with a handkerchief that looked like that napkin.

And from the tears of farewell to the hope to see if he returns.

— Now we’re seeing the other side of the mirror, aren’t we? That of asking us if he’s coming back or not… do we believe it or not? Little rumors appear and we cling to them, cling to them. My feeling is that Barça and Messi need each other. They are like those movie loves, like those strong love stories that have been there all your life, like that Howard Hawks movie with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell (His girl Friday [Lluna nova], from 1940) in which they break up, argue…but are forced to come back because they have special chemistry. So we are, waiting for them to come back. In the first version of the book I imagined the farewell with the whole field singing his name. I even imagined a future after his retirement where the public continued to chant his name as a way to celebrate life, happiness, as a way to reward the new young players… And now we we find ourselves chanting his name without his having gone away, but for a different reason: we want him to come back. It’s got a point of… plain, doesn’t it? And of hope.

Amazing things have happened at Barça in recent years…

— And they will continue to happen. Imagine if Messi comes back, but they kick Barça out of the Champions League. It would be living in a dystopia, seeing Messi playing in the Olympic stadium without being able to play in Europe.

When you first posted it we were already aware that we had been very happy, but once you lose it, do you value it even more?

— Well, there’s everything. It’s that Barcelonaism also has those recalcitrant pessimists, who disowned Messi. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who think he left because he wanted to leave. And you have to explain to them that he wanted to stay.

I am very interested to know how you experienced the World Cup. Those of us who wanted Argentina to win were not always understood.

– True. I was another Argentine, I was very clear from the beginning who I wanted to be champion. I suffered just as the Argentines suffered. I felt that initial euphoria, as did they. And after losing the first game I felt like we were shit, like them. But at the same time there was this feeling that there was an outside force that would help, that Messi was destined to be a champion. There was a way of flirting with sensational drama. The way to win was this, dramatic, with that stop of the Back Martínez in the last minute of the final which could have meant victory for France, where Mbappé, his nemesis, was playing. Messi’s relationship with the national team has always been like this, dramatic.

It was the first World Cup sense Maradona.

— It was key. In Russia in 2018 you have a Maradona loaded with anabolics, shouting things from the stands, that if you need to lay eggs, fighting with spectators… he was the center of attention and with his presence he seemed to be telling the players that they could never be like him. But in 2022 it was no longer there. The players were the protagonists. In the penalties against the Dutch there is the image of Messi looking up at the sky where he seems to be asking Maradona to help them. Someone said he did, that he was talking to Diego. And if it’s not true, it’s even better, because Argentina is precisely that, this story between reality and fiction.

You defend that Messi is no longer human, he is a fictional character.

– Yes. I remember doing the first book I realized the idea that Harry Potter and Messi are born at the same time. There is a whole generation growing up with Messi and Harry Potter at the same time. I think it has turned him into a mythological figure, if you want to call him that. In the sense that we project many of our feelings, many hopes. Somehow it makes us who we are when it plays, makes us feel like we’re winners or losers. It either makes us depressed or enthusiastic…

When you presented the book in Buenos Aires…what did you find? The same point of view or that Messi was seen in a different way?

— I thought about the immigrant syndrome. The Spanish immigrants who came to Catalonia, when they went to their native village on vacation, called them the catalans. But here were the Castilians. I explained it in the book The Castilians, that they were Andalusians, but we called them the Castilians. Something similar happens with Messi, since here he is Argentine and there he was told that he was too European, that he was Catalan. And look, I was living in a very Argentinian bubble here, huh? But in Buenos Aires I was talking to taxi drivers and one told me… “he lacks argentinity». Many Argentines understood that he was one of their own when they saw him in action, fighting against the Dutch in the World Cup. The other players saw him fighting like this and followed him. When he told him Bobo in Weghorst it was a great moment.

A lot of people here criticized him for doing that.

— But it’s not a serious insult, is it? It’s still a very sweet insult, bobo. I would like Messi to tell me bobo.

I am dos.