Messi goes up on stage again. His teammates already have the medal. He greets Infantino, hugs the emir, shakes hands with Macron, hugs Chiqui Tapia, greets the rest. And they put on the “bisht”, the Arab tunic, a gala dress. So when he passes, when the World Cup is handed over to him, the world balances out. At least the world of football. Messi walks slowly towards his teammates with the glass in hand, and lifts the six kilos and 170 grams, the 36.8 centimeters of five kilos of eighteen-carat solid gold, the base of thirteen centimeters in diameter with two concentric rings of malachite , a green colored mineral. He blows up the Lusail. He explodes in earnest, with fireworks seen from the hole in the ceiling. What happens at that moment? The insults on the Colón pitch in the Copa América 2011, the criticism from some journalists, if he didn’t sing the Anthem, if he wasn’t interested, the frustrations of so many moments, all of this can go through Messi’s head. . But he’s done, now he’s world champion. He knows it, Antonella, his wife, knows it, his parents, Jorge and Celia, his brothers, know it, and above all his children know it, Thiago, Mateo and Ciro, who are old enough to see it, to enjoy it. So that those kids remember it forever like this. “I was missing this and here it is,” he would say later.
The return begins, joy. Kun Agüero carries his friend on a litter until his back bursts. They all drink champagne. The cup they had delivered would return to Zurich, to the FIFA museum. They took her away once the celebration started strong. An official replica of copper and zinc would remain inside with a three-layer gold plating. The champagne had already circulated a lot. Checho Ibáñez, a friend of Paredes, had brought another drink onto the field, a trout that an Argentine couple had in Lusail. Suddenly it reaches Messi’s hands, there are photos, back, videos with that cup. Di María warns him, Messi laughs. Scaloni puts on the Sub 20 shirt in Malaysia 97, a blue shirt with the 18. It is given to him by a fan, Tomás Calvo, who had had it for several games.
When the players arrive at the locker room, they are told that they will have to go for a bus ride through Doha: they must go through the royal palace. Obviously they would prefer not to. A convertible micro those expected on the street. The players refused, they wanted to stay in the locker room. But they got out. The party also becomes the party of the fans of Bangladesh, the fans of India, the fans of Nepal, of all those who love Messi. It is not just an Argentine party. Or it is too, but suddenly this is the Third World. A crowd begins to gather in every place in Argentina. It is the crowd that a few days later would gather at the Obelisk and in the Buenos Aires suburbs. A completely unprecedented, historic popular mobilization, five million people in the streets. They would be the days in which promises would begin to be fulfilled, to get tattoos with Messi, with Dibu, with the Cup, with the five of cups card. A happiness that would last for a long time, the happiness of a town hit by its economic crisis but now had something to celebrate. First that. Second, France.
And now in Doha, at night, what there is is the clamor of another world, of the Arab World Cup. What had started with Maradona in 1986 continues with Messi in 2022. Joy is not only Argentine, joy is that of a world that seems foreign and is close. The first Arab World Cup is Messi’s World Cup, from Argentina. The return flight was already scheduled for early morning but it was going to be delayed, because no one wanted to leave Qatar. It would only be known at that time that the confidence in the team was so great that the AFA did not foresee any return charter for previous matches. He was sure that they would stay until the end.
It is for hours, during the press conference, that Scaloni remembers a dialogue with Messi. After the draw with Brazil in San Juan by zero to zero, with which Argentina qualified for Qatar 2022, Scaloni felt the immensity of everything that was coming. It could be Messi’s last World Cup. The team, in addition, drove the fans crazy, it generated an expectation in them according to what that group gave. Scaloni was also going through what happened with his parents since the days of the Copa América. He had suffered by that time a cerebrovascular accident. With all that, with that pain, the coach moved on. He is now the world champion coach, like Menotti, like Bilardo. But also the one who won the most titles, although those statistics do not matter to him.
But that night, after the match in San Juan against Brazil, Scaloni felt he had to speak to Messi before the player returned to Paris. What was coming was difficult because the expectation was too great. That responsibility had to be borne. There was anxiety, also fear.
“Leo, people are very enthusiastic about this selection, what stood out is very strong and disappointment can also be very strong,” he told Messi.
-Does matters? We continue, we continue because she will surely go well. And if it doesn’t go well, nothing happens. You have to try.
Everything is in what Messi told Scaloni. That was Qatar, the World Cup, the third Argentine star.
data sheet
- Title: The Third
- Authors: Gastón Edul and Alejandro Wall
- Genre: Journalistic chronicle
- Year: 2023
- Pages: 216 Publisher: Planet
- Authors:
- Alexander Wall. A journalist specialized in sports, he is the author of the books “¡Academia, carajo!”, “El último Maradona” (together with Andrés Burgo), “Corbatta, el ala” and “Now that we are happy”. He writes in the newspaper “Tiempo Argentino” and participates in the radio programs “Things Happened” and “Era por abajo”.
- Gaston Edul. He is a journalist and works for the sports channel TyC Sports. In recent years, he has covered the Argentine team on the channel’s broadcasts and was a privileged witness to the consecration of Scaloni’s team in the 2021 Copa América at the Maracanã and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
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