LOS ANGELES – They are different topics, but not disjointed; different, but not alien. Almost a year ago, in August, on the 25th, the burofax broke into the Barcelona offices stealthily and silently. Lionel Messi wanted to leave the club.
Sometimes humans unleash storms that they are unable to control later. Sometimes human beings crave a whim so fervently, unable to divine the disaster lurking behind it.
The spawn of the burofax, that August 25, 2020, ended up being the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. Impossible to know then. Useless to know today. “I woke up as a child, never wake up,” the Spanish poet Miguel Hernández would have warned him.
This Sunday in Barcelona, Lionel Messi woke up from being a child. “Last year I didn’t want to stay… and I said so. Now I did want to stay, “he explained in a ceremonial densified by the stuck, guttural, universal and shared sadness.
That was the storm unleashed by his father, Jorge, unable to control, and that today moistens the eyes of millions of people, while Leo’s children, Thiago, Mateo and Ciro, unable to understand the collapse of a club and a league They applauded timidly and innocently, also unable to understand how those adults, standing for two minutes, cheered the shocking and sublime moment of seeing their own father whimper. Woke up from being a child, never wake up.
Messi regrets his farewell. Everything about her is aberrant. He does it in a dark suit, when he should have done it on a court, with his sweat-scented shirt. He has gone without the armor of all his life. He does it with a handkerchief collecting tears and mucus, when he longed to see thousands of them flutter, thousands of cloths, like contrite birds of passage, on the platform of the Camp Nou.
Accustomed to stirring up crowds, blessing some with happiness and others with bitterness, this Sunday, Lionel Messi, in the opulence of fame, left in the frugality of a room, with his family, his now former colleagues, and before types smelling of money, with masks, and without having the privilege, the right, the urgency, to immerse themselves in the raucous roar of a rostrum. So many times he crossed the gates of Barça glory, and ends up slipping, more alone than ever, through a small side door of a room that ends up being a cursed mausoleum.
“Ne would have liked to leave in another way. Say goodbye to me with a standing ovation ”, said the footballer, still leaving a veil of suspense over his future with PSG, which has already rented the Eiffel Tower for this Tuesday.
He does not know and may never know, but again he kept the Barcelona universe in suspense, in which some still waited, as parishioners of some miracle, that Messi would tell them no, that it was all a nightmare, a rumor, a misunderstanding, a joke in bad taste.
But, in his appearance, Messi did not hide any mystery. He had been stripped, for that moment, of his very life. No ball, no net, no court, no marker, no tribune, no screaming. They forced him to leave as an outcast, in a corner of the majestic cathedral that he helped build alongside geniuses like Xavi, Iniesta and Ronaldinho, or blood warriors like Puyol.
There should only be one happy man in Barcelona. Josep María Bartomeu must be spinning a plump glass, scenting the tragedy and his victory, lighting a cigar, and reading and rereading the manifesto produced by the burofax. Losing, ended up winning. Messi, then winning, ended up losing.
Javier Tebas also has his hands red in blood. Under the banner of wanting to save La Liga, choose the most sinister way to annihilate it. You have to be very foolish to invite vultures to your own funeral.
Messi imputes it: “Everything was fixed and because of the La Liga issue it couldn’t be done at the last minute. I wanted to stay, I did everything possible and it was not possible ”.
Could, wanted, should Barcelona do more? Joan Laporta assures that no. It was either sinking together or surviving apart.
True, I insist, there is no relationship between the suicide burofax, and the financial crisis of Barcelona and La Liga, but it is impossible to believe that they are disconnected. Jorge Messi, I reiterate, unleashed a storm that later he was unable to control. His voracity of a year ago led his son to this Sunday farewell. He wanted to buy him a carnival and this Sunday even the crows dressed in mourning.
True, at that time, less than a year ago, the burofax was an ultimatum, but the conflict was not money, it was Barcelona’s competitive misfortune. Lionel urged to have a better team. Every failure was a sore. And he was sick of that leper skin. So he did want to leave. Maybe he wanted it too badly.
It is also true: it was impossible to try to negotiate in good faith, with a guy like Bartomeu, with absolute power within the same club, surreptitiously and falsely attacked all the vital organs of the institution, ready to remove them and sell them on the market. black of his madness and his ambitions. How to talk about salads with a butcher brandishing a machete?
In his speech, Messi sent various messages to the Blaugrana brotherhood. But, above all, he made it clear that his home, from the age of 13, is at this moment the most urgent entity to rescue. “The club is more important than anyone. People are going to get used to it. They have a great squad and great players came, in the end everything settles down ”, he explained.
For now, this Monday, with the head of the family still part of the 197 million unemployed in the world, the Messi Clan prepares the move to Paris.
Lionel says he is hungry for titles and wants to surpass his teammate Dani Alves, who has 46, after winning Olympic gold in Tokyo. He needs to get 11 more with PSG as an accomplice. “I want to continue adding titles to my career. By the way I greet Dani Alves, for the Olympic Games. I will try to pass it on titles. I want to go to a club where I can compete and keep winning ”.
And in Barcelona, who will ever dare to wear the ’10’ shirt?