FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Redemption Song of Lionel Messi
The world's greatest soccer player and the power of memories.
This week, I’m taking a break from my regular column to revisit the most popular story I’ve written in the past three years.
In July 2021, Lionel Messi captained Argentina to its first Copa América title in two decades. He had played in and lost the final thrice before. I was there in the Meadowlands for the third defeat with my head in my hands. I couldn’t sleep that night and was haunted by the loss for years, just as I had been in the fall of 2022 by the possibility of Argentina losing the World Cup and Messi retiring. I wrote this story hours before the tournament kicked off, recounting the nightmares that, by God’s grace, were not realized.
Argentina’s Copa América win was the start of a whirlwind 17 months in which La Albiceleste also claimed Finalissima (Intercontinental) and World Cup glory. Since I live in Knoxville and attended and am employed by the University of Tennessee, I compare what I experienced during that time to the euphoria of Vols fans in October 2022 when the football team beat Alabama for the first time in 15 years. (The story of how I experienced Argentina becoming world champions made it into my book).
I wrote “The Redemption Song of Lionel Messi” two days after the Copa América final. A friend shared it with her network of English-language teachers in Argentina, and it racked up hundreds of reads. I don’t write for any specific audience, which is perhaps what makes my writing so hard to describe or monetize. But I think anyone who loves something a lot—something they’ve probably been ridiculed for loving that much—can empathize with how I feel for Lionel Messi, the Argentine national team, and the beautiful game.
On Thursday, I’ll hop in the car with Haley, Alba, and Enzo and drive the three-and-a-half hours to Atlanta to see La Selección kick off the tournament against Canada. It will be my family’s first Argentina game and my third, though I have yet to see Argentina or Messi win a soccer game in which I’ve been present: 1-1 vs. USA in March 2011; 0-0 (2-4 PKs) vs. Chile in June 2016; and 1-1 Inter Miami vs. Newell’s Old Boys this past February. I was with my brother for all of those games. He will be at Argentina’s second group-stage game against Chile a few days after they face Canada. Hopefully, they win both. If not, we’ll figure out which of us has carried the bad luck to the stadium all these years.
For the next month, there will be Euro 2024 games being played all morning and afternoon, followed by the Copa América in the evenings. It will be a buffet of football that even regular folks will enjoy for the drama and storylines. It’s also just enough reason to warrant me spending another month paying for fuboTV.
I hope you’ll be watching these tournaments with me. As an appetizer, here’s that piece I wrote about Messi and Argentina three years ago, published a little more than a day after the final whistle blew.
Vení vení!
Cantá conmigo!
Que un amigo vas a encontrar!
Y de la mano
de Leo Messi
toda la vuelta vamos a dar!1
With the sound of a whistle from inside Brazil's Estádio do Maracanã, the weight of the world fell from his shoulders. The boulder tumbled down the mountainside. The wood splintered. The curtain finally tore.
Today is the first day of a new world for Lionel Messi and for me, too—the world of my joy and his redemption. After falling short in four finals with the senior side, Messi has finally won his first major trophy for Argentina.
This is the story of a hero whose climb to the pinnacle of his sport has finally been rewarded with the trophy he’d long deserved. But in the hours since “The Little Boy from Rosario” lifted the Copa América for the first time, that story has already been written.
So instead, I'm writing about the power of memories.
We have words to describe people who live off memories as if they were diesel fuel. But you don’t have to be a nostalgic or a lunatic to cherish remembering. Fans of Swiss tennis star Roger Federer will remember the first time they saw him win Wimbledon. Those who were lucky enough to witness Muhammad Ali box or Michael Jordan play basketball, who were there in the Rose Bowl in 1999 when Brandi Chastain ripped her shirt off after scoring the penalty that won the United States a World Cup, will tell you exactly where they sat, who they were with, and how they reacted in the moments after witnessing greatness. This eidetic recall is what I think is most beautiful about the video that went viral in the U.S. after Landon Donovan scored that goal in the 2010 World Cup against Algeria2.
I was 16 when I first saw Messi play on TV. It was 2005, and Argentina was competing at the under-20 World Cup in the Netherlands (in that tournament, like the 2021 Copa América, Messi was also named best player, top scorer, and won the team title). I watched all the games at the kitchen table with Nono, drinking red wine mixed with seltzer water and eating cold cuts.
Before that tournament, Messi had been approached by the Spanish Football Federation. His family had moved abroad in 2000 during Argentina’s Great Depression (I chronicle the story in 'Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá'), and he’d been playing at Barcelona from the age of 13. By 2005, Messi was already regarded as the future of the club and Spain didn’t want to miss out on his services. But he rejected his adoptive country’s advance and, digging the dagger in further, he scored as Argentina beat them 3-1 in the quarterfinals (he also scored against Brazil in the semifinal and twice against Nigeria in the final). At that point in his career, he didn't even have a Wikipedia page.
Messi's legend grew as he simultaneously became more famous at Barcelona and solidified his key position with La Selección. After losing in the Copa América final in 2007, he won an Olympic gold medal for Argentina in 2008. He then won the Champions League for Barcelona in 2009; I watched the final on the wall-mounted TV at my uncle's house in Argentina before he drove me to see Rosario Central's stadium, where I got to meet Kily González, then player, now coach, and also a 2004 Olympic gold medalist for Argentina. Talk about a very good day.
I’ve seen Messi play in person twice. The first time was in March 2011 when Argentina played the U.S. at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. That match ended 1-1. I wore an Argentina jersey and a U.S. flag as a cape. The second time was the Copa América Centenario final in 2016, also at the Meadowlands. I had decided at the last minute to attend. I paid $700 for a round-trip flight from Knoxville, Tennessee and $500 for a ticket to the game. I went with my brother and three neutral friends. After 120 goalless minutes, Messi missed a penalty kick in front of my section of fans and Argentina lost its third final in a row without scoring. Afterward, Victor and I sat in stadium traffic for over an hour. I got home and wrote an impassioned Facebook defense of Messi, who’d announced his first brief international retirement in the locker room.
For better or worse, memories embed themselves inside us. I don't know what distinguishes the ones we’re capable of shaking from the ones we can't. I've been telling more people recently that I worry about my memory. I can hardly remember anything anymore. This morning, I tried to force myself to recall each Argentina goal from this tournament; I couldn't even come up with the scorelines from the group stage.
I watched this Copa América final in my living room on Chickamauga with my brother, who had also been in town for the quarterfinal against Ecuador and semi against Colombia, and my friend DJ Loope. We mixed Fernet Branca with Coke and drank craft beers that DJ brought. We ate hot-wing-flavored ruffled barbecue chips and butter-snap pretzels. When Ángel Di María scored, I was briefly transported back to my grandparent's spare bedroom in August 2008, where just past 1 a.m. I laid on the bed alone and watched “Fideo” score an even more outlandish chip to win the Olympic final, 1-0. As I had then, I celebrated this time with restraint, my daughter asleep—in her Argentina onesie—not 10 feet from the living room. The game ended. Relief came. Messi had done it.
Because I stayed up for hours after the match ended, reading articles and watching clips, recaps, analysis, and social media posts, I saw the YouTube video of the players gathered around Messi singing his redemption song. An almost entirely different group had sung it for Messi in 2014 when Argentina fell just short of winning a World Cup (coincidentally, losing the final in the same stadium in Brazil where they won this past weekend—talk about redemption). Then Messi won the Best Player trophy and stared into space. Rumors have spread that as soon as he got into the dressing room, he gave the trophy to a member of the backroom staff and asked him to dispose of it. In an interview before the 2018 World Cup, Messi said he thinks of that final every day—walking by the cup on his way to the locker room, the missed chances, the celebrations that could've been.
Now Messi has a different memory. In the video, he is shirtless, holding the trophy and dancing. He is singing along with his teammates. “By the hand of Leo Messi, we're all rounding the field now.”
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The lyrics translate to English as: "Come, come! Sing with me! Here, you'll find a friend. From the hand of Leo Messi, we're going to round the field (in celebration)."
I was in Mickey's living room in Bayonne, Jersey. Our friends Steven Kim (who we call Estefano), Cesar Alvia, and Mickey's little brother, Shakes, were also there. I sat on a couch to the left of the TV, which was in front of the window. We celebrated wildly, piling on top of each other and screaming.