In 2011, during an off-day in the Copa America, I went on a tour of the vineyards round Mendoza, in the west of Argentina. At one, I got chatting to the manager, a woman in her early forties. She asked why I was in Argentina and, when I explained I was a football journalist, she asked why I thought Argentina had performed so badly in the group stage, in which they had drawn against Venezuela and Colombia before scrambling through with a victory against a second-string Costa Rica side. I mumbled something about Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez not being able to play together in the same side.
“Yes,” she agreed. “So we must drop Messi.”
To anybody who had watched Messi lead Barcelona to Champions League success earlier that season, it seemed a bizarre suggestion, but in Argentina the manager was, if not in a majority, at the very least in a large and vocal minority.
“Messi maybe is more skilful,” the manager went on, “but against the bigger teams Tevez has...” – she tapped her heart– “...garra.” The word literally means “claw” but is used in rioplatense Spanish to denote a combination of toughness, spirit and streetwiseness. It’s the quality that helps the underdog win–and so it was slightly surprising to hear it praised by a woman of such obvious wealth and social status.
It’s the quality of the barrios, the key attribute of the pibe, the urchin who is venerated in Argentinian football: he is the child of the slums who lives on his wits. Tevez, from the rough Fuerte Apache neighbourhood, with his scarred face and his mop of unruly black hair, is clearly of that line. Messi, having moved to Spain aged 11, with his sensible haircut, clearly isn’t. Messi is distrusted because, although his footballing ability clearly places him in the lineage of the pibe, of which Diego Maradona remains the prime example, he doesn’t look like one.
There was a time when Messi was constantly asked whether he really feels Argentinian. Argentinians, perhaps naturally given it is an immigrant nation, a country formed by those who have left their homes to settle there, are habitually skeptical of those who leave: the parallel there, perhaps, is with another native of Rosario, Che Guevara, who, although he was the inspiration for the Montoneros, the Peronist leftists who waged a campaign of terror against the military governments of the 1970s, was never as popular in Argentina as he was elsewhere.
Yet, when he wasn’t training, Messi spent his teenage years eating in Argentinian restaurants in Barcelona, watching Argentinian television and following the Argentinian league. He was homesick for a land he had never wanted to leave and had done so only because Barcelona could offer him the hormone treatment he needed to grow–and because they were Barcelona. His favorite films are El hijo de la novia and Nueve reinas, both Argentinian. His favorite actor is Ricardo Darin, an Argentinian. He still speaks with a Rosario accent.
Spain wanted him to play for them. Gines Menendez, a selector for the Spain Under-16 side, approached him to play at the Under-17 World Cup in Finland (the tournament at which Mikel John Obii so impressed for Nigeria). Argentina hadn’t called him up, but Messi refused: he was Argentinian– why would he want to play for Spain? Finally, in July 2004, the Argentinians called him for a youth squad–although in the invitation they spelled his name as “Mecci”.
Fortunately–for Messi and for Argentina–the assistant to Marcelo Bielsa with the national team at the time was Claudio Vivas, who was from Rosario and remembered Messi playing for the boys side at Newell’s. When an agent showed him a video of a brilliant kid at Barcelona, he recognized him and, although it was too late to select him for the Under-17 World Cup, they made sure he was selected for the Under-20s.
Yet fans were still slow to accept Messi. In part it was resentment that he had never played for an Argentinian club, a crushing symbol of the weakness of the Argentinian league. And in art it was because, in truth, he didn’t for a long time play as well for the national side as he had done for his club team. Barcelona play–or at least at their very best they played–in a very particular style. Messi was a false nine, dropping deep from the forward line, something that either created space for himself or drew defenders out of position, creating space for others to run into. National teams, given the lack of time the players spend together, tend to be more static than club sides–the intuitive movement that the best modern football demands simply isn’t there. For Argentina, Messi would drop deep and the midfielders, who at Barcelona would run beyond him, would remain where they were–or, at the very least, would be slightly delayed in making their runs.
That diminished the effectiveness of the team, but it also diminished Messi’s effectiveness. Defenders could stick tight to him without the fear that his teammates would exploit the space they then left behind them. With a player tight to him, he couldn’t turn and run at defenses as he did in Spain. Add in the way the pace and precision of Barcelona’s passing effectively hypnotizes teams and it’s obvious that the environment Messi found himself in with the national team wasn’t as conducive to getting the best out of him as the environment at Barcelona.
Diego Maradona, in his time as coach, exacerbated that, cramming far too many attacking players into the side, congesting precisely the area of the pitch where Messi needed space. By playing relatively cautious fullbacks, he also denied the chance of the thrust from deep that makes Messi’s relationship with Dani Alves so fruitful at club level. Sergio Bastista, who succeeded Maradona, at least acknowledged the problem, but he tried to make Argentina play like Barca, a vain hope given Barca played like they did because so many of their players had spent years learning the system at la Masia. That sort of style cannot simply be imposed over a matter of weeks.
Only Alejandro Sabella, the present coach, has really understood the issue. Messi can’t be expected to play as he does for Barcelona for the national side, so it's important to get him to do what he can do. Sabella has built a platform for Messi, using him on the right, rather than as a false nine, with an overlapping fullback in Pablo Zabaleta to replicate the Dani Alves role. The change in Messi’s form for his country has been remarkable.
It was a hat trick against Brazil in a 4-3 win in a friendly in New Jersey in July 2012 that eventually persuaded Argentinians of Messi’s worth. Tevez, after a poor Copa America the previous summer, was fading from view, and Messi suddenly started scoring. From the start of 2012, he has scored 21 goals in 21 appearances for his country. He was second top-scorer as Argentina finished top of Conmebol qualifying.
With the goals, the doubts have melted away: of course he is an Argentinian. It’s just that, like so many other Argentinian heroes–Che Guevara, the tango singer Carlos Gardel and the author Jorge Luis Borges, for example–he has found his glory in exile. If it brings a World Cup, Argentina will accept that.
For further coverage of the World Cup, see:
“Iran Can Beat Any Team in the World”: Interview with Ciro Blažević
Nigeria’s Front Line: A Challenge for Team Melli
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