Andres Iniesta knows Lionel Messi. He knows Messi more than anyone. He was the source of his goals, his best friend, and the one he turned to when he needed a brotherly hug. He knew his moments with telepathic intuition. They were comrades in 489 games. Yet, on an afternoon in Buenos Aires, two months after Spain were crowned world champions and stunned the world with their style, Messi showed little mercy to Iniesta or the rest of his Barcelona teammates, who scored in the final against the Netherlands.
It was only eight minutes when they came up against each other: Messi was coming down the field, Iniesta was bending like a sumo wrestler to block him. Messi lowered his shoulder, moved his body to the left, but moved to his right and Iniesta remained still like a statue. When he turned around, he saw Messi slip away from the three markers, slip into space that no one saw until it was too late, and roll the ball past goalkeeper Pepe Reina. Argentina beat Spain 4-1 to end the match against a full-strength Spain. Messi’s last match was Spain, the country where he spent most of his years from 13 to 34, Barcelona’s La Masia academy that molded and nurtured his football ideas and ideals, the club that gave him an identity, where he made lifelong friends and bonds. Barcelona and Messi are as inseparable as Argentina and Messi.
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Years later, Iniesta recalled that night on Canal television: “Thank God, he’s my teammate, I don’t want to suffer that embarrassment. I can sympathize with others.” Manager Vicente del Bosque joked to the press: “I wish he had played for us. He could have been a world champion, yes, a European champion.” But Messi’s loyalty was clear. He always had Argentina in his heart, although for most of his career, until he won the World Cup, he had to show his Argentine-ness every time he put on the jersey.
Messi scored in Argentina’s last game in 2010 in a 4-1 win against Spain. (Reuters photo)
And it’s not like the Spaniard didn’t try to stay out of the eyes of Argentina’s youth scouts and consciousness during his early years at Barcelona.
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A few months after Messi joined La Masia, youth coach Alex García wondered why Argentina were not enthusiastic about tracking Messi. He decided to call the then Spain youth coach, Gines Melendez. “There is a boy here, from Argentina, but they (Argentina) are not calling him. There is a possibility that he wants to play for Spain.”
Most of Messi’s teammates were part of the youth squads, with scouts constantly watching over them. No one checked Messi. His budding talent was buried in his country. Melendez approached, looked at him and excitedly instructed him: “Convince him, his parents or maybe the agents. He’s the future.” Melendez later told ESPN Spain in a documentary: “It was all I was missing Lion. I imagined him with that team. I thought my national team was completely invincible.”
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The club assumed the mission would be straightforward. Because, Messi and his family owe Barcelona. They found a job for his father and paid him about $70,000 a year; They paid $1,000 a month for his hormone injections, which proved a deterrent for many Argentine clubs to sign him. But they had to convince him first, as relations between the two confederations were cordial. Garcia had a way with his students. He asked him playfully: “You mates are playing for their country. Wouldn’t you like to play for Spain so you’re not lonely here while you’re all away?”
Messi was truly alone. He missed his home and friends while at the national camp. “In the beginning, the truth is that it was hard, it was hard. My brothers went to Argentina, my sister had the hardest transition, she was the youngest and school and everything was hard for them. They decided that my mother would go to Argentina with her. I was alone.” But even at the age of thirteen, his mind was firm. He only played for Argentina. “There were informal contacts to see if I wanted to play for Spain, but I always said I wanted to play for Argentina and I just felt these colors,” he wrote in La Nacion.
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The Barcelona coach took a different route: to try through his agent, Horacio Gaggioli. He played diplomatically. “We want to talk to his family.” Deep down, he didn’t want Messi to slip through Argentina’s net. He talked to the coaches, but nothing concrete came up.
But a year later, he heard that Argentina coach Marcelo Bielsa and his assistant Claudio Vivas were in Spain to watch the senior players. Gaggioli seized the opportunity and asked Messi’s father to give him a VHS tape of Messi’s skills that he had videographed. Through his sources, he took it to Bilsa and Vivas. But they were so busy that they didn’t see it right away. Vivas was instructed by Messi’s academy to watch it. The Under-17 squads of both the teams were staying in the same hotel for the World Cup. After Spain beat Argentina, the latter’s youth coach Hugo Toccalli met the Spanish players to congratulate them. Fabregas told the Marca reporter: “You lost because you didn’t play your best”. Curious, he asked: “Who?” “Lionel Messi”.
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Then the VHS tape hit him and he showed it to Bills. The veteran coach’s first response: “But don’t play it fast, play it normal for me.” The video was at normal speed, only Messi was faster.
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What follows is a mad dash to find his parents. This task fell on the national team manager Omar Souto. Noticing the urgency in Tokalli’s tone, he immediately went to a payphone booth and called everyone by Messi’s last name. He didn’t even know his first name. An hour later and hundreds of pesos burned through, he connected with his grandmother. “I called his grandmother. Then his uncle. Then finally, George [Messi] in Spain. ‘It’s Lionel,’ Jorge told me, ‘and he’s waiting for a call from Argentina.’
Within days, the AFA sent a fax to Barcelona requesting him to be released for national duty, but with the funny spelling “LEONEL MECCI”. A year later, he made his youth debut against Paraguay. When Souto died in 2025, Messi wrote a touching tribute: “You were always present and you were the person who paved the way for the AFA to find me.” It’s a quirk of history: Argentina almost let him go. The heart, Messi insists, was always here. But the heart can be fickle.
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Is Messi’s game basically Spanish or Argentinian? It is both, as Spanish as Spain, and as Argentinian as Argentine. He combines the freedom and fight of the Argentine game with the refined rigor of the Spanish school. The magic of his feet is Argentine, feet dancing to an indescribable tune. It is more tango than sardana. He takes care of him like a father. Watch him in set pieces, he doesn’t see it as an inanimate tool for publicity. This is his love.
Messi (10) reacts as he leaves the field after Argentina’s victory in the World Cup semi-final against England. (AP Photo/Jacob Kuferman)
Intelligence founded in Spain: spatial awareness, how to make space, how to use it, and find space where others don’t. As is the minimalism of his movements, so does the lack. Perhaps, he thinks like a Spaniard and plays like an Argentine. He lives on the outskirts of both schools and builds a bridge between two supposedly opposing sports theories. One that glorifies the height of individual expression and that emphasizes collectivism and ideology above all else.
Messi has an evil spirit like Maradona. In a different era, God’s hand might be his. In the last two World Cups, he has been nasty on the field at times, arguing with referees and provoking opponents. But unlike Maradona, he is largely reclusive off the field.
In the final, Spain found their own shades in their arch nemesis, just as Argentina could feel the Spanish riffs in their talisman. Messi belongs to both.