There was a 70-foot Messi in Kolkata. It came down on June 1, dismantled after officials determined it was unsafe, swaying too much in the wind and could not be trusted. A few weeks later, in a Patagonian oil town in Argentina, a towering one rose in its place.
Aldo Berroisa’s sculpture stands 85 feet tall in Cuttall CoIt was unveiled on June 16, Argentina’s opening day of the World Cup. The moment after Argentina’s shootout victory in the 2022 final, Messi is pictured on his knees at Lucelle Stadium, holding the national jersey with one hand, the other pointing to the sky in a gesture for his late grandmother. Beroisa, 61, has previously built monuments to giant dinosaurs and Argentina’s independence heroes. Nothing he had ever done had attracted this kind of attention.
He was asked about this KolkataStatue and his reception, before going on his own. “I believe every artist has complete freedom to express themselves through their work. Every perspective deserves respect,” he told The Indian Express.
“Messi has a lot of admiration and love in India,” he added. “As Argentinians, we are very proud and grateful that a man from our country inspires such love and admiration in such a distant place.”
An 85-foot statue of Lionel Messi has been unveiled in the remote town of Cutral Co, Argentina 🇦🇷
This surpasses the 70-foot statue of Messi in India that was unveiled last December 🤯
🎥: @SkySportsNews pic.twitter.com/N2OZwQqC0e
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) 25 June 2026
Cutral Co sits in the Patagonian Steppe, the eighth largest desert on the planet, with the Andes on one side and the humid Atlantic on the other.
“Access to water is a challenge,” says Berossa. “Working on such a large scale under such conditions made the project even more meaningful.”
The Cutler Co Municipality Sports Secretary gave him 18 months to design and build. The statue ended up using about 70 tons of steel, rebar and three-grade concrete mortar.
“Approximately 110 structural tubes were used, which enabled the creation of a large-scale, highly durable work,” says Berossa.
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Most of the eighteen months passed by. “The face was undoubtedly the most complex part of the process,” says Berossa. “For months, I studied videos and photographs from different angles to really capture his essence.”
Dimensions alone explain why. “The subject is a figure of contemporary global importance; capturing the true likeness is a huge responsibility,” he says. “Messi’s head is 4.30 meters tall and weighs approximately four tons. I dedicated almost three months exclusively to its creation, striving for the highest possible level of detail.”
Lionel Messi has been honored with two new monuments in Argentina, a mural near Buenos Aires and a statue in Patagonia 🎨 pic.twitter.com/6XfQ96HH7q
– Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) 23 June 2026
“Right from the start, I was aware of the magnitude of the project and the challenge it posed,” he says. “Undoubtedly, I consider it a very important task.”
When asked why he took the commission, his answer was: “Lionel Messi, a man who, with his humility, hard work and dedication, gave our country the greatest moment of happiness in its history.”
The desert had the ultimate say in design. Winds here run at 60 to 80 kmph on a normal day and touch 150 on a bad day. Beroisa’s original plan had Messi holding the trophy in one hand.
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“The original idea was never to put the World Cup trophy at the feet of the sculpture,” says Berossa. “The design called for it to be placed in one arm. However, during the development of the project, engineering calculations determined that it would be unsafe to do so.”
At almost four meters high, the trophy in the uplifted hand was never going to withstand the force of the wind. So he landed where physics put him, level with Messi’s knee, and stayed there. It’s the one part of the statue that gets the laughs before anything else, and Beroisa wasn’t too surprised by the reaction on social media.
What he wants for the statue goes behind the joke and the record. He says, “We hope that this sculpture will go beyond the local level and become a work of national importance.
The statue still needs the finishing touches, although it has already survived longer than its predecessor. In Cutral Co, this was never guaranteed. The wind first looked at the location of the trophy, and everything else, water, steel, eighteen months of sculptor’s attention, had to answer to the same desert before Messi could stand at all.