The metric that Lionel Messi ran 6.8 kilometers the other evening has produced a lot of chatter. A favorite narrative theorizes the Argentinian captain is protecting himself for the 2014 FIFA World Cup beginning in 60 days. Well, so what if he is?


What Leo Messi has done for FC Barcelona is indisputable, incomparable. He has been the catalyst which sparked the club into global superstardom. If not for his childhood growth deficiency, if not for Argentina’s turn of the millennium financial meltdown, Messi would never have ended up at La Masia, he may never have played for Barcelona. If not for Joan Lacueva personally forking out thousands of euros for Messi’s treatments while the rest of the club’s directors were dillydallying around “not paying what they promised” and in turn angering the Messi family, if not for Carles Rexach imploring that he be signed much to the chagrin of the majority at the club, if not for Leo himself deciding to remain at the club when presented by his father the opportunity to return with his beloved family back to Argentina, the reality is most of you may never be reading these words. Ronaldinho got Barça standing again, but make no mistake, Messi is why Barcelona rule football’s roost. He has given everything and more for the blaugrana colors, and as former club vice-president Ferran Sorriano remembers “we knew the value of the player, we were aware of his value on the football pitch, and we were conscious too that he had never asked for anything.”

Above and beyond everything Lionel Messi is his own person. He has personal hopes, fears, goals and dreams; like everyone else. He has achieved much already: multiple winner of every possible club competition, an Olympic gold, record Ballon d’Or haul, setter and breaker of innumerable records, FC Barcelona’s all-time goal scorer at 26. The vast majority has been with Barça, yet it’s as if he hasn’t given enough, as if enough is never enough. Messi’s successes in Catalonia came with a cost back home. Leo Messi is Argentinian. To him, “Rosario is everything.”

Argentinians enjoy glossing over the fact that a 12 year old Lionel Messi and his family only left because multiple local clubs undervalued his talent and point-bank denied him the medical treatment he desperately needed and his father could not afford. Regardless, Messi’s heart burned to play and win for Argentina. The player anointed Diego Maradona’s true successor wasn’t producing for the albiceleste like he was for the blaugrana. But instead of honest reflection and logical analysis concerning inexplicable tactics, locker-room politics and indefensible team selection, no more so than under El Diego himself, Argentina turned on him. And not only the general public, even those within the dressing room. The infamous Juan Román Riquelme and Messi share a birth date. At the 2006 World Cup, a 19 year old Messi decided to join the veteran’s birthday shindig and was promptly told, “Idiot! Don’t you know how to knock! You’re going to have to learn to knock on a door! Who the f**k do you think you are?”

Fast-forward a couple of years, Argentina were again struggling under post World Cup boss Coco Basile, and Diego Maradona was angling for the albiceleste job. Guillem Balague writes that “in a calculated initiative”, Maradona “singled Leo out as the culprit for the team’s poor performances. With the attitude of those who believe they are always right, he created a general mistrust of Messi in the minds of the average Argentine fans, who took Maradona’s words as gospel.”  El Diego said Messi “lacked character“, “Messi plays for Messi” and “he has so much arrogance that he forgets his team-mates.” Lacks character? Selfish? Arrogant?

The first time in his life Messi was nervous was not his first-team debut, not a clutch encounter at the Santiago Bernabéu nor the day of a Champions League final; it was the night he met Diego Maradona on a television program. Fathom Maradona’s importance to Messi, now imagine how Messi felt hearing those outlandish accusations from his hero. The Argentinean press called him “the foreigner“, a “traitor“, described Maradona the “flag” and Messi “a poster.” Fans booed him. Messi describes all this as his most difficult personal battle. It deeply hurt him; then it angered him. So much so he seriously considering quitting the national team. But of course, he couldn’t. Messi is no coward.

Frankly it’s insanity all this transpired. And it did. A nation tried its utmost to hate their best player in 30 years, for many the best footballer never mind Argentinian ever. But Messi loves Argentina. He’s been in Spain 15 years and still speaks with the thickest Argentinean accent. In his youth he found comfort at Argentine restaurants in Barcelona or the homes of his countryman. One of Messi’s closest friends in Barcelona, reporter Cristina Cubero, has “always said that Leo is the most Argentine footballer from Argentina” she’s ever known.

Messi has given absolutely everything for FC Barcelona. Gerard Piqué bears testament that Messi has played with his ankle “f••ked” countless times because the team looks to him. Following his injury last year against Paris Saint-Germaine, he and Juanjo Brau trained eight hours a day for eight days straight with the sole objective of Messi playing just 15 minutes (at the absolute maximum 35) in the return leg. He hasn’t done enough for Barça? All his Barça success illogically was envied, practically despised in Argentina and for years the country he holds so dear branded him a turncoat. So what if he’s consciously or subconsciously cautious with the most defining month of his career on the horizon. The biggest challenge for professionals returning from significant injury is not the physical healing, it’s the mental aspect. It’s the trust that needs to be placed in a body that has now failed them. All arguments countering Messi being the undisputed best of all time hinge solely (and unfairly) on a World Cup victory. In Brazil, Messi will be essentially the same age Maradona was when he won his one and only World Cup. Messi genuinely believes that 2014 is his moment, his World Cup.

Messi isn’t even close to the first star player to look ahead to a tournament that professionals get two, maybe three, if extremely gifted/lucky four shots at. Nor will he be the last. Additionally, any notion of him slacking is utter baloney. He hasn’t managed to score this season against Atlético Madrid? Only one other player has; twice in 450 minutes. Is he always the one that must pull Barça out of the fire? Messi has scored 17 league goals in 2014 since returning from injury, that’s more than any other player in Europe’s top 5 leagues (@MessiStats). It was even admitted from the horses mouth that at the Vicente Calderón Messi was instructed to conserve his energy for moments he could be decisive; he was instructed not to run around and press endlessly. Messi never has nor ever will be lazy.

This isn’t a new phenomenon either. When Pep Guardiola took over in 2008, he specifically focused on finding a reason for Messi’s incessant injuries. Studies of Messi’s morphology uncovered that his muscles were shorter than normal and were also unique in their “very high energy consumption.” That results in his muscles emptying themselves extremely quickly, meaning he must rest them before the next burst. That muscle we’ve heard so much about, the femoral biceps, is what drives acceleration and the changing of pace. It is said muscle that Barça have known is Messi’s chief injury risk and as Ballague exposes, Guardiola and club trainers specifically instructed Messi to rest between plays, to not press like the others. His teammates both know and understand that. Guardiola also had to force him to reduce his effort at training. As Ballague writes, Messi is “expected to expend his energies more sparingly” as it was “explained to him he could not permanently be looking for excellence in every passage of play.”

Guardiola explained to Messi that he could at times be more important in 20 minutes than 90, that he wanted to rest him more. “Leo did not accept that.” He didn’t accept that because Messi is the ultimate competitor, the type that comes around but a few times. He refused sitting down because he has an irrepressible will to win, because “he understand football…as a collective effort“, and that stubbornness is the reason millions of culé dreams have come true over the past decade. Messi suffered these recent recurring injuries because he pushes himself so hard, as you’ve just learnt did so against the advise of important people from the club, and he did it because partly athletes of his calibre cannot control their will to win, they need to feel invincible, but also for, hello, Barça. Messi loves FC Barcelona.

He however is an individual. Messi has done more than enough for Catalonia and for Barça. I know all the counter arguments, all boring and irrelevant. Yes, Messi has been paid handsomely for his efforts, but FC Barcelona have made countless of millions euros more off Messi than vice-versa. The club has always gotten it’s monies worth. Every cent is handed over more than willingly. He has regularly rejected exceedingly greater sums from afar; Jorge Messi confirming an offer from Russia of 32 million euros per annum. Just because these people earn gargantuan sums, it doesn’t change two realities: club football is a job and these athletes are people. Why is humanity flippantly brushed aside in big time sport? After absolutely everything, is Messi not entitled to consider his own ambitions, his own nagging desires? So many million Barça dreams fulfilled beyond the wildest of expectations, are his any less important? The answers are yes and no respectively.

The Messi family would never have left Rosario if not for unique circumstances, circumstances that Barça have historically benefited from. So what if Lionel Messi is quite understandably distracted by a defining, if successful iconic, moment of his life? He has accepted the responsibility of carrying a club and country on his shoulders, never shied away and delivered with unrivaled production, especially for Barça. Yet for all the Messindependencia chatter, merited or not, Messi has always felt the weight of Argentina heavier. The country’s decades of lamentation, of yearning for the next Pelusa were projected forcefully onto La Pulga. In August he will be back to fight for Barça, and if the club and it’s often incomprehensible “supporters” haven’t shot themselves in the foot by then, he’ll be there again in 2015, and again in 2016, and again until the day he inevitably returns to “his everything“, to Rosario, to Argentina.

Source: Quotes and pertinent facts from Guillem Balague’s “Messi”