Part One - Becoming the GOAT

[MUSIC PLAYING] The Athletic. [CHEERING] Hey, Siri. Define, go. A hardy domesticated room and a mammal that has backward curving horns. No, scratch that. It's Leon L. Messy. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] So right now, catch away from the goal. We'll put a feather inside time. [MUSIC PLAYING] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Sports fans across the world are obsessed with the concept of the goat, the acronym for the greatest of all time. Whether it's Michael Jordan and basketball, Muhammad Ali in boxing, or Tiger Woods in golf, sports fans need to crown the intergenerational king of their craft. The player is most often associated with goat status when it comes to soccer, or Leon L. Messy, fellow Argentine Diego Maradona, Brazil icon Pele, and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo. Messy's sprinkles starved us wherever he goes, winning 12 league titles in two countries and four Champions League. The annual competition between the best teams in Europe. He's also scored a sublime 807 career goals for Barcelona in Spain, PSG in France, and his country, Argentina. However, he had to wait for the best part of two decades for silverware with Argentina. First, it was the Copa America, the competition which crowns the best team in South America. And then, the most prestigious trophy in the international game, the World Cup. The focus is on Leon L. Messy. [CHEERING] You know, as much as Messy going on to win the Copa America in 2021 and the World Cup in 2022, it's easy to dress this up as an inevitability that it was always going to happen for him. It might not have. As his career begins to wind down at the age of 36, Messy plans to conquer America with his move to Inter Miami, the Major League Soccer Club, part on by David Beckham. This series from the Athletic will bring you expert insight into the inner workings of the Argentine Switch to South Florida and how it can make MLS go boom. We'll also look back on the signings of stars from previous areas like Pele, Rotan Ibrahimovic, and of course Beckham himself and how they attempted to grow the domestic game in the US. This is the Making of Messy. Our story begins in Rosario, Argentina, a bustling city of around 2 million people in the province of Santa Fe. Rosario is the birthplace of the Argentine flag, as well as Marxist Revolutionary Che Guevara. This is also where the greatest soccer player of all time is born. Messy's parents are normal people working normal jobs. His father Jorge, who's now his agent, was a supervisor at a steel company. His mother Celia, she worked at an electrical coils company. I think the fact that both of his parents work tells you that they had to make ends meet. They had to support a family of six. There are four children. Messy has two older brothers and a younger sister. There's his home in Rosario, where he grew up. It's still there. It's just a humble, two-story home. And I think essentially, Messy came from just a middle class upbringing to what he's known as today an absolute superstar. My name is Felipe Cardenas, and I am a football writer for the athletic, concentrating mainly on Major League Soccer and International Football. Messy joins his boyhood club, Nools Old Boys, at the age of six. Nools was established by Englishman Isaac Nool in 1903 in Rosario. And their list of alumni is quite special. Some of the biggest names in football that you recognize have come out of that club like Marcelo Bielsa, Gabriel Batistuta, Mauricio Pochettino, play there as well. Herrardo Patamartino, who is now going to coach Messy and Inter Miami is also a legend at Nools. As a youngster, Messy is busy showcasing his abundance of talent. However, it wasn't like he was known throughout the country. We had the superstar that's in the making and look at this young kid play. No, if you didn't go to the youth games at Rosario, you didn't know who Leo Messy was. The problem with Messy was just his size. When Messy is 10, he and his family are deliberate some bad news. He was diagnosed by a pediatric endocrinologist as having growth hormone deficiency. The Argentine is just four foot two at the age of 10, well below the average of four foot six for boys his age. And there was treatment that was needed. And at the time, it was treatment that was very expensive. Even today, it's an expensive treatment. It was something that the family could not expense on their own. And so they sought help from the club. And in Nools old boys, they didn't necessarily turn their back on Leo Messy. But it was a hurdle perhaps to hide for them at the time. Enter Barcelona. Barcelona have scouts all over the world and they look at thousands of players. But they're staggered by what they see with Messy. Couset tapes show him slalom through defenders with ease and scoring countless goals. But there are doubts. Horatio Gaggioli, an agent who worked on the Messy deal for Barcelona, was shocked when he met the player for the first time. There's no way you can play. This child's too skinny. He described his legs as the size of fingers. He was concerned for Messy that his legs would be broken as soon as he started playing competitively and within the Barcelona youth system. But it only took a day, the very next day, as soon as they dressed Messy in Barcelona gear and had him train with the youth team, he was heading shoulders better than everybody else. Messy impresses during his trial, but Barcelona has a team. After lots of back and forth, a contract offer on a now famous napkin seals the deal. December 14th of 2000, we're in Barcelona where that's where this took place. We needed a final decision. Carlos Ressache, the sporting director at the time for Barcelona just grabbed an napkin and wrote a contract and said that people here at this dinner, including Gaggioli, his partner and myself, are now responsible for this player, Leonel Messy. That napkin to this day is revered in Barcelona. And Gaggioli told me that he keeps it at a bank in a safe deposit box. It was notarized by his attorneys and it became a legal document, a napkin, which established Leonel Messy as a Barcelona player. That's where Barcelona and Leonel Messy's adventure began, essentially. Messy can finish off from the parade. Messy! Go! It's party time in Barcelona. That's where you pay over new kings of Europe, Barcelona. Leonel Messy and Pep Guardiola are a match made in heaven. If Messy is the goat on the pitch, Guardiola is the goat on the touch line. In the recent 2022-23 season, the Spaniard led Premier League side Manchester City to their best ever campaign as they won the treble. But his legacy was forged at Barcelona. He went from a ball-boy to captain of the team to then winning 14 major trophies in just four years as head coach at the camp now. Barcelona's iconic stadium. Together, in the 2008-2009 season, Messy and Guardiola make history when Barcelona become the first Spanish team to win the treble. That's La Liga, the Champions League, and the Copa del Rey. Barcelona couldn't compete with the number of potentially that rather than the past, but with that travel, Barcelona managed to get something that Barcelona didn't still have to do. Messy, dentro del área, el remato de Messy! Leonel Messy was the start of the show. He went from being a talented youngster to become like a world star with a monster mentality. My name is Paul Valleus and I'm the athletic correspondent at Barcelona covering FC Barcelona. In 2009, something special happens for Messy. He wins the first of his record seven ballendores, the yearly award for the best male soccer player on the planet. Barcelona fans were realizing that Leonel Messy would start like an hero of domination and dominate he does. But we're not of the three-fifth battle to it. Leonel misses. Leonel messes. Leon messes. Leonel messes. Well, it's not all sunshine and rainbows for Messy, especially at the start of his 20-year-bars of career. We don't realize like about the change of life that he had to go through at the age of 13. On the pitch, things were going quite okay for Messy, but off the pitch, when he came back home, he just basically locked himself on his room and he applied himself like the treatment of growth hormones that he had to go through, basically, just to get over with it just keep going. Despite his off-field troubles, Barça are brewing it. super star in their academy. La Masia. What is La Masia you may be asking? It means like country house, like a farm house. That's like the literal meaning of it. It was like in practical terms it was like located next to the Camino. Most of the players from the Barcelona Academy used to live. Later from all ages used to live there. They went to school together. They went to high school. Then they went to training. It is really known like for the production of talent that it had basically. Andres Iniesta, Leonel Messi, Savi, Carlos Puyol, Victor Valdez. Messi quickly goes about setting records. Something he does a lot of in his career. There's like a really particular season on the 2003 and 2004 season where Messi sets up a course that hasn't been broken yet at the Barcelona Academy which is playing with five different teams in the same season. He played with five different age groups in the very same season. Like from the under 18s, the under 19s, and then Barcelona beat him. Barcelona beat him because they had like two amateur teams. And then the first team he made his debut with the first team. This team made it just like couldn't believe it. So the skinny boy from Rosario is now playing with Brazilian World Cup winner Ronaldinho, Portugal legend Deco and Cameroon star Samuel Eto. Messi goes from strength to strength and Boris' domination kicks in when Guardio arrives in 2008. In 2015, they win the treble again under current PSG boss Luis Enrique. But there's someone who wants to spoil the party. That rivalry against Manuel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo is an opinion one of the most impressive things in sport that we have ever seen. It's going to be really difficult in the future to see a rivalry with that level. Like that many years, like fighting against a really worse life. It was amazing to see. As the cliche goes, all good things must come to an end. Messi continues to do his job, but Boris's hierarchy don't. At Spanish football clubs, things work a little bit differently to the rest of Europe and other continents. Clubs have presidents who oversee the overall management of the club. And in Barça's case, they have like the president, they also have an sporting director and people who deals with transfer and contract extension. And presidents at Barça are voted for by the club Sofios, like the memberships who are allowed to participate on the election and just to place their vote for whoever president they want to win the election for the club. A series of bad decisions on transfers like letting Brazilian superstar Neymar join PSG in 2017 leave the club in turmoil behind the scenes. Spanish businessman, Josep Maria Bartomeiro becomes president in 2014. The financial problems which still plagued the club today, almost a decade later, start here. Barcelona weighs close to a quarter of a billion dollars on expensive flops like Philippe Coutinho, Wismond and Bele and Antoine Griezmann. There wasn't like a solid leadership, a solid person guiding the club through like firm decisions and out of the blue like the power of the club ended up in the dressing room. It was not under pressure or in the manager and that was extra pressure for Lionel Messi. This is the beginning of the end and the unthinkable becomes a reality. That Messi might not finish his career at Barcelona. Messi sent his bureau facts and the legal document to the club showing his desire to leave Barcelona on a free transfer because according to Lionel Messi he had a clause on his contract. He could live on a free if he decided to. Josep Maria Bartomeiro replied to that clause saying that he wasn't valid anymore because he came after COVID, timings were in a gray area basically. He made Messi stay at the club against his will would just something that the fans never forgave him. Fast forward to 2021. A popular former bar surprise in John LaPorta is reelected. There's renewed hope but not for long. John LaPorta was the president when Lionel Messi came through the Academy of FC Barcelona and made it to the first team and the bond that LaPorta Lionel Messi had was great. They negotiated for a new deal and a regional agreement with Messi taking a huge picket knowing that the club was like facing a tough summer in terms of like the financial side of the club. On the very last minute like the club asked Lionel Messi scammed to help like a last minute meeting. They told them like the last minute problems that they had in terms of like finances. They couldn't register Messi within LaLiga limit. They tried to negotiate in some sort of detail but it was already broken. It was like tough for Messi to take and we could see how he cried and how emotional he was on his farewell even at the club because he had to leave the club of his life against his will. So from a playing perspective why is Messi considered as one of the best ever to play the sport? His pick Messi was the best at shooting and passing and dribbling. There's pretty much only three things you can do when you get the ball. Those are the three things and he was the best to each of them. Football tactics writer for the athletic Michael Cox picks out goals with showcase Messi's excellence in those three key departments. One from the World Cup last year, it maybe wasn't the most spectacular goal but it was a really big goal in the second round against Australia. It's a kind of classic Messi finish in that is placed rather than driven. I mean obviously the one of the differences I think between him and Cristiano Ronaldo over the years has been power. I think power in the way that they're run but also in terms of how they finish. I personally always like a neat little finish and this is just slid past the defender. It's not even really in the corner but it's done at such speed that it's quite difficult for the goalkeeper to read. Unquestionably my personal favourite Leo Messi goal was in a three-one win against Philly Rayout back in 2010 and this was really the crucial goal. It's when the game was won all passer in a little bit on the back foot and it comes from a quickly taken free kick in midfield by Javi and the thing I like about it is when Messi gets the ball there's basically nine outfielders between him and the goal and kind of only one attacking player who's an option who's Pedro and Messi gets the ball in front of the Villarreal midfield and he plays a first one too with Pedro to get the ball between the lines and then as soon as he gets the ball that time he then plays another one too with Pedro to run in behind and then he dinks it over the goalkeeper with his right foot. It just summarises what Messi's all about he can be a deep playmaker he can be between the lines he can be going in behind and he does it all in the blink of an eye really before Villarreal have even switched on for the free kick. A very famous goal that he scored for Barcelona against Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final back in 2011 was the first leg it was quite a brutal game really Real Madrid I think at that point didn't really feel they could cope with Barcelona in terms of tactics or technique and they really went after them in a physical sense. The good thing about the goal is it's basically Messi doing it all himself but he uses buskets as basically just a wall it's almost like buskets briefly as the the number nine is the big center forward just playing a hold-up role and buskets gets an assist for what is not even a pass I mean he basically just traps the ball stands with the ball and lets Messi do this thing away from two three four wonderful wonderful how good is he and it's just an extraordinarily good goal the directness and the speed and of course the fact that he finishes it with his right foot as well I mean he beats both center backs and Marcelo the left back and then Rose at Pascal Sears he's just brilliant best player in the world bound on we've heard a lot about Messi the soccer player but what about Messi the man and what drives him my name is Nick Miller I'm a writer for the athletic what I've found out about his character and what he's like away from the pitch is not a lot because it seems like there's not really a lot to find out when he first joined Barcelona he was so quiet that people thought he was mute these days is a little more forthcoming but people who have met him say he could be quite easily sitting at the next table to your restaurant and you probably wouldn't know that the greatest football to ever live was next to you his life doesn't seem to be that exciting you went to cold play recently what is another remarkable thing apart from his talent is his money money has been a key theme and running throughout his career to the point where one person I spoke to said it was his number one passion we should probably point out a few other people disputed that but the figures are astronomical his final contract at Barcelona the one he tried to get out of with the infamous bureau facts could have paid him 55 million euros over four years that deal was a big contribute to fact to Barcelona's financial problems and the main reason that they couldn't sign him back for business to make he makes around 65 million dollars every year for endorsements companies like address Pepsi Budweiser Mastercard Louis Vuitton Hardrock Cafe the wide range of crypto companies with strange made-up sounding names plus of course that deal with the Saudi tourist board you probably could have earned even more money by selling for a Saudi club rather than into Miami but he's betting on the commercial potential of being in the US now and after his career finishes. Does any of this matter? Does it matter if he's rich and boring? Maybe not. Even if some of his money is from slightly questionable sources. Ultimately, all anyone will really care about his how he plays on the pitch. These are the shots that many thought they would never see. Linel Messi wearing a football club shirt that didn't belong to Barcelona. He was at the park, depressed in a PSG kit and he were aware of the number 30 the number he had when he made his debut at Barcelona. Messi's story resumes in the city of love, Paris. However, PSG's journey under its guitarry owners has been anything but a love story. In fact, it's been a tale full of European heartbreak. Although the French side are all but certain to win their domestic division every year, the Champions League is the silverware they so badly desire. The closest they've been to the Promised Land was in 2020. When they went all the way to the final, only to lose the Germany's Bayern Munich. When Messi comes along in the summer of 2021, PSG must have been thinking surely this is our time. Here was Messi joining forces with French World Cup winner Kylian Mbappe and his old teammate from Barcelona, Neymar. But it all goes wrong for Messi at PSG. Why? Well, where'd you start? I'm Tom Williams, I'm a football writer and broadcaster specializing in French football and I contribute to be athletic. Everyone knew from the start that he didn't want to be there. We saw him crying in that in that press conference when he announced that he was leaving Barcelona. He didn't want to leave Barcelona. Barcelona didn't want him to leave but I don't think anyone in football really wanted to see him play for another club. Joined a team who weren't playing particularly good football and weren't in a successful period of their evolution. Struggle to adapt to French football. Found it very physical, I think, perhaps more physical than he was expecting. They expect the best. They expect the best from people. When you serve people come here all the time and suddenly you don't give them that. People don't care that you move. People don't care about your kids. Adaptive people don't care about your wife. Adaptive people don't care about you. Adaptive fell short in terms of his primary objective which was taking PSG to the next level in Champions League. It's Messi and it's saved by Courtaire. One of the big moments in this Champions League last 16 die. Courtaire denies Messi. Never engaged with Paris as a city in any real way with France as a country in any real way. Ran out of puff about halfway through his second season and then gave PSG an opportunity to make him an example by going on on an authorised trip to Saudi Arabia. Messi has been suspended for two games and find two weeks wages for going on a personal promotional trip to Saudi Arabia without permission from the club. I think from PSG's perspective given that they were already starting to think about you know the kind of the post Messi era it kind of suited them. It was a bit of an open goal and for once PSG didn't miss it. So I think if you kind of add all those things together perhaps throwing a few other factors you get an explanation for what I didn't work out. Club football, Messi's completed it. International football, not quite. Messi the second he steps on a field without that core is average because Shabby's not there, because NES does not there, because David V is not there. So how do Argentina go from this in 2014? To this, eight years later. I'm James Horncastle. I cover Syria for the athletic but I followed Argentina at the World Cup and Qatar over the winter. I described Messi's relationship with Argentina as heartfelt and yet quite complicated. Messi got this opportunity to go to Barcelona. It meant he's never played club football in Argentina, certainly at a professional level in the way that some of the countries other icons did. Diego Maradona, Mario Campes. And so it became quite easy to frame Messi as a foreigner. In 2006 in Germany, Messi's first World Cup there was already a lot of anticipation for him to be kind of thrust into the national team. He'd already made his debut, which was kind of a bad omen really because he got sent off very shortly into it. There was this pressure on Jose Peckerman, the coach at the time, to include Messi more, regardless of his age and to play him more. Argentina crashed out at the quarter-final stage at the 2006 World Cup, losing to host Germany. Messi is left on the bench during that match and people aren't happy. Argentina's elimination was framed around Peckerman not using Messi. Every major tournament would be seen as, can Messi do this for Argentina? If Messi can't, no one can. And it all, again, became pitched as well with Maradona could do this for Argentina. He could take the team on his back, the country on his back. Messi must do this. It was a big shortcoming I think in the coaching team. That Argentina and Messi was receiving, compared with what Messi was getting in Barcelona. There was a lot of dysfunction around Argentine football at the time, because of the financial crisis at the turn of the century in Argentina. If you go back to Maradona's World Cup performances, always playing time with Argentina, he was seen as someone who got to benefit from playing for great coaches like Menotti, Basile, as well. Diego Maradona comes up a lot when discussing Messi in Argentina. Maradona did what his modern counterpart couldn't do for a long time, when he kept in Argentina to World Cup glory in 1986. Forget about the go for a second. Maradona was seen as more than a footballer and more than a human even. You talk about the supernatural how Diego Maradona, for example, is often so associated with being a sort of pagan god. Maradona was a larger than life character. It's hard enough living up to a great footballer's standards, let alone a god. Messi for a time was seen as taciturn, quite introverted, quite quiet, certainly in comparison with Maradona. You know, when Argentina started losing these Copa America finals, Maradona said that he did not believe that Messi had the character of six to be a leader. In 2016, Messi hits rock bottom. You have the 2014 World Cup, which they lose their Germany. They then lose the 2015 Copa America, Chichile, and then in 2016, there was this centenary edition of the Copa America in the United States, and it goes to a penalty shootout. And Messi misses Argentina's first penalty, and Chichile goes on to win that as well. And if you think about that, that is three consecutive years in which you've taken your country to a final, and you lose all of those finals. But we start with big breaking news this morning, and Leonardo Messi has told Argentinian television that he is retiring from international football. He's kind of humble enough to accept at that moment that, you know, maybe all the trophies he was winning isn't individual, or the trophies he was winning as a club were not going to be matched by what he did with his country. What his mini retirement doesn't last long. Two months later, Messi is back in business. Leonardo Skologny takes over as Argentina head coach in 2018, and a few years later, in the lead up to the 2021 Copa America, everything changes. You have a group of players which I think Messi felt comfortable in. He felt there was a good chemistry. He compared it with the team that had reached the World Cup final in 2014. It was one that liked being together. It was the one that had solidarity with one another. And it was one that was coached by somebody who understood Messi in Lionel Skologny. Skologny, he'd been a teammate of Messi's with Argentina. The vibe and the atmosphere around the team is right. And they go all the way. And they beat Brazil in the final in Brazil. Once they won that title, it relieved Messi of some of the burden. I remember going into, for example, the 2022 World Cup. The debate around Messi was already kind of shifting. It was shifting away from does Messi need to win the World Cup in order to be considered the greatest of all time or the equal or some of the good past marathoner. It's World Cup time. Argentina, after their Copa success, are one of the favorites going into the tournament in Qatar. They have an opening group game against Saudi Arabia. It should be fairly straightforward, right? Right? The longer that game went on, the more the fans believed. The more frustrated Argentina got, and Saudi Arabia were able to use that to their advantage. And they upset Argentina in one of the greatest kind of shocks in World Cup history. Messi was asked about the atmosphere in the dressing room and he said, "We're dead. We're dead in there." Operation Resurrection begins. There are labor victories over Poland and Mexico in the group, followed by an easy-ish win over Australia and the first knock-out round. There's the dramatic battle versus the Netherlands, which goes all the way to penalties. And a dominant 3-0 win over Croatia to set up the final. It's Reigning World Champions France in the final, and Messi versus his PSG teammate and Starboy of the World in Bape. Finally, it was the fairytale ending. It was a great part in this epic poem of Messi's career for Argentina that the last possible opportunity is when he wins the World Cup. It will go down in football law as the greatest World Cup final. "Ruddy Brinkley ever been,uddy Brinkley ever been,uddy Brinkley ever been,uddy Brinkley ever been." Montiel! Argentina! Champions of the World! Again, at last! The final Messi has conquered his final peak. The final Messi has shaken hands with Paradise. The little boy from Rosario Santa Fe has just pitched up in heaven. He climbs into a galaxy of his own. He has his crowning moments, and of course he is not alone. That one feels from Bape who scored a World Cup final hand trick and lost. It felt like it was kind of a fitting end that a crazy final after a crazy tournament would go Messi's way. There were suggestions Messi would retire from international football after Argentina's triumph in Qatar. But there doesn't seem to be any signs that he will hang up his boots. In the next few years, there's the Copa America in the US in 2024, and the World Cup in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2026, both of which coincidentally are tied into Messi's move to Miami. Coming up on episode 2 of the Making of Messi. Coming to America. We dissect what the Argentine's arrival means for US soccer. Speaking to former players who have attempted to crack the United States, Bradley Wright Phillips, and Nathan Manuaha. It's not going to be about his team. It's not going to be about his team's history. It's going to be about everything that he's doing. He's the biggest asset that the league has ever had. The Making of Messi is an athletic media production. It was presented by Mike Zimmerman. It was written and produced by Mike Zimmerman, Mike Stavrou, and Jay Biel. The executive editor was Ben Green, and the managing editors were Ian McIntosh and Alex K. Jelski. The Athletic.