Messi’s summer diary: captain and assumed leader and a surprising personality change. (Tipsbladet)

It was not just another summer that Lionel Messi lived. During this season, football fans, but especially those who are Argentine, could notice a resounding personality change, logical if it is considered that by age, at 32, it is already a player who despite his genius, is already in his last years of career and it shows that the fact of being captain of both Barcelona and the Argentine team -in which he already integrates the lot of the three most veteran players- generated on him more loquacity and the conviction that due to the importance of his figure in the world, every word of his has a special impact.

In this summer that happened, Messi made such a turn in the Argentine national team, that he went from never singing the anthem to do it suddenly and loudly during the Copa América of Brazil, and as never before, for being a football player without a conflicting background, He made very hard statements against Conmebol, the organizing body, in treating it as corrupt and putting together everything so that Brazil, the local team, kept the title, closer than Diego Maradona would have said three decades ago.

These were Messi’s most significant events last summer:

16/5 With a sober suit, Messi receives in the middle of the stage the prize “The Cross of Sant Jordi” awarded by the Generalitat to people and social entities that have distinguished themselves for their merits and social services provided to Catalonia. The Catalan Vice President Pere Aragonés, President Quim Torra, and the Minister of Culture, Mariángela Vilallonga, are present on stage. He was distinguished as “the best footballer of all time” and for representing values such as “humility, honesty, learning, creativity, team sense and respect”, as well as for his donation to the San Juan de Dios Hospital for the construction of the “Pediatric Cancer Center”, the largest children’s cancer center in Europe. The only footballer who had previously received that award was Johan Cruyff in 2006. Also that day 27 other personalities and 15 entities were awarded. Already with Messi on stage, from the public they begin to shout “Freedom to political prisoners” and they all began to applaud the slogan, and the player was seen in an awkward moment, without applauding, impassive. The next day, his attitude was debated in all Spanish media, although the vast majority praised him for not meddling in foreign affairs.

24/5: After an enormous expectation, because he hasn’t been given an official press conference for four years, he gave one in the hall of Barcelona with Gerard Piqué in the clubhouse in San Joan Despí (short hair, long beard, turquoise shirt training, and below, a long-sleeved black thermal because the cold of the Catalan spring did not go away). It is the day before the final of the Copa del Rey against Valencia at the Benito Villamarín stadium, Betis. He looks calm, although somewhat down. “It’s a Cup final and you have to give it the importance it has, but the truth is that it was a very hard blow that we received in Liverpool for the Champions League. It was difficult for us, to get up and I think that was seen in the following games that we had to play because it was very hard, but we have the possibility of doing a double (League and Cup) in the season, it is a title and finishing well, within what fits (resigned smile) the year and think that you have to win like all the finals we play. That is the idea, to go get the title.”

When he was asked about the criticism to coach Ernesto Valverde, he smiled slightly and said “I am sincere, I did not speak much but I did hear the criticism of the coach. Honestly, I think he did an impressive job at the time he was. I think that in the elimination with Liverpool it was not his fault for anything. We are the only ones guilty of that match because we knew that what happened to us last year in Rome could not happen again, and it did. I think it was unfortunate the game we did, the image we left. I can happen one year, but two years in a row and being able to be in a Champions League final, which we wanted so much, what happens to us is incomprehensible and the coach would have his share of guilt but I have no doubt that the responsible are we. I would like Valverde to continue next season (in those days, there was speculation about the couch could leave and that the board of directors did not support him so much anymore) because he has a good communication with the team and may or may not like how the team plays, but the last year we did the Doublet, which was stained by what happened in Rome, the way it was, and this year we can do another Doublet and unfortunately with a stain, this time much bigger (smiling, resigned). If you think about it, we lost two games, which marked us a lot by how those defeats went, but beyond that, the rest was good. ”

On the Golden Boot, which Messi was about to win if Mbappé did not score 4 goals with the PSG just that day (and did not score them), he said that “honestly, I don’t even think about it. I do not have that in the head because what happened in Liverpool was a very hard blow and I am still with that, and I can’t think as an individual right now, but to win this final and finish the year well with another title. I did not stop to watch the Anfield game but it was very similar to that of Rome, where we enter and quickly the rival make us a goal and that starts to work your head, thinking that it can’t happen again and you are entering that dynamic although we reacted well because in the first half the truth is that it was not bad at all, but in the second half we did not compete and there was only one team on the court and that was the biggest mistake. Beyond that there were failures, errors, misses, what we cannot forgive ourselves is that we did not compete. We were playing a final and we let ourselves go by. ”

He was asked if he ever thought about going to another club. “I never hesitated to continue in Barcelona beyond the disappointments of last year and this one. I have also had disappointments with the Argentine national team and yet I keep trying and I want to continue competing to get something there, and the fact of being eliminated with Barcelona does not make me think about leaving the club at all. Nor do I regret having said at the beginning of the season, in the presentation, “that beautiful Cup.” I did not even promise to bring the Cup but do everything possible to bring it and we disappointed and that is why we have to ask for forgiveness, not for having lost but for not having competed for the pass to the final”.

He did not want to get into the issue of signings, especially when he was asked about the possibility of Antoine Griezmann: “I am not the one who must say if for the next season there should be changes or not in the squad, but it is others who decide”. This represents a remarkable change of attitude because just one year before, both he and Piqué had given their agreement in public and as soon as the French decided to continue at Atlético Madrid, they felt that they were exposed too much with their opinions, and also, the relationship with Griezmann was damaged from that moment.

“Not winning this final against Valencia would be much worse than how we are now,” he acknowledged, and about his physical condition, he said that “I’m fine, better, I have pain (pubis) that had been dragging it since January but I always had it under controll and I could play normally. I think that today I am at one hundred percent. ”

He returned to the defeat against Liverpool: “Losing the 2014 World Cup final was a big disappointment because it was the most important game of all but another thing is to go with a 3-0 result and have it turned around. They are two totally different things. The truth is that as captain it was a spectacular year for me. We won the League and we are in the final of the Cup. I think we had a great year, taking out that game which spoiled a little the great year we had done. Against Valencia there were two hard games in the season and if we don’t go out with attitude, it can hurt us a lot. ”

25/5: In the final of the Copa del Rey you can see a very beaten Barcelona. Messi plays little, although in the second half he leads a kind of rebellion that does not reach and wins Valencia 2-1 (Messi makes the only Barca goal). The players leave Benito Villamarín stadium without making statements and the holidays begin, although Messi must travel to Brazil for the Copa América. It was winning Valencia 2-0 with goals from Kevin Gameiro and Rodrigo Moreno against a bewildered Barcelona, dominated completely in the second half but did that was not enough. In the goal, Messi shoot a point-blank rejection by goalkeeper Jaume Doménech at a very good header from Clement Lenglet. It would have been the fifth Copa del Rey on a round. Messi tries to hide his disappointment, and appears in the field with a face of circumstance. It is no longer certain that Ernesto Valverde will continue as coach and there are rumors that the board of directors is going to take the summer time to analyze it although nobody seems to want to bother Messi and Piqué and they support him.

29/5 In the morning he arrived in Rosario on a private flight with his wife and three children, another plane to Buenos Aires and from there, for whether reasons, a car to the Ezeiza estate. The incipient Spanish summer was changing for the winter of Buenos Aires. At the airport of the Argentine capital he was received by the president of the AFA, Claudio Tapia, and by César Luis Menotti, director of National Teams and former coach of the Argentine world champion in 1978, whom he had never met in person. It was time to train with players of another generation, much younger than him. Only Sergio Agüero, Ángel Di María and Nicolás Otamendi remained. The rest, all younger. The story had turned. With the days, he was seen near the most prankster, Rodrigo De Paul (Udinese), and also talked a bit with Paulo Dybala (Juventus), who had manifested a year ago some discomfort of playing together and that made him pay very expensive these statements and almost stayed out of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Of that World Cup there were few players, such as Nicolás Tagliafico, Franco Armani, Marcos Acuña, Gio Lo Celso. They were training without him from the 27 of May.

5/6: He gives an interview to the argentina’s TV channel TyC Sports, in which he says he is “more mentally frustrated” than with physical pain after the season with Barcelona because “it was the years when I played less games because they gave me rest several times”, and that he was integrated “very fast” to “so many new boys in the Argentine national team, who almost have no games with the national team.”

14/6 Great expectation for his participation in a new Copa América in which he had already played 21 games and would be his fifth experience, with 8 goals and three continental subtitles. This time, the question is whether it will not happen the other way around than other times: that the Argentine team worked as a repairman of what happened to him in Barcelona. The results of a survey from the newspaper La Vanguardia, asking if Messi had surpassed Cruyff as the most influential player in Barcelona, said yes at 74.46% against 25.54%.

15/6 The debut of the Argentine national team at Fonte Nova de Salvador was a 2-0 defeat against Colombia with an inexpressive Messi, without intervening almost in the game, well surrounded by Colombian middlefielders and there was doubt about whether he is okay, if he is melancholic for what happened with Barcelona, if he is not yet integrated into a team that did not give any response, or if Lionel Scaloni’s outline was misguided.

19/6 Argentina 1 Paraguay 1 at the Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte. Argentina almost lost it, but Armani saves a penalty and that gives a minimum air to the Argentine national team, which does not depend on itself to move to the quarterfinals for the first time in history. Again the team is shipwrecked and barely shows its face in the end through its young promise Lautaro Martínez (Inter) but Messi still does not appear.

23/6 Argentina 2 Qatar 0 at the Arena do Gremio stadium in Porto Alegre. A very slight improvement of Messi but much better the team, which is with a goal in favor very soon, and also knows that Paraguay lost with Colombia and that gave them the classification. Now things could change because they started from scratch, with the same chances as everyone, and the worst nightmare had passed.

24/6 He turns 32 in Porto Alegre. The festivities begin on Sunday 23 with the joy of triumph and the visit of their relatives (parents, wife and children).

28/6 Argentina 2 Venezuela 0 for the quarterfinals in the Maracaná in Rio de Janeiro. There’s a Messi slightly on the rise and within a much safer team, which wins his game very well, with Lautaro and Agüero consolidated above, and a certain cohesion is already noticeable, with several players near Messi. Without the weight of staying out soon, you can see a more liberated team that works better. Before starting the game, during the execution of the national anthems, Messi is seen singing it loudly for the first time, after 14 years refusing to do so, something that had always been criticized by many Argentines.

2/7 Brazil 2 Argentina 0 in the semifinal in Belo Horizonte. Not only the best match played by Argentina but perhaps the best match in Messi with the national jersey in 5 years. Unstoppable, bright, the best version of Messi in Barcelona. Shots in the sticks, rumors of admiration in the public and a liar result, based on two counterattacks arrivals, but with two clear penalties not collected and without the VAR. After the game, Messi made some unusual statements: “I have anger because I think we made a great game, a very big effort, and it wasn’t for it to end this way. They were not superior to us. They got tired of penalise bullshit throughout the Cup and in these plays of the possible penalties for Argentina they did not resort to the VAR, an incredible thing, but it was the whole game as well that way. At the minimum contact, foul for them, and details that go taking you out of the game. There are no excuses because we lost by the goals but it is to analyze and hopefully the Conmebol do something with this type of arbitration because we tried everything to go to the final and the referee bended the field for them. Anyway, I don't think they’ll do anything because Brazil manages everything so it is very complicated, but we don’t have anything to reproach ourselves. It didn’t happen and that’s it, bad luck. They always got out cards to us and nothing to them. Throughout the Cup they charged dummy penalties and tonight they didn’t even check the VAR so in the end I waited for the referee to tell him that. ”

These statements were taken in Argentina as a revelation, as an act of rebellion that had never been thought of Messi, with another profile up to here. Many spoke then of “the maradonization of Messi”, and the next day all the media discussed this, and many even pointed out that it was not the best way, but that it would change Messi’s relationship with many people, that now I looked at him as closer to them. Another interpretation was that now being one of the three eldest of the team, and captain, Messi needed to shoe himself as a leader in every way, outward and inward. After the game, he meets Neymar in the hallway and they give each other a long hug, but they don’t speak anything (there were more people around).

3/7 Letter from the AFA to Conmebol about the arbitration of the Ecuadorian Rody Zambrano. In it, it says that what happened in the Brazil-Argentina match “deserves a deep reflection that doubts that the principles of ethics, freedom and transparency that you (Alejandro Dominguez, president) recurrently invokes, have been observed. This reflection finds sustenance in all the irregularities noted before and during the aforementioned match, where it has been evidenced that the Argentine national team was clearly harmed by the arbitration staff headed by Rody Zambrano, and in particular by the non-use of the VAR in specific plays that had undoubtedly reversed the final result. The fact that the designation of this arbitral list has been questioned by the AFA, mainly due to Zambrano’s background, broadens the cloak of doubt generated by his performance.” And it questions the president of the Arbitration Committee, the Brazilian Wilson Seneme and stands by Messi’s statements to the press.

6/7 Argentina 2 Chile 1 at the Corinthians Arena in San Pablo for the Third Place. Sergio Agüero and Paulo Dybala scored the goals. In the first half, the team reaffirms the good direction it took from the quarterfinals against Venezuela and again with a very good performance from Messi. The game is played under great tension because they are the same finalists of the last two American Cups, both won by Chile on penalties, and it is especially noticeable in some Chilean players like Gary Medel, who always goes very violently to mark on Messi. At 36 minutes, a ball that is close to leaving the bottom of the field and Messi is looking for it, Medel covers it, the Argentine presses and the Chilean heads and pushes him, Messi opens his arms as if not wanting to participate while Medel headbutt him again, and the Paraguayan referee Mario Díaz de Vivar expelled them both. For Messi it was the second expulsion with the Argentine jersey (the first was the day of his debut against Hungary, in a friendly match in 2005) and that immediately unleashed a storm. “I think the yellow card would finish it for both of us. These are things that usually happen in many games where there are tensions but maybe what I said after the match against Brazil was claimed and the referee received a mandate but that’s it and the important thing is that the team finished the Cup well. I did not attend to the award ceremony (for the third place) for many reasons, because we do not have to be part of this corruption, of disrespect that was made to us throughout this tournament and we leave with the feeling that we were up for more, than we did before Brazil and Chile the two best matches of the championship, which we had a growth, but that they did not let us reach the final. 

Unfortunately, corruption, referees and all that do not allow people to enjoy football, the show, and ruin it a bit.” The reporters ask him if he is not afraid that because of the red card and what he said, he may be sanctioned in official matches, when in a short time the South American qualification for the World Cup in Qatar 2022 begins: “Let them do what they want, I leave with my head high and proud of this group that people stand because it has a lot to give in the future”.

7/7 While the final of the Copa América between Brazil and Peru is played, a rumor spreads that obfuscated with what happened in the Copa América, Conmebol would analyze accepting an invitation that UEFA would have made to dispute the Nation’s Cup, an open door to leave the South American confederation to go to the European one, something that UEFA strongly denies.

Holidays in Ibiza after spending a few days in Rosario. He went with his wife and children to a beach in Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean. Relaxed and playing football with one of his children and boys from the Resort. On the way back, he was with his parents and siblings in Argentina, and then in Ibiza his wife Antonella Roccuzzo, with Luis Suárez and his partner (Sofía Balbi), Cesc Fábregas, his partner (Daniela Seeman) and his sister-in-law Suzanna, Jordi Alba and his wife, Romarey Ventura , and Pepe Costa (from the department of attention to the Player, of the Barcelona, whom practically goes everywhere accompanying Messi) and his partner. They showed themselves on a sailboat and even shared images of everyone in a festival, very affectioneted, dancing, very relaxed. He was neither in the US with Barcelona, nor in Japan (vs. Chelsea and Vissel Kobe of Iniesta and Villa, as part of the agreement with Rakkuten, the company that sponsors the jersey).

There was talk of an incident in Ibiza, a stir near him, but he it categorically denied: “All the people treated us incredibly.” The best night was that of the disco “Ushuaia”, to which celebrities frequent. It is the most famous and outdoors. They were seen singing, with Antonella, Ozuna (Puerto Rican singer, songwriter and actor of Dominican origin), a weakness of the couple, who gave a recital on stage. Messi also appeared playing with his children Thiago, Mateo and the dog Hulk, a bulldog from Bordeaux (“Mateo shouts the goals of Madrid to anger Thiago” Messi tells, amused. Then this would been saw in the Barcelona-Betis of the second date of the League, in the box of the Camp Nou, next to Suárez and Pepe Costa, when his second son, Mateo, shouted the goals of Betis against Barcelona).

15/7 During the presentation of Antoine Griezmann in Barcelona, next to the president of the club Josep Maria Bartolomeu, the Frenchman is consulted by the apparent anger of Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez with him for his final decision to stay at Atlético Madrid in the Last summer, in 2018: “I hope that will be reversed on the field, and if I have to apologize to some, I think that will be the best place.” “What makes me happier is being able to share a mate with Messi. I am happy because he is number one, a reference for all players. Just as Le Bron James is the reference in the NBA, he is in football. He will be a legend for my son, for my son’s children.”

23/7 La Conmebol quotes Claudio Tapia, president of the AFA, to it headquarters in Paraguay to defend his letter sent during the Copa América, but his words are not accepted and they take away his representation of Conmebol before FIFA and Argentina is isolated. At the same time, it suspends Messi for an official match for his expulsion against Chile, and gives him a $1,500 fine. The match must be completed in March 2020 on the first date of the World Cup qualification for 2022. A major sanction was feared but was mitigated by a letter of apology sent by the player to Conmebol claiming “emotional stress” for the red card received in the confrontation with the Chilean Gary Medel in the Copa América.

26/7 Finally, after his vacation, Messi returns to Barcelona. He lands at the El Prat airport together with his family, although he does not have to return to training until August 4.

2/8 While Messi is still on vacation, Conmebol suspends him for three months for his words against the entity after the game versus Brazil. That will prevent him from playing the friendly of September (in the US vs. Chile and Mexico) and October (vs. Germany and the Basque Country). He can only return in November (without defined rivals). But it was missing to know the disciplinary sanction for the expulsion. In addition, it imposes a fine of 50,000 dollars.

4/8 Barcelona opens in the Gamper Cup, against Arsenal and Messi returns, although he does not play, and speaks to the microphone as captain before the game: “It is difficult to say something after last season but I do not regret anything. I repeat what I said last year: I trust this team, in this coaching staff and I have no doubt that together we are going to fight again for everything. The truth is that last season ended up being a bit bitter for how it happened but we have to give value to the League that we got, the eighth in 11 years. What we did is very important. Maybe today we don’t give it the value it deserves but in a few years we will realize how difficult that is. We are with renewed illusions and I hope you arrive in the same way. ‘Visca el Barca and visca Catalunya’ (“Long life to Barca, long life to Catalonia”). Barcelona wins with a goal from Suárez. When Griezmann is replaced and returns to the bank, he greets everyone and greets him back, but Messi ignores him and does not speak to him throughout the rest of the game. It was one of the fears. The other was with Suarez (it was said that the Uruguayan team did not touch the issue so that there are no internal shocks because Diego Godín, the captain, is the godfather of Griezmann’s son).

5/8 Messi is injured in the first training of the season and does not go on the US tour. First degree lesion in the soleus of his right leg. He does not play either of the two friendly matches against Napoli. Nor does he play in the premiere of the League against Athletic Bilbao or in the second against Betis.

29/8 Receives the UEFA award for best striker of the season. He appears sitting, relaxed and laughing next to Cristiano Ronaldo, who for the second time insists that he does not rule out that both can have dinner together in the near future and stresses that “we have been competing, he and me, for 15 years at the highest level”, but the prize for the best player is taken by Liverpool’s Dutch defender Virgil Van Dijk.