Rosario’s mythical figure Lionel Messi is hoping to win the biggest prize of all, the World Cup

Lionel Andrés Messi is a mythical figure in his native Rosario. The prodigal son who will hope to win the biggest prize of all. The most famous soccer player in a city proud of his ability to produce soccer players on an industrial scale. Di María, Lavezzi, Mascherano, Lavezzi, Demichelis, Maxi Rodríguez, Garay, Banega, Pochettino, Batistuta, Heinze, Valdano, Lo Celso, Ángel Correa.

Rosario is proud of him, even though they never see him in the flash.

Memories of a skinny kid playing baby football for Gandoli or Newell’s Old Boys are the stuff of legend. Everyone has a story of seeing a very young Lionel dominating soccer games in Rosario.

Lionel Messi will be looking to win his first and last World Cup on Sunday afternoon.

‘Leo was a pleasure to watch. We played against older guys but it didn’t matter. He was unstoppable and no one could take the ball from him,’ says Mauro Formica, who played with Messi at Newell’s Old Boys, the team Lionel supports.

Messi goes to Rosario twice a year. He spends Christmas with his family in town and a few weeks when he ends football season.

Another legend about him in the city is his visit to the Club de la Milanesa, a restaurant that serves his favorite and typical Argentine dish: a milanesa. He has been seen on occasion by some lucky fans going in and out of the venue. But he knows that it is impossible to spend a lot of time anywhere in the city. It would be chaos.

However, he will have to fight with Kylian Mbappe to get the trophy.

Many tourists, during the holidays, go to Café VIP, a restaurant near the Monument to the Flag, one of the most iconic symbols of Rosario. The place belongs to his father, Jorge.

But it is not easy to find someone related to the family there. Lionel is almost impossible. Almost. One lucky fan found success weeks before the 2014 World Cup.

Messi signed a card with the image of the trophy and wrote ‘I promise to bring it’ (I promise to bring it home). A broken promise so far. Today’s World Cup final against France could be his last chance.

Lionel owns two private villas in the city. He also owns a two-story office building near the Paraná River, on the eastern edge of the city.

The house where he grew up, on the Estado de Israel highway, a narrow street in the poor south of Rosario, still belongs to the family but is always closed. Neighbors say that Matías, one of Lionel’s brothers, still lives there, but he doesn’t answer the door. He was arrested twice for illegally carrying a weapon.

The graffiti of Messi with the Argentina shirt are everywhere. For most he is the great ambassador of Rosario. But this is not a unanimous opinion. It’s not hard to find people who think Lionel should do more for the city and now, near the end of his career, he should make good on his promise to come home to play at Newell’s.

“Some people have unrealistic expectations of Lionel. Maybe they think that he should be his neighbor, a person who is in the city every day. He lives in a different country, he has a life in Europe. They expect too much,’ says Lucas Scaglia, a former Newell’s teammate and cousin of Antonella Rocuzzo, Messi’s wife.

Whether or not Messi wins the World Cup, Rosario will continue to be proud of him

Since Argentina won the Copa América last year, the national mood has changed. People believe in the national team and they believe in Messi. Until then, there was a hint of suspicion. The question was always the same: why didn’t he play as well for Argentina as he did for Barcelona?

There were accusations: he does not care about his country, he does not sing the national anthem before matches. He is not Argentine. He is Spanish. He left at the age of 13, a child who cried profusely during the flight to Barcelona, ​​afraid of a new life and of leaving his friends behind. But his children are Spanish. They speak Catalan. Rumor has it that he intends to live in Barcelona after his retirement. This thought stings the people in his hometown. For them, Messi is from Rosario. Not Barcelona.

‘It was a long time ago, but a lot of people still remember the player he was when he was a kid, when he was 11, 12 years old. It was ridiculous. We had a strong team at Newell’s, but when Lionel arrived, we were unbeatable and he scored a lot of goals,” says Sergio Almiron, manager of amateur teams at the club Messi played for before moving to Barcelona.

Messi became so much bigger than the city that some of his ex-teammates only talk to the press for a fee. They all have stories about the player who once, during halftime of a Newell’s pro game, did holding drills in center circle. Right foot, left foot, head, shoulder, thigh, heels back without dropping the ball. Thousands of people inside the Marcelo Bielsa Stadium began to shout:

Messi goes to Rosario twice a year. He spends Christmas with his family in the city.

‘Maradona! Maradona!

‘It was just incredible,’ recalls Bruno Millanesio, a midfielder who played with Lionel in the club’s youth system.

Those who shared dressing rooms with him do not remember him as a shy child, contrary to the popular image of him. They talk about a polite but funny boy. The one who took other kids to do keepie-uppies in front of cars to earn some money to buy Coca-Cola, which he loved.

“There was a game in which his marker fouled Leo every time he touched the ball. So he decided to humiliate his opponent. His marker could no longer find it. Leo passed by him without touching the ball. There was a moment when he hit the poor boy twice in a row, in the same play,’ says Sergio Maradona, another boy who played with him at Newell’s.

That team was nicknamed the ‘1987 machine’ and went undefeated for three years. In 2000, the year Messi traveled to Barcelona, ​​they won the championship so easily that the league decided something had to be done. If either team had a six goal lead, the match had to be stopped. Only one team the following week did that: Newell’s Old Boys.

Messi is a mythical figure in Rosario also because of a promise he never made: one day to return to play professionally at Newell’s. No one heard him say that. Jorge Messi, his father, mentioned it once. It was enough. When he left Barcelona, ​​a part of Rosario wanted him to come home, instead of Paris.

It was unreasonable to expect that. But some will never give up and still want to see Messi in the black and red Newell’s Old Boys jersey, ideally with a World Cup victory to his name.