Marina Artusa
08/15/2021 7:52 PM
Clarín.com
sports
Updated 08/15/2021 8:11 PM
It is not there and it will not come.
But around the
Camp Nou
in Barcelona, 1,040 kilometers from where he really is, his presence is venerated as an act of faith in which you don't have to see to believe.
Hundreds of backs with the Messi 10 tattooed below the neck attended this Sunday the game that Barça won against Real Sociedad with a team in which no player with the 10 appeared.
It was the start of the Spanish LaLiga at the Futbol Club Barcelona stadium that, this year, experienced two anomalies: the return of the public to its stands, which the pandemic had forced to interrupt in March last year, and the absence of Leo Messi, his fetish player who, almost certainly, watched the game from Paris, from the 350-square-meter apartment, a few steps from the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe where he has settled for now.
Not to forget: Messi's 10 shirt will continue to be present in the stands of the Camp Nou Photo: Cézaro Luca
A week has passed since the press conference that Leo improvised in Barcelona to tell his version of the abrupt no-deal with Barça and his move to Paris Saint-Germain.
The one in which, in a suit and tie - plus a handkerchief that his wife lovingly approached him when she saw him tear - he confessed: "To this day I do not fall into the reality of leaving this place, this club."
Most of Barcelona's 85,000 or so members feel almost the same way. They do not fall
.
Of the 30 thousand tickets for fans that Barça had authorized for this Sunday, 20,384 people attended
.
Some met a couple of hours before at the Bar Club del Plin, on the Traversa de Les Corts, diagonally to Gate 19 of the stadium, to drink beer and curse the president of the club, Joan Laporta, whom they blame for Leo I am not on the court this Sunday.
“It is going to be a tough day to enter the field and not see the best player in the world with our jersey.
It is a very fat stick but, as he said himself, the club is above everything.
The love we have for him is infinite and
we are already looking forward to his contract with Paris Saint-Germain ending
”, Xavi Ratera, who has Messi's signature tattooed on his right forearm, tells Clarín.
Barsa fan Xavi Ratera got the original Lionel Messi signature tattooed on his forearm Photo: Cézaro Luca
Elisenda Cabrejas Marc, a Catalan passionate about Barça's colors, does not hide her disappointment at not seeing him play this Sunday: “With Messi I have mixed feelings.
It's like family, 17 years here, but
I also feel a betrayal.
Messi, you haven't behaved too well with us,
”he says.
On the corner of Carrer de Elisabeth Eidenbenz, at the stall that sells Messi t-shirts for 25 euros and scarves with his face for 10, no one seems to register that the Argentine is no longer part of the squad.
"It continues to sell a lot," says the lady who attends.
People now take Messi's as a souvenir.
He was a very important figure. "
During the match, the tribune chanted his name more than once.
There was also some "Fucking Paris Saint-Germain!"
and blasphemies against Laporta, to whom they dedicated some banners at the entrance of the stadium: "Laporta, Judas, you cheated on D10S" or "
Messi in Paris and you in Ibiza
."
In the center of Barcelona, the tiles of the Ramblas waved by inertia on this Sunday of 29 degrees and tired tourists.
Souvenir businesses feign insanity and still do not remove Messi merchandising from the windows
.
Messi is everything: the boys do not forget the passage of Messi on Catalan soil.Photo: Cézaro Luca
"He is an inseparable icon of Barcelona and Barça," said the city's mayor, Ada Colau, when she learned of his departure from the club.
In Castelldefels, the town 20 kilometers from Barcelona where the Messi built their family fortress, there is a sad silence.
The house is closed and the neighbors wonder what will become of it.
The curious pass by the El Chalito restaurant, where Leo used to eat in a Neapolitan Milanese family, in search of some vestige, some anecdote, some antidote to oblivion.
In 2018 Leo Messi was appointed a goodwill ambassador of the World Tourism Organization for responsible tourism.
And still no one drew up a strategic plan against the uneasiness of those visitors who planned a stopover in Barcelona months ago to see a Messi play that left the devotion of a club, a city and a good part of the Spanish orphaned.
"Players will continue to come to Barça.
The club is more important than anyone and people are going to get used to it.
At first it's going to be strange, but great players came and they have a great squad, "Messi said a week ago, at the press conference in which we all saw him cry.
And he was not wrong: in Barcelona this Sunday was a strange day.
Special sent to Barcelona
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