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The text by Hernán Casciari that made Messi cry

2022-12-22T21:00:15.141Z


The Argentine writer dedicates a story to the player that speaks of the uprooting of "a simple man" who reached the top without forgetting his roots


Leo Messi during a match with Barcelona in 2006. Luis Bagu (Getty Images)

Messi is “a simple man” on the “top of the world”.

On Sunday, he lifted the Cup in Qatar.

On Tuesday, four million people chanted his name in the streets of Buenos Aires, in what was the greatest collective experience in history.

That same day he traveled to Rosario, his hometown, as he does every year.

On Thursday, he picked up his phone and sent a recorded message to a radio journalist, Andy Kusnetzoff, and a writer, Hernán Casciari.

He told them both that he had cried along with his wife, Antonella Roccuzzo.

And that the reason was a nine-minute text that Casciari, director of the

Orsai Magazine

, had read on Wednesday in the program.

The protagonist of the story was Messi, evidently, and it was titled “Lionel's suitcase”.

Casciari lived 15 years in Spain.

There he witnessed the long road that turned Messi from a young Argentine player who scored goals in the lower ranks of Barcelona to that "simple man" who reached the "top of the world".

“There were two kinds of immigrants: those who kept their suitcase in the closet as soon as they arrived in Spain, they said 'okay', 'uncle' and 'hosts'.

And those of us who had not kept our suitcases kept the customs, such as mate or yeísmo.

We said

yuvia

, we said

caye”

.

With the victory in Qatar, Messi "shut the mouths of his detractors" in Argentina.

And with his

"What a look, silly, go paya",

Casciari confirmed that Messi had kept intact "his yeísmo of him".

“And we all enjoyed seeing Messi come home with the World Cup in his suitcase without putting away (…) This epic story would never have happened if Lionel (…) had hidden his suitcase in the closet.

If as a boy I had succumbed to the 'okay' and the 'host, man'.

But he never mistaken his accent or forgot his place in the world, ”Casciari wrote and read.

The uprooting story struck a chord with Messi, who heard Casciari's story thanks to his wife, Antonella.

He then decided to send a recorded message to the cell phone of Andy Kusnetzoff, the host of the program.

"I wanted to send you this audio because I was here, we got up with Anto, we were drinking mate, I started watching a little Tik Tok," he tells her.

He declares himself happy because the journalist had recovered from a health problem;

and he immediately advances on Casciari's text.

“What about Hernán, what he wrote, what he told, the truth was impressive.

We both began to cry because everything that counts is very true.

And nothing, I wanted to send a greeting to both of them, thank them, and tell them that we heard it, we were moved, they made us cry.

He wanted them to know.

I send a big hug to all of you.

And thank you again",

Everyone dried their tears in the air.

Among them, Casciari.

“Lionel's message this morning was tremendous, saying that he had cried with his wife listening to the story.

If as a boy they gave me a choice: Nobel and Cervantes prizes or thrill Messi with a story, I choose today ”, he says.

The text that Casciari read, which can be read below, is a summary of the original, which will be published in its entirety in the February issue of the

Orsai Magazine.

Lionel's suitcase

On Saturday mornings in 2003, TV3 de Cataluña broadcast live the matches of the lower teams of Barça.

And in the chat rooms of emigrant Argentines, two questions were repeated: how to make dulce de leche by boiling cans of condensed milk, and what time the fifteen-year-old boy from Rosario who scored goals in every game played.

In the 2003-2004 season, Lionel Messi played thirty-seven games and scored thirty-five goals: the morning rating of Catalan TV, those Saturdays, surpassed the night one.

There was already talk of

'aquest nen'

in the hairdressers, in the bars and in the stands of the Camp Nou.

The only one who did not speak was him: in the post-game interviews, the teenager answered all the questions with a "yes", a "no" or a "thank you", and then lowered his eyes.

We emigrated Argentines would have preferred a charlatan, but there was something good: when he stringed together a sentence he ate the S's, and said ful instead of falta.

We discovered, with relief, that it was one of ours, one of those of us who had unsecured suitcases.

There were two kinds of immigrants: those who kept the suitcase in the closet as soon as they arrived in Spain, they said "okay", "uncle" and "hosts".

And those of us who had not kept our suitcases kept the customs, such as mate or yeísmo.

We said

yuvia

, we said

falls

.

Time began to pass.

Messi became Barça's undisputed number 10.

The Leagues, the Copas del Rey and the Champions League arrived.

And both he and us, the immigrants, knew that the accent was the most difficult thing to maintain.

It was very difficult for all of us to keep saying dribble instead of dribbling, but at the same time we knew that it was our final trench.

And Messi was our leader in that battle.

The boy who didn't speak kept the way of speaking alive for us.

So, suddenly, we were not only enjoying the best player we had ever seen, but we were also making sure that he didn't slip a Spanish idiom in any interview.

In addition to his goals, we celebrated the fact that, in the locker room, he always had a thermos and a mate.

Suddenly he was the most famous human in Barcelona but, just like us, he never stopped being an Argentine elsewhere.

Its Argentine flag in the celebrations of each European cup.

I disregarded him when he went to the Olympics to win gold for Argentina without permission from his club.

His Christmas was always in Rosario, despite the fact that he had to play at the Camp Nou in January.

Everything he did was a nod to us, to those of us who, in the year 2000, had arrived with him in Barcelona.

It's hard to explain how happy life was for those of us who lived far from home.

How he got us out of the boredom of a monotonous society and justified us.

How it helped us not to lose the compass.

Messi made us happy in such a serene way, and so natural, and so ours, that when the insults began to arrive from Argentina we couldn't understand it.

Cold chest.

You only care about money.

Stay there.

You don't feel the shirt.

You are Galician, not Argentine.

If you ever quit, think again.

Mercenary.

I lived fifteen years away from Argentina, and I can't think of a more terrifying nightmare than hearing voices of contempt coming from the place you love most in the world.

There is no more unbearable pain than hearing, in your son's voice, the phrase that Messi heard from his son Thiago: "Dad, why are they killing you in Argentina?"

My breath catches when I think of that phrase from a boy to a father.

And I know that an ordinary person would end up invaded by rancor.

That is why Messi's resignation from the Argentine National Team in 2016 was almost a relief for us immigrants.

We couldn't see him suffer like this, because we knew how much he loved his country and the efforts he made to not break the umbilical cord.

When he resigned, it was as if Messi had suddenly decided to take his hands out of the fire for a while.

Not just yours.

We too were burned by those criticisms.

That is where, I think, the most unusual event in modern football occurs: the afternoon in 2016 when Lionel got tired of the insults and decided to resign, a fifteen-year-old boy wrote him a letter on Facebook that ended by saying: “Think about staying.

But stay to have fun, which is what these people want to take away from you.

Seven years later, Enzo Fernández, the author of the letter, was the revelation player of the Lionel Messi World Cup.

Messi returned to the National Team (he said it himself) so that those boys who sent him letters would not believe that giving up was an option in life.

And when he returned, he gained everything he lacked and closed the mouths of his detractors.

Although some found it "for the first time vulgar" in front of a microphone.

It was when he said:

"What a look, fool, go paya

. "

For us, those of us who have watched his accent for fifteen years, it was a perfect sentence, because he ate all the eses and his yeísmo is still intact.

We are happy to confirm that he is still the same person who helped us to be happy when we were far away.

Now some immigrants have already returned;

others stayed.

And we all enjoy seeing Messi come home with the World Cup in his unstored suitcase.

This epic story would never have happened if fifteen-year-old Lionel had hidden his suitcase in the closet.

If as a boy I had succumbed to the "okay" and the "host, man".

But she never got his accent wrong or forgot his place in the world.

That is why the entire Humanity desired Lionel's triumph so strongly.

No one had ever seen, on top of the world, a simple man.

And yesterday, like every year, Messi returned from Europe to spend Christmas with his family in Rosario, to greet his neighbors.

His habits don't change.

The only thing that changes is what he

brought us

in the suitcase.

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Source: elparis

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